eyedropper.co.uk

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Rainbow from my window,
originally uploaded by eyedropper.co.uk.

The weather was chopping and changing all day today, from bright sunshine to sudden showers. The result of all of this was the biggest rainbow I ever saw! It started behind the TV trainsmitter, and ended 10 miles away in the city. You don’t really get to see ‘big nature’ in cities much. And here’s why they happen.

Link: Pop Idol Cowell warns: ‘ignore iPod generation’.

Honestly, what a shit. Ignore the biggest paradigm shift in music since the invention of… stereo/the 45/rock n roll”. In his view [record companies] have become “obsessed” with the market for 16 to 25-year-olds. “From what I see there is a massive audience outside the iPod generation.” Idiot! It’s those sort of people who own iPods, kids can’t afford them.

Any way, It’s a bit rich considering the age groups he’s traditionally targeted, the under 16′s. This from the man who launched the careers of acts such as Robson & Jerome and Gareth Gates (yeah thanks Cowell). Cowell does not have an iPod – “they are too technical” – and does not like laptop computers or even email, because the latter act as a substitute for real communication.

Now I know me of all people is biased. Maybe he’s kind to his family and such, but I despise the man professionally. I hate everything he stands for, his Caligula attitude, his high pants, his cheap brand of music hall/punch ‘n’ Judy entertainment. It’s not music, it’s just shit (I)TV. His acts are about as tasty as processed mild cheddar. it’s ASDA A&R, middle of the road supermarket bulk buying power. The vain bastard even put a calendar out this year. And then there’s this: “I am not a fan of the BBC – or the structure … I am totally against the licence fee. It’s 50 years out of date and I can’t understand the rationale behind it.” Bit like the record industry then? Face it Cowell, you are your casting couch producers are dying. The future is (hopefully) gonna be things like Garageband.com, leading to things like Soundslikeradio.net.

You know, one of the best obits I read for John Peel was an editorial on the letters page of the NME the week he died. It simply said ‘Peel was the Anti-Cowell’; but like Iron Maiden sang, “..Only the good die young, the evil seem to live forever.”

Awww, shit.

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the_new_office.JPG,
originally uploaded by eyedropper.co.uk.

Today was the first day BBC New Media Central (a.k.a Highfield’s Heros) moved to the Media Village, the BBC’s swanky ultra modern development adjacent to White City. And it’s very nice, it’s just the commute that isn’t.

8:25, leave house, walk to Gipsy Hill train station, 8:32 delayed till around 8:40ish, get to Clapham Junction at 9ish, cross over to platform 17, train to Olympia cancelled, race to platform 2, 9:05 to Olympia rama-dama-ding-dong, train leaves stuffed with people, run back to platform 17, 9:25 also cancelled, walk back to platform 2 and wait for the 9:35, get to Olympia, wait for shuttle bus, get in work at 9:55

So, what’s it like working along side the ‘other bits’ of the BBC? Well, it’s all very different. All the girls are young and attractive, the guys well dressed and handsome, all much more meejah and glam than the World Service with whom we last shared an office with at Aldwych. There’s a nice buzz about the place, though we’re the only people on our floor at the mo, so it’s a bit sparse.

Then there’s a small induction where we learn where the fire alarm/bogs/parking/paper clips are, and the fact that the building’s the most modern in the BBC estate; fully air-conned and totally bomb proof, etc. then a welcome pack and a free mini bottle of Champagne… oooooh.

By then it’s lunchtime. After the gulag that was the Bush House/World Service Canteen us noobs fell upon White city’s refectory like Eastern Europeans in a Berlin Mac Donalds circa ’89. Proper food, cooked to order, decent salad bar, proper knives and forks… It was all too much. One of the team had swordfish, just because it was there. Another had a 10″ pizza, that came in a proper warm soggy box! Ah it’s a long way from the Brussels Sprout and Cous Cous salad that I once saw at Bush, or the Goat Cheese cake, (not Goat’s cheesecake but a savoury quiche that had goat in it).

So, not a bad first day, topped of by a 1 hour 20 minute commute home. see above, sort of in reverse.

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solicitors,
originally uploaded by eyedropper.co.uk.

My mate Nick took this photo in a northern chip shop over Xmas…. makes you wonder what happened? And also, how would the owner know if you were a solicitor?

You wold have thought that for once, just once, the Daily Star could have knocked the norks of the front page? The Independent’s done a lot of these sort of framed editorial things recently, on Ken Bigley, Margaret Hassan and other Iraq-tastrophes.

Newsnight asked some interesting questions last night, [watch here] about what could be called ‘grief event horizon’. Guest Frank Furedi made some good points too, that the public gets swept up in these events, Dunblaine, Soham, Diana etc, by the media. He went on ‘..To be a moral responsible individual you have to give more money than someone else… there’s a sense of competitiveness as we face moral confusion… the only time we come together as a people are when we’re facing tragedy, a tragic death or disaster..’ Food for thought indeed. So maybe it’s because so many of us have been to Thailand on holiday, that it’s sort of ‘second world’ and that the disaster was sudden and unstoppable, and that there seems an easy way out, rebuilding and such, rather than having to face a disaster caused by 20 years of civil war and that’ll take 20 years to put right…

The report focused on previous appeals. Stats quoted: emergency appeal for Chechnya raised $40 a head. The floods in Mozambique was only 15% met, raising 40 Cents a head. In contrast the money pledge so far, some 2 billion dollars, means $400 a head for the 5 million people affected in Asia. Another worry now is that the tsunami will take the focus off Africa. On the plus side the other guest said British people give 7.6 billion to charities a year, and that 10% of that goes overseas.

So perhaps this would be a best outcome; If the International Community and people of the World can respond this quickly and with this much will, determination and aid to this disaster, why not keep the momentum going and focus on some of the other problems around the World?

Been a lot of this sort of ‘No Logo’ thing recently, only mostly in a bad way. I give you, a tale of two brands.

French Connection has finally dropped the awful FC:UK thing. thank fuck for that one might say. It was a one-liner that went on for far to long. the simple pun FC:UK was poor, but when it got to ‘fancy a fcuk’ or ‘I don’t give a fcuk’ in a hippy typeface, it made me scream! Why stop there, if the aim is to be edgy and daring, what about ‘FC:UK dead dogs’ or ‘FC:UK spastics’?

Let’s face it, FC:UK as a brand is mostly popular with people who… don’t. As shown by booze industry stool pigeons, The Portman Group here, when French Connection tried (and failed) to launch an alcho-pop in 2003.

So now they have a new ad out, which guess what.. sends up the previous campaign! Who’d have thought it eh? According to The Independent, the logo will be replaced by a series of ironic, self-referential phrases such as “Don’t make us say it”, “Something beginning with F”, with no other clues as to which brand they represent.

Jesus you can imagine the pitch… How lame of TBWA, (who’s flashtastrophy of a site don’t work in Safari, and look at their US page, it’s a full on ‘ironic’ under construction flash page!)

I’ve seen the ad, It’s rubbish, first I thought it was that HSBC one, that also featured a denim clad guy travelling across South America on a bike, then when the words came up I totally misread the typeface and thought it was for GAP, because, like most of the Western World, I’m mentally attuned to glaze over when commercials come on. Here’s the thing in it’s shitty entirety.

The Economist on the other hand, have been cleverly playing with their brand for ages. They’ve used one colour and one typeface to great effect. This is supplemented either toying with the title, such as switching it to Morse Code, or appropriating words and phrases from economic circles and popular culture.

Sport Relief ‘thanks’ party – a photoset on Flickr
ok, so Monday I get an email from the Comic Relief web team, saying, ‘hope you got your invite to out sport relief thank you party tomorrow night, see you there’…. eh, what invite… A party, without moi? I mailed back and made arrangements.

See a while back myself and Mr Useability himself Gee-Kay Wong paid them a visit to talk about design, promotion on bbc.co.uk and general useability guidelines…

So Tuesday night comes around off I trot. It’s in a quick drink at the bar before Kevin Cahill takes the stage and talks about all the good work that’s been done and the successes of sports relief.

Emma Freud, a trustee of Comic Relief then takes the stage and talks about the upcoming plans for 2005. The plan is this… Make poverty history. It’s a really unique opportunity that the UK has to end some of the major causes of world poverty. It’s 20 years after Live Aid, when we were first made aware of the full horrors of famine and poverty. It’s also the UK’s turn to host the G8 summit, where eight men will go to the Gleneagles hotel in Scotland and decide world economic policy for the next few years. The UK will also hodl the EU presidency. MPH is campaigning for three things: Fair and even trade laws, dropping 3rd world debt and increasing each country’s aid budget to a ‘whopping’ 0.7% of GDP.

Emma then showed a video, and you can watch it here, infact I insist that you do. It’s one of the most heart breaking things I’ve ever seen.

World poverty won’t go away over night, but at least some of the root causes will have been addressed by these aims. It’s a real chance to do something powerful and far reaching so get involved.

Everyone was kind of numb after that video…. but Kevin made an exceptional closing statement and raised the mood once more.

Then it was time to get some more drinks in, Bjorn Again got on stage, then the lovely Edith Bowman did a set, Ainsley Harriott was there along with a load of other c’lebs, and I got a bit smashed. I then saw a man passed out at Embankment station, and met a couple with ‘tazer quest’ guns on the train… [photos of the night here]

BBC NEWS- Pro-hunt protesters storm Commons
So it’s been another day when the country folk come to town. I remember the last time they were here, all ‘we hate the city’ placards and then off to starbucks for a coffee and a whinge at the prices.

There’s a great many injustices in this world, things that I feel strongly about are issues like global poverty and child welfare, these are worth donating too and caring about, whereas today’s demonstrations just make me mad.

Who’d have thought that in the 21st Century it’d be the aristocracy that would be rioting! How ironic. There was a chap on BBC Breakfast this morning saying he was coming to London to protest about the hunting ban as it’d mean he’d loose his job, bit like the guard at the Berlin wall in 1989. The interviewer said ‘well under the ban you’ve got two years to retrain..’ and he said ‘this is all I’ve done since leaving school, my father and grandfather did it too, we’ve done it since the middle ages’ well whoopdidoo, my grandfather was a coal miner, my father a chef in the Navy, both of those things have been scaled back, welcome to the real world mate.

For to long now the countryside think that we owe them a living, due in part to WW2, where the Government nationalised food production to feed the nation, so it wouldn’t have to depend on the merchant fleets that were being sunk in the Atlantic. So it kept the farmers happy, giving them massive subsides, thinking there’d be enough farming space to grow food for the nation and we wouldn’t have to dig up Battersea Park and plant potatoes again. But times have moved on, there’s far to many people in the UK than there is land to grow crops to feed them, the UK imported tons of food and ‘other stuff’ last year, so why are we giving all this money to farmers? Go to your average supermarket and see how much, especially veg, is made in the UK?

The posts on the BBC message boards are right, this is about class war. The problem with fox hunting is this; they say it’s a form of pest control. Well why does it take 20 men and horses and 40 dogs to eradicate vermin? Badger baiting’s illegal, 5 man can’t send a dog down a den and then smack the badger over the head with a spade. Rabbits are considered vermin, they spread disease and eat crops, but snares and pellets are considered good enough for them. We live in a world where chickens are mass-produced from chick to bird in six weeks, in sheds the size of a football pitches, with each bird having an A4 sized area to grow in. More than 30% of the chickens die due to disease, fatigue and exhaustion before reaching six weeks, this is considered an acceptable loss of the ‘crop’. The old idea of a fox getting in and stealing a farmers livelihood in this context is hypocrisy. ‘sides, most foxes nowadays seem to have given up on the country and come in to town via the railway lines to pick old KFC out of our bins. Their own data says ‘well half of all foxes get away’ thus proving it’s ineffective.

The countryside alliance is pro all forms of hunting, including fishing and shooting. it’s website says this:
As a recreational/leisure activity, country sports account for approximately 130 million activity days per year, with the number of people participating directly in country sports in the UK making it the fifth largest of all recreational/leisure activities – broadly equal in number to football. Hunting undertaken by the same amount of people as play football a week? I think not. If ever there were a case of battery farmed hormone injected statistics, this is it. At least other forms of hunting are considered fair game for the pot, who ever heard of eating fox?! No, what I object to is the whole ceremony, the red coats and stupid little horns, it’s not about vermin control, it’s not about employment nor one man against nature using skill and a tool. It’s about rich people getting together to trample all over the countryside and hunt down an animal. There was a story in the Metro today about a gang of city youths who kicked a puppy to death, anyone in there right mind would see this as barbaric, yet if it were a fox, they wouldn’t be sought for arrest on animal cruelty.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the countryside. I think it’s very pretty, I want it preserved, even if it’s just to keep the cities apart. But what I don’t want are anarchic rituals and institutions disguised as ‘history’ paid for by my taxes. No tourist ever came to Britain and said, ‘Ooooh, let me see a pack of dogs rip apart a fox’. It’s no place in our national culture anymore, along with bear baiting and cock fighting. Ban it, and make the countryside do what it’s best at, preserving nature, for everyone, forever.

Thoughtful piece in the Observer Review section about the fallout from the Beslan school massacre… One line in particular… Picture editors scanned a gusher of digital images, and made impromptu choices about which incident to pick out of the affray and what meaning to attach to it. No one had time to wonder about the ethics or even the aesthetics of what they were doing.. Maybe?

There were some truly shocking images form the news wires as the siege came to an end. The worst being a couple of frames showing a distraught mother lifting up tarps over charred bodies looking for her child. There were over 200 in a makeshift morgue. Could you imagine even looking at one? That really upset me… afterward.

While the story was breaking, aesthetics were, I’m ashamed to say, at the forefront of my mind. I was looking for which image is going to ‘work’ and create an effective piece of editorial, not the suffering unfolding in front of me. As a picture editor, watching a story unfold via news wires is a disjointed yet rich experience. See a lot goes onto the wires that doesn’t make it into the press, you sometimes see the ‘before’s and the afters’ to an event, the wrong angle shots, the ‘also rans’ and stuff to shocking to print. In this case the town of Beslan assembled in facets on my monitor, unfiltered and raw.

It was the same for the Madrid train bomb too. When you’re ‘doing it’ you sort of get this zoning effect, you make instant snap decisions, you become ultra focused, only afterward when the adrenaline is curdling in your system to you actually reflect on the images; that that group of pixels you optimised was a human being.

There was a an accompanying piece from Balkans vet Andrew Testa summing up why we need these images, and the effects it has on the photographer who’s actually there. Both pieces come down to a: should we see these sorts of images, and b: should the photographer get ‘involved’?

In answer to a: There’s a market for it.. even a print market at around €1000 a pop, from War Photo Ltd. Testa’s own work is there too. Suffering sells, but perhaps only of the right sort? And it doesn’t get any better than instant, unplanned death in on focused area at the hands of terrorists rather than say, the deaths of 400+ people over two months at the hand of mother nature.

In answer to b: I was once on a student portfolio judging panel with Paul Lowe, who’s worked in Chechnya, the Balkans and other hot spots around the world. In the boozer afterward I asked him about how he coped. “It’s a bit like the end of Blade Runner, ‘I’ve seen things…’” was all he’d say. As for getting involved, there’s a piece in Russell Miller’s book ‘Magnum’ where Lowe describes the aftermath of a Hutu massacre by Government troops in Rwanda.
It was very chaotic, there were a lot of injured and wounded… I felt I ought to help but I was only a journalist and I knew it was my duty to make pictures that would record the event. And anyway, what can one person do? A lot of babies had been on their mothers backs, and the mothers had died, but the babies were still alive. I went out with one of the aid workers to collect these little children. It was a terrible experience. One off the doctors at the camp said “Look you’ve got to stop bringing these people in because we’ve got no where to put them. If you bring any more they’re going to get dysentery and they’re going to die”. I literally had two babies in my arms at this point. I had to put them down by the entrance to the camp. There was nothing I could do… It was very very harrowing. I was in quite a state when I got back home.

Hardcore.

Crib Notes for the Turing Test. Get them ‘pooters to work!