24 May 2015

You know what the best thing is about being over 40?  All that embarrassing stuff in your life happened before the internet and iphone cameras!  Imagine having to re-live all those stupid things you did when you were young, and know that the whole world can see and laugh about it too.  But, when I watch global news on France24 tv, I often think about the poor people who live in the 'third world'.  There they are living the kind of traditional lives their forefathers always lived:  unpaved roads, flimsy shacks, no sanitation etc.  Yet, some young people there are shown with iphones. How can they not compare their lives with those of us in the west and feel intensely aggrieved?  In the past they would have just soldiered on. Ignorance is bliss.  But now?  What can they do?  You can't just skip over centuries of lost opportunities of technological advances.  It can't be done.  Decades ago I remember that old English tv advert: Clunk-click every trip.  Today I make mistake after mistake by clicking too quickly and then can't retrieve what I've sent. To the people of the third-world:  enjoy your lives. Think twice before you click.      

11 January 2015

Ten years ago a bridge was built by a Frenchman and an Englishman. As the 50 millionth vehicle is expected to cross the Millau divide this summer, it signifies something special.  I've always liked bridges.  Although they cost  a lot of money - this one cost 400m euros - and take a lot of time and effort to construct, it's worth it. They bring places and people together that were otherwise held apart. Global troubles and strife similarly need a lot of money, time and effort to cure.  An important new bridge now needs to be built, one that will act as a global catalyst to cross divides and bring people together. Wars happen when people fail to understand each other and mistrust each other's motives. With all today's technology, with the internet already bridging global divides, we have that catalystic bridge already to hand.  We have international organisations like the UN to use such a bridge.  As the long, silent march begins today from the Place de la Republique in Paris, let that be the starting point. Erase misunderstanding. Use the bridge.

18th July 2010

Everything's fine living here as long as all's going well. But when things go wrong? Double the trouble. It's not just having to use a foreign language; attitudes in France are very different from those back home in Birmingham. There, the general air of pessimism was renowned. In shops everywhere could be heard the refrain: 'I don't suppose you've got one of these', the customer wondering why he'd even bothered to ask, so unlikely was the trader's answer gonna be. So France was bound to be the same, wasn't it?
Living in the middle of nowhere, one of the worst things for me is when the internet goes down. I have one of these 'blinking' liveboxes, but it's not supposed to blink. Disaster. Ringing France Telecom is a nightmare: the usual musical tones, then the Queen asking you to press 1 for this, 2 for that etc. And then, when you finally get a real person - impossible to explain the technical jargon for what's gone wrong, even more the answer. But, my fairy godmother was at hand! I found an English-speaking service that actually had technicians at hand to help. Not only did they come chez-nous, they fixed the problem (a chewed wire underground + changed our old rusty phone socket) for free! Now that's something you don't see everyday. The tel. no. is charged at local rates: 09.69.36.39.00.
See. I told you everything'd be all right!

3rd December 2008

The French sometimes struggle to come to terms with this internet age. Living here is a curious mix of the ancient and the modern, each jostling for position in a land famed for its love of tradition and old values. On the one hand, no-one seems to knock anything down, preferring to leave in situ all those ancient, wonderful chateaux and riverside watermills - waiting for the arrival of les rosbifs (the English) to spend vast swathes of money on renovation. But, on the other hand, the French still feel they are the most superior people on earth so don't wish to be left behind in this internet age. Sometimes I get a fit of the giggles when I see an IT engineer struggling through some ancient stony portal in order to establish a broadband connection in one of the oldest villages in the world. Never the twain shall meet?
Well, now French TV seems also to have come of age. There is a plan for the French government to launch its own 'Web TV' site, with proposals to respond to questions about public services and reforms. However, comme d'habitude with anything new, the public is up in arms. Enter stage left, government Information Services Minister Thierry Saussez, who tells everyone not to worry. "Propaganda is saying the president is the greatest', he says, "so we don't be doing that." Quite. Everyone knows that we don't need a web TV for that: the man himself is more than capable!