svetadtc.co.uk

When I go walking, which I do quite frequently along a 2km path near our home, I bump into dogs of every shape and size. It is fair to say that I am not a dog lover (I much prefer cats, especially the one at home), but have nothing in particular against dogs and it is quite enjoyable to watch them trot alongside their owners, at least those which are very obviously well trained.

However, there is a particular dog-related behaviour which really irks me, and it doesn’t originate from the dogs themselves, but rather the from dog owners. In 1993, it was reported that up to 50 children a year were suffering serious eye damage as a result of toxocariasis, originating from roundworm, spread around our public parks by the 9mn or so dogs which live in the UK. Between them, they excrete 1,ooo tonnes of faeces daily (according to ‘Keep Britain Tidy’). Just for balance, the UK’s 8mn cats also carry roundworm (unless treated), but their outdoor pooping habits are markedly different to those of dogs.

Since late last century, when there were several high profile incidents of young children losing eyesight and the stories made headlines, legislation has provided the means for dog owners to be fined (up to £1,000) for public dog fouling. Nowadays, you see dog owners everywhere using plastic poop bags to collect, and dispose of, their doggy gifts.

Now, the reality is that it might be perfectly natural to poop, but it is still a gross thing to have to pick it up – it’s not like a looking after a baby, because disposable nappies collect most of the mess for you – you physically have to bend and scoop up something which has been deposited at random, in a field or on a pavement, and I’m sure the ‘protection’ of wearing the poop bag over you hand doesn’t alter the fact that it is just gross. My mother has a dog, and my sister has two, and I have had occasion to take their animals for a walk, and I can confirm that scooping poop is absolutely gross.

Perhaps this explains why some dog owners take the risk and don’t bother* or, judging by the evidence I see when out walking, others feel disgusted by the process and simply lob the offending items into the undergrowth along the path or, in one recent instance, leave it hanging from the branch of a tree for everyone to admire. Instead of a risky, but decaying, mound of poop, we have a growing population of parcels of poop, preserved for centuries to come.

I’m confident the vast majority of dog owners are responsible people, and that the activities I have described are down to an unfortunate resistant minority; but either way, I say, get a grip (of the poop) and take it home!

*One evening, whilst driving home from work, I noticed a hooded man walking a dog. From his demeanour, it was clearly a drudge. He passed a lamp-post, but the dog resisted walking on. The tug on the lead sent a signal to the dog walker who, without looking anywhere but the pavement immediately ahead, paused. The dog did his (or her) business, the lead went slack, and the hooded man set off again, leaving the pile of poop for subsequent walkers to step around. Even the sound of my car, as I stopped at the junction directly opposite the pungent incident, did not deflect the dog walker from whatever weighty issue he was trying to resolve.

Yes, but which people? I’m speaking, of course, of the Power Companies, who serve the people but also pay homage (and dividends) to their power(ful) shareholders. In a week in which one particular power(ful) company announced massive billion-pound profits, I will tell you a short story of my attempts to secure a miserable, but promised, £75 from the same outfit. Maybe you can then tell me if you’ve experienced the same frustrations in dealing with our powerful friends?

It was Christmas Eve and we had, literally, just lit some candles and sat down to dinner when the lights went out. We thought, at first, that a fuse had gone, but it turned out the whole area was in darkness. So, we finished dinner and, when the novelty wore off, we took ourselves to the pub, hoping that when we got home, order would have been restored. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until 11am on Christmas Day, as we sat together opening presents by candlelight, that power was restored. What a relief! The turkey had been saved (though I imagine the turkey might have gobbled something different if the opportunity had presented itself).

Now, many people had worse experiences, and in true insurance company-speak, the adverse weather conditions over Christmas were an ‘Act of God’. I expected nothing further to come of it all; but no, and bless their Armani socks, for the powers that be stepped out of the shadows of their power stations and proclaimed that they would compensate anyone who had been without power on Christmas Day and, as a marvellous PR stunt, they would ignore the guidelines and pay out £75 no matter how long the power vacuum had lasted.

Duly impressed, I submitted a claim, and I have received not one but three voicemails confirming that a cheque would be coming. Remember the old joke? The cheque is in the post. It appears the adage still holds true (even though cheques have fallen out of fashion). Two of those phone calls came in February, promising the aforementioned piece of paper within 5 weeks; another call came in March or April, advising me to wait another two to three weeks. I hate to think about the layers of internal bureaucracy that those companies appear to have created for themselves, though the individuals who made those phone calls may actually be a tiny clan of the power-less trying to deal with a powerful, and apparently elusive, chequebook signatory. I resorted to an email on Tuesday, and received an automated response advising that the company in question ‘usually respond within one day’. I think the chequebook signatory must have gotten to my enquiry first…

So to Cliff Richard. It’s usually against my religion to even mention his name, but for one particular case, I’ll make an exception. Come on, people! In His own words, it should be power to you and me!

This utterly relentless digital age has been accompanied by a deadly new disease, one that has slowly insinuated itself into our core being as we’ve leapt from one technological breakthrough to the next — fickleness. Never satisfied with what we’ve got, we seek out the next ‘must have’ gadget, not realising that we are being led, forcefully, by the noses down a course of ever-greater dependency by the very companies who, firstly, develop the technology, and then convince us that life would be better if we owned one of their new, slim, shiny, compact, HD, bluetooth-compatible boxes, with its ever bigger (in the case of TVs), or ever smaller (in the case of mobile phones or iThings), screens. We do not seem to appreciate the fact that, not only do we seldom take advantage of the full suite of features available, but also that we watch (maybe even, encourage) the younger generation (to) spend an increasing amount of time fixated to life within a pixelated screen. My father used to talk about being ‘glued to the TV’ or getting ‘squares eyes’. I wonder what he would make of it all now?

Since the birth of commerically-available microprocessors in the 1980s, information technology has seeped into every corner of our lives, swallowing one analogue or entirely dumb device after another, creating many new toys in the process. There is even talk of databases being developed from all of the data flows within cities, for use by governments and their agencies (for the common good, no doubt). Gigantic conglomerates have sprung up, creating for themselves a perpetual feast, and so long as they retain the ability to harness data and add fascinations,  flocks of the wide-eyed and curious will continue to caw for more, abandoning one form of technology, prematurely (and, to the delight of marketeers), in favour of ‘the revolutionary, latest thing’.

I wonder what life-skills we are losing in the process? What happens if this technological infrastructure gets knocked out? In a hundred years, would we be able to find our way from A to B without the aid of some silky, detached voice advising us when to turn right? Will we even bother to talk to one another (forget face-to-face, which is already on the wane) or will our technologically-enhanced evolution result in the loss of speech, entirely? Over several millenia, we have moved from Biblical stone tablets to shiny, plastic ones, but will we regret our decision to cram the written word into something thin and cold and lifeless?

I’m all in favour of genuine improvements to the quality of life, but I draw the line at crass indulgence. As my father used to say, ‘All things, in moderation’.

Copyright © David Thomas Cochrane 2012

Tough times

And endless miles

You’ve run the distance, with no end in sight.

But S is for a sunny smile, and sweet success soon.

Stay the course, my friend, and fight!

And we shall overcome.

Copyright © David Thomas Cochrane 2011

Are things getting worse? Should we worry about life as we know it? If you listen to the media for long enough, you’d think that the only sane course of action would be to draw the blinds, lock the doors and disconnect the phone. Oh, and disable your wireless connection. The news is relentlessly dire, full of endless wars and disasters (natural and man-made), the immoral behaviour of those who ought to draw our admiration (business leaders, government ministers, sportsmen and celebrities alike), not our continual condemnation, and a stream of events predicted to be about to gallop over the horizon towards us, designed to wipe us off the face of the planet: global warming, flu pandemics, fuel shortages, aliens, solar flares, etc., etc. Should we give in to these worries, and sink into a deep, collective depression?

Our senses are assaulted at an ever increasing rate for two reasons: the staggering growth rate of the human race which, by inference, means that war, pestilence and disaster will continue to affect larger and larger proportions of the population; and, the relentless advances in microprocessing technology and the means by which we access data, which enable ever increasing volumes of data to be fired around the world in smaller and smaller fractions of seconds, instantly viewed on state-of-the-art portable handsets while you sit on a bus in Hackney or a rickshaw in Hong Kong. So, events which, decades ago, would have found there way into newspapers several weeks after they occurred, and merited only a paragraph or two by some unheard of correspondent, are now flashed onto television screens and tablets, in minutes, by very familiar faces. Breaking News is the current competitive metric by which the media channels hope to get there first, delivering the latest horrific piece of news through earnest, honest-looking experts all telling us why we really ought to listen up this time, and worry like hell.

What if we just turned off the television, disconnected the computer and never read another newspaper again? Would we be any worse off? On balance, probably yes. The ready availability of information should help people make more informed decisions. The internet has been a revelation, and will continue to amaze for years to come as it turns our children into app-fed addicits. But, perhaps, just maybe, the tap has been turned on much too hard. Someone somewhere ought to react to the onslaught, and turn it down a bit before the bath overflows and we all drown in an unregulated yottabyte of newsflow.

What a terrific story that would make, if there was anyone left to write it!

Copyright © David Thomas Cochrane 2011