The End of the World As We Know It

I don't know what's wrong with me at the moment. Can't seem to bring myself to write about anything much. Perhaps that's because I keep being given assignments about the onset of armaggedon at work which make everything seem a bit pointless.

Last time I checked terrorists were about to cause a clash of civilisations with the muslim world that would result in a Revelations-style fight to the death.

However, unlike the (apparent) majority of my fellow citizens I have never been particularly afraid of this scenario, partly because I think those threatening to destroy Western civilisation are more than usually incompetent and partly because we have most of the money and weapons on our side.

From what I can tell there's a large number of disgruntled 16 year olds from Luton with about 2 GCSE's to rub together looking for their moment in the limelight and a short-cut to credibility with their peers.

The shoe-bomber just made me laugh, as did the jeep 'attack' on Glasgow airport where the only person that got injured was the mujahideen doctor type who set himself on fire. From shame, probably.

True the whole 7/7 London Tube incident was scary but we definitely had more to fear from the IRA than these guys.

Climate change catastrophe and rising food prices is a different story.

The past year has seen startling hikes in the cost of basic foods: Corn has jumped 31%, rice 74%, soya 87% and wheat by an astonishing 130% since March 2007. As a result 100 million people could be pushed into poverty and hundreds of thousands put at risk of starvation according to the IMF and World Bank.

As opposed to the very localised threat of a possible terrorist attack (which can spread fear, but rarely, if ever, total destruction) the current situation is so grave that Ban Ki-Moon has warned it will cancel out all progress toward the Millennium Development goals of halving world poverty by 2015. Now billions of starving and desperate people is not only a humanitarian disaster but the recipe for a real third world war.

We are faced with the threat of a world which is deforested and denuded of its natural resources. Common goods like fish stocks and fresh water are getting rarer and will likely be the trigger for major conflict in years to come. If sea levels rise we'll sea a massive increase in refugee numbers, while natural disasters, salinisation and desertification linked to climate change will ensure harvests go from poor to non-existent in many of the world's poorest areas.

People like to blame biofuels for the current rash of food price hikes and shortages, and to a certain extent they are right since biofuels increase demand for crops, which boosts prices, which drives agricultural expansion, which eats forests, which releases even more CO2, which brings armageddon another step closer.

However, using biofuels as a scapegoat is a little too simplistic. Even if we turned over agrofuel fields to food production , that won't do much to counter world population growth and industrialisation which means people are consuming far more than the world can actually produce.

Take eating habits. The average Chinaman already eats 30 kilos more beef per capita now than he did in 1980. And the average kilo of beef requires 2000 square feet of land and 13000 litres of water. Since the same nutritional content can be gained from soya at 1% of the land and water, the logic of global capitalism, the logic of demand and supply to those who can afford goods, is pretty much responsible for the fact that farmers are growing food for the rich, and leaving the poor to starve.

Not that they have much choice. Agricultural markets are amongst the most restrictive and subsidised in the world, and their distortions trap poor farmers in a cycle of poverty and give them little incentive to increase food production. Likewise, the real culprit in the biofuels saga is the United States government which props up its industry to the tune of $7 billion a year, not including basic farm subsidies, which has a knock-on effect on world food production and prices.

It is the CAP and other subsidies, not biofuels, that are the root cause of this problem. If we really want to feed the world's poor, Europe and America should stop bleating about biofuels and move to end agricultural protectionism and export restrictions; enhance agricultural development in the poorest countries; and ensure the success of the Doha Development Round to encourage free, fair, and sustainable agricultural trade at global level.

Likewise, Europe must use its collective weight at international level to ensure that climate change and sustainability criteria are effectively integrated with trade policy to stop the latter undermining the former, as is currently the case. And that means stopping the Americans, in particular, screwing everyone over with their peculiar definition of 'free market economics' which is all about protecting their farmers, and damning the rest of the world.

It also means everyone becoming a vegetarian, as called for by Paul MacCartney.

It's a long shot. I dont see it happening myself. Armageddon is - sadly - a far safer bet.

Letting the Surveillance State in by the Backdoor?

One of my best friends has long refused to join Facebook. I found his hardline stance rather peculiar in the past because, well, everyone's on there, aren't they, and it's such a quick and easy way of seeing what old friends are up to - not to mention people you've barely met, or haven't seen for decades - without actually having to contact them personally. Not to mention checking out other people's holiday snaps and advertising your own 'fabulous' existence - or airbrushed internet approximation thereof - and organising your social life. Opting out of facebook, it seemed to me, was like voluntarily opting out of your own social circle. It's the modern equivalent of living without a mobile phone - the preserve of the elderly, the eccentric, and the socially crippled.

Well it turns out he may have had a point. The reason we should think twice before joining Facebook, let alone posting our most intimate details there, is precisely because it makes it so easy for anyone to see them. "Not so!" you might protest. "It's for friends only".

Now I know that Facebook technically has a privacy policy but I wonder how many of you have actually read the smallprint? Well me neither, as it turned out, because the smallprint is always long, boring, and, well, small, and we office hamsters are always so busy chasing deadlines or hiding our skiving tendencies from our bosses that we tend not to bother with yet more bureaucracy and simply click 'accept'. Wrong decision.

I first got concerned about a lack of privacy when a variety of freak strangers - 'networkers' I guess you' call them - started asking me to be their friend. Now this is in a completely different league from pesky peeps from the past who don't get that you weren't in contact for a reason and won't take no for an answer. These were people I had never met and never heard about. So how had they found me?

I figured that we must share some friends in common or I was some kind of deranged amnesiac. In some cases this was true. Yet in others I could see no real connection between me and the names I thought I ought to know. Until it twigged- it's due to the networks you join where, as I was to learn, everyone can see who else is on it. That's also the reason adverts for EU Studies Masters and Brussels Job Fairs are perpetually popping up on my screen.

Not so bad, you might think. That's what a virtual community is all about. But it doesn't stop there.

More and more bosses are monitoring employees pages and taking action against behaviour outside the workplace that doesn't correspond to their professional standards. Witness the case of Stacy Snyder who was sacked from her teaching placement and denied her degree because a photo captioned 'drunken pirate' appeared on her My Space page. The university claimed it promoted underage and irresponsible drinking amongst her students. And now her career is in ruins before it even began.

Nor is such psycho surveillance consigned to the risk-averse side of the Atlantic. Here in Europe everyone, from potential employers to university tutors, is checking up on our personal preferences before we even step through the door for an interview. One too many photos of drunken nights out, one too many revelations on your wall, and you can kiss goodbye to your future prospects.

What's worse, though, is that the corporations and civil servants who track down information to use against us are not abusing the system at all. Quite the contrary. They are using it exactly as its founders intended. There's a reason Facebook is now worth $15 billion and that's because it's the most detailed and up-to-date database that exists on earth.

Who wouldn't want to buy into a programme which provides particularised profiles of 60 million human beings from Afghanistan to America - a figure set to rise to 200 million by this time next year? It's an advertisers wet-dream for heaven's sake. It's the government's holy grail.

So what do Facebook's founders do? Thanks to Tom Hodgkinson from the Guardian for this analysis. "The creators of the site need do very little bar fiddle with the programme. In the main, they simply sit back and watch as millions of Facebook addicts voluntarily upload their ID details, photographs and lists of their favourite consumer objects. Once in receipt of this vast database of human beings, Facebook then simply has to sell the information back to advertisers, or, as Zuckerberg puts it in a recent blog post, "to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web". And indeed, this is precisely what's happening. On November 6 last year, Facebook announced that 12 global brands had climbed on board. They included Coca-Cola, Blockbuster, Verizon, Sony Pictures and Condé Nast. All trained in marketing bullshit of the highest order".

So there we are. The people most interested in the unique, individual, 'I am' of liberal discourse is not old school friends jealous of your desperately attractive boyfriend or wonderful career, not loved ones who live far away and rarely see your life except through shared photographs and messages - no, it's precisely the people we spend most of our time protecting our information from. Our government and our boss.

So what makes Facebookplc so profitable and beloved of the enemies of our privacy? Well...

1 - It will advertise at you: "When you use Facebook, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalised features."
2 - You can't delete anything: "When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information."
3 - Anyone can glance at your intimate confessions: "we cannot and do not guarantee that user content you post on the site will not be viewed by unauthorised persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of user content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other users have copied or stored your user content."
4 - Our marketing profile of you will be unbeatable: "Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (eg, photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalised experience."
5 - Opting out doesn't mean opting out: "Facebook reserves the right to send you notices about your account even if you opt out of all voluntary email notifications."
Finally, and most worryingly,
6 - The CIA may look at the stuff when they feel like it: "By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States ... We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Facebook service or using the Facebook name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies."

So delete it all now! But wait, there's no point leaving Facebook once you're in the system. Because even if you delete it the information's stored in an archive 'just in case'. And to think I even signed the 'NO2ID" petition.

No Stars for Eurostar

Eurostar promises you all kinds of good things about its futuristic new terminal at St Pancras - the only railway station in Britain to boast a champagne bar instead of the obligatory stale sandwiches and cardboard coffee. But while the 'extras' delight, one aspect of the service is noticeably missing.

One of the worst things about the old terminal at Waterloo was the crazoid xray machines you had to lift your bag one metre off the ground to reach. These were normally manned by strapping security-guard types who would refuse, on grounds of 'health and safety', to help you lift your suitcase.

Their unequivocal stance created quite a few problems for me on one occasion when, due to a mystery illness contracted on holiday, I was too weak to manage feats of weight-lifting. The guy in question, I recall, told me rudely to get a move on and put my bag through and, when I asked for assistance, started shouting I wasn't his personal slave.

On insisting, as best I could, that lifting the thing was IMPOSSIBLE for me at that time one of his colleagues took pity on me (by now in the midst of a crying fit) and did the necessary. I was then forced to pay £18 for the privilege of a porter to take my things the rest of the way to the train. Not the way to treat a customer who had just paid for a first class ticket, you might think.

I wasn't the only one suffering the same problem either. Having travelled more often on Eurostar in the last year than is sensible, enough to have earned the right to a season ticket with my own dedicated chair, I witnessed a long line of little old ladies, over-burdened mothers and sick and suffering travellers fall foul of this bizarre system.

Surely, I reasoned, this glittery new terminal would resolve the problem? But no. Just the other day my friend (perfectly young and healthy by the way) was travelling through St Pancras with no more than a heavy suitcase. Quite sensibly she had decided to avoid Ryanscare's 15k baggage limit when coming home from the holidays with her Christmas pressies and take the train instead.

Yet when she arrived at security, the same evil machines were in place and she had to ask for assitance with her bag since she couldn't lift it. Staff refused at first then some kind hearted soul helped her. He was reprimanded by the supervisor in front of her and she was then called aside to be treated to a lengthy lecture on why she shouldn't travel with heavy bags.

DOES ANYONE SPOT WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS?

If operators want to embrace the kind of capitalist ethic that means they make a fortune in profits while service deteriorates and ticket prices rise they should not enjoy the right to treat passengers - as happened routinely in the days of state-sponsored British rail - as criminals.

If the sick, the elderly, or the plain over-burdened wish to travel, at vast personal expense, they should not be hampered or harrassed by rules that diverge so far from the ethic of consumer protection as to beggar belief. Eurostar, we expect more from you. Please try putting customers first.

I'm semi-tempted to put up some kind of petition or standard letter, at the risk of acting like a stand-in for WHICH, to try and get them to reconsider the kind of scanning machines they use. If enough of us complained we might get the kind of service which we pay so dearly for.