Big Sticks

In the afterglow of Osborne’s budget we all behaved like beggars at a medieval banquet, bowing and scraping our gratitude for scraps thrown our way by the benevolent government. Look a tiny little tax break, I'm £100 richer this year: break out the champagne, wait let's not go crazy make it cava. Thank you Lord Osborne for your wonderful gifts, we aren't worthy. And if anyone's voting decision was swayed by the budget one way or the other, then I think it's safe to say they should not be allowed to vote. Hey that's democratic politics for you, the least worst system of government; when the current alternatives are fundamentalist theocracy or kleptocratic dictatorship it's hardly much of contest.

What's more worrying is that as election approaches there is little or no debate about the planned cuts to the British Armed Forces or their current condition.  In 2015, military spending is seen by many as anachronistic. Why spend money on Trident submarines instead of hospitals is the standard sort of critique. The problem, as many have already noticed, is that hospitals, although very nice things, are not very good at dealing with foreign policy crises. They are fixed to the ground, can't sail round the world and no matter how riddled with MRSA don't inspire fear. 

That's the peculiar thing about military spending, buying two aircraft carries and equipping them with enough planes seems very expensive when the world is a safe place. Much better to spend that money on pensioners who vote ; better still decommission your old aircraft carriers and sell the Harriers to the Marine Corps. Even though the government is still running a 5% deficit, why not commit to spending 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid; everyone likes foreign aid. What could possibly go wrong?

Unfortunately successive British politicians decided that Britain, the sixth largest economy in the world, with a history of naval power stretching back to the 16th century, didn't really need those expensive ships, soldiers or planes. Like all short term decisions, it's backfired. Those pensioners who government throws money at like past its sell-by date, are grumbling anyway, surprise. And you can't send OAPs to deal with ISIS. Well maybe you try, perhaps they could bore them to death with stories about how much better everything was when they were young. For the record, one of the reasons people didn't use to lock their front doors in the sixties is that was very little worth stealing. iPads and laptops hadn't been invented and you needed a four-man team and a flatbed truck to make off with a TV.

So the UK finds itself with just one aircraft carrier, compared to America's twenty and no planes for the carrier. It will be 2020 until the next ones come into service. You'd think that just maybe we might have kept the old ones. In the normal world, outside of politics, the general rule of thumb is that you keep your old car until the new one arrives, unless you really like walking and carrying heavy bags ten miles home from the supermarket. We no longer have a big stick, as the US refers to its Nimitz class carriers, a vessel so vast it won't even fit in Portsmouth harbour. We have a toothpick.

On the plus side, the one thing the British Armed Forces do have is plenty of generals, brigadiers, captains and admirals. The much quoted figure is the Navy now has more Admirals than ships, the Army has six times more officers than the US Marine Corps, which is of comparable size. Incredibly, the Ministry of Defence has 60,000 civilian personnel against the 87,000 of the British Army. Even if you add in the Navy and the Air Force, that's still a surprising ratio. Put it crudely WTF are all those people in the MoD doing? I suppose being British, we should laugh at the absurdity of it all and make a sitcom how hopelessly ill-prepared we are for war and how much we squander in pointless pen-pushers. Dad's Army was produced decades after WW2, I doubt anyone would have found it entertaining in 1940.

There are many people in Britain who may be pleased at reduced capability. War is bad isn't it, killing is wrong. We should have e-petitions and benefit concerts instead, where the only danger is listening to Bono, the tax avoider, lecture the rest of us about our responsibilities. Perhaps the combination of failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined with the 100th anniversary of WW1, has cemented this anti-military feeling. We learned the lesson of history, war is a senseless waste. Give peace a chance.

It's a lovely idea, but the likes of ISIS and Putin's Russia don't agree. They are very much pro-war. Besides the critique of WW1 is deeply flawed. Britain guaranteed the sovereignty of Belgium,  Germany planned to invade. If as Niall Fergusson suggests, we should have simply stood by whilst Germany overran both Belgium and France, then the outcome would have been German domination of Europe by force. The idea that British politicians were warmongers or had any other option than to intervene is false. Sometimes in foreign affairs there are no good choices, only less bad ones.

When it comes to the military, it seems like the British government has continued a long tradition of opting for the worst possible choices. Impose cuts on the frontline troops, leave the top brass and bureaucrats in post. Make short term cuts, ignoring long term strategic needs. Now we face a situation with Russian planes regularly buzzing British airspace, a low level war in the Ukraine, Libya's collapse into anarchy, ISIS marching Iraq back to the 7th century, the Yemen's descent into civil war and to cap in all now there's rumours that the Argentinians might acquire long range bombers from Russia.

That's the fallacy of the pacifist position, it depends on everyone else playing by the same rules. Gandhi is usually cited as an example of peaceful means overcoming military force, which is sort of true. Except that pretty much any other colonial power in the 1930s would have summarily executed him and Hitler certainly would have done given the chance. That is not to downplay the moral authority and effectiveness of non-violent protest, but it can only operate in narrow parameters.

The military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan should teach us lessons. Sure. It’s much easier to invade a country that it is to run one, especially if we’ve been there before, the locals have very long memories and didn't like us the first time round. For those who cite these cases as the reason to avoid military action at all, there are counter examples. When the Americans bombed the Serbs in Bosnia, it turned out that those fearless Serbian warriors were less keen on fighting actual troops than murdering helpless civilians. Likewise a handful of troops helped protect Sierra Leone's capital from drug-crazed maniacs. 

Think of an situation closer to home. In Britain, we like the fact that our regular police don’t carry guns. I for one feel a lot safer than I do in Italy, where even the traffic police carry submachine guns. Although when you consider Italian driving practices, maybe it’s  wise. But if there is a terrorist on the run or a lone gunman, it’s comforting to know that they are armed police to deal with the situation. There is a big stick, just in case. 

Like all democracies, we should count ourselves lucky that even though our feckless political class has crippled our military, one nation hasn’t. America, the arsenal of democracy,  accounts for 39% of world defense spending. When the other big spenders include the Chinese and the Russians, that’s a bonus. America has many faults, it is at least a democracy under the rule of law. The rest of Europe likes to protest about American foreign policy, safe under the wing of their military. It’s hardly a noble position.

We can resign ourselves to obscurity and irrelevance, at the mercy of events and hold rallies against US foreign policy to make ourselves feel important. Or we could get a big stick, just for emergencies. That’s the handy thing about big sticks, just having can be deterrent enough. I think most of the British public, regardless of their political persuasion, would rather the UK had the means to protect its national interest. We need a big stick. 

Respect

2015 has not started the way many of us would have hoped and I'm not talking about resolutions to lay off booze that lasted three days into the working week until it was a colleague's leaving do and it would rude not to have had at least one drink or four and a round of shots. The terrible murders in France have shocked us all, but one word being banded around is perhaps something we could do without in 2015: respect. We should respect Muslim beliefs; we should respect freedom of speech. I'd suggest that a collective resolution for the new year should be to lay off the concept of respect altogether. 


Think about when you use the word respect. When you say "with all due respect", what you really mean is you think the other person's opinions are ridiculous. "With respect" is another way of saying stop talking crap. Even the polite phrase "I respect your beliefs" really means I think you are mental but it would be socially unacceptable to tell you so to your face. 

George Galloway's party is called Respect. This is man who took money from Saddam Hussein, allegedly for a charity foundation, which has never published accounts. When describing the sociopath who killed 100,00s of Kurds with poison gas, Galloway said he admired the dictator's courage. 

Street gangs will assault or stab people over the failure to provide enough respect. Organised crime groups such as the Mafia have a habit of shooting one another for violating their peculiar code of respect. The IRA still doles out punishment beatings or knee-cappings if they feel they have been disrespected. These outfits are great source material for TV dramas and feature films, true. I'm re-watching the Sopranos which expertly plays with the viewer's emotions, making you sympathise with mob boss Tony at times. It's a tough job dealing with teenage children, an ageing mother and murdering informers. I feel his pain; I just don't respect him. 

Fundamentalist Muslim groups and indeed more mainstream ones are ready to allege that their faith has been disrespected and demand that the rest of us show the proper "respect" for their beliefs. Why? Nobody has any inherent right to respect, nor does any group.  Respect is something individuals earn through over their lifetime through their actions. You don't get an automatic right to respect because you believe something very strongly. 

9/11 Truthers are adamant that the US government orchestrated the destruction of the Twin Towers. As long as no one ever puts one of them in a position of responsibility, that's fine. But those beliefs do not merit respect. Some of the truthers really do wear tin foil hats and live inside Faraday cages. They are to use the technical term batshit crazy. 

You could argue I'm being very disrespectful comparing the religious beliefs of fundamentalist Muslims to those of conspiracy theorists. Except you cannot grant everyone or every idea respect, if they are mutually exclusive. Richard Dawkins and the Archbishop of Canterbury cannot both be right, especially as the new Archbishop actually believes in God. If you respect Dawkins's beliefs, you can't respect the Archbishop's and vice versa. The same holds true for any belief system, whether it's atheism or scientology unless you don't believe in anything at all, which is cheating.



When groups or individuals clamour for respect, it's not the same as tolerance or freedom. Doing the right thing in terms of people's beliefs in covered by the ancient philosophy expressed by Socrates, Buddha and Jesus, namely don't be a dick. Or as your grandmother might call it, good manners. Actually my grandmother is a bad example, as she was a borderline Nazi. For everyone else, with normal grandmothers who didn't think Norman Tebbit was dangerous liberal and hadn't visited Hitler's Germany in the 1930s, you get the idea. Be nice to people, don't be a dick (your own grandmother may have used a slightly different phrasing). 

Anyone agitating for respect is really demanding that society change to accommodate their beliefs or behaviour. To which the correct response is, with respect, get lost. Equality legislation and laws on racial and religious discrimination have the situation pretty much covered ( though there's plenty of material for another blog). The interesting thing is that the individuals who most deserve respect in our society, those who devote their lives to the service of others are also the least likely to shout about needing respect. Odd that isn't it?

Now the observant of you may have noticed that in the opening paragraph, I used the phrase freedom of speech and implied that even that doesn't deserve respect. I was exaggerating for effect. Although someone excising their right to free speech is not entitled to respect by default. Lars von Trier can make a film where the characters remove their own genitals, I don't have to watch it and as it turns out, I haven't. You can if you want, that's the beauty of the free society. 

Freedom of speech requires robust defence, not respect as if it were a local bye-law relating to parking zones or littering. Freedom should be championed, cherished and celebrated. The concept of respect is the refuge of bigots, bullies and bullshitters who want to extract concessions from the rest of us. 

But what if you offend people or hurt their feelings by penning satirical cartoons, like Charlie Hebdo's team? Sadly in recent days, too many have rushed to blame the victims, as if freedom speech is a conditional principle, dependent on good behaviour. If a person believes in an Almighty deity with supreme power, then I'd argue that that deity can look after himself (or herself). Those who kill to right an alleged wrong against their faith cannot be appeased nor should they and don't above all deserve respect. 

Free Speech

What are the limits of free speech in an open society? My instincts are libertarian, so I'd start with the premise that we should allow the maximum freedom possible which includes press regulation, unless someone is inciting criminal behaviour. So far so good, but then there's a number of cases in recent months around freedom of expression that are problematic.

Take Dapper Laughs for example, aka  Daniel O'Reilly, who had a show on ITV2. I really don't want to defend Dapper Laughs; even Gene Hunt might think twice about sticking up for that show. The extracts I saw on YouTube were loutish and sexist; many others felt strongly enough to petition ITV and several comics wrote an open letter to the channel. The end result is ITV has cancelled the second series (if it was ever planned)  and Daniel O'Reilly went on Newsnight to make an apology claiming that it was a character that got out of control. We can debate whether a fictional creation can escape the control of its maker or whether Dapper Laughs, who seems to be Daniel with a different name is really a character as such, elsewhere. Whatever you think of the show (I hope you don't like it), doesn't it still count as free speech?

You could argue that broadcasting the programme is not the same as someone writing a blog or posting videos on Vine or YouTube; that's more a question of audience numbers than the principle. Free speech would be so much easier to defend if everyone used that right wisely. In any group of people, there is always one goes too far. If you can't think of anyone in your office who keeps overstepping the mark, the bad news is that it's you.

The worry for me is not the Dapper Laughs was offensive and unpleasant, it's the strange precedent that it sets. Many liberal-minded people in the media wrote at length how the programme was an incitement to sexual assault; yet why was a stupid comedian the focus of such ire and not religious programming from the Middle East, available in the UK, that preaches women should be beaten for disobedience and gays should be killed. Ofcom is, as to be expected, launching an investigation...into Dapper Laughs.

This is known as 'whaboutery', citing other cases where a principle was not applied. It's an old philosophical trick, doesn't mean it's not valid. Campaigners for women's rights can claim a victory of sorts against ITV2, whilst much worse goes unchecked. Then there's Julien Blanc, the self-styled pick up artist, who is the focus of a campaign to be banned from Britain. For the record, I think he's a seriously nasty piece of work and any woman that falls for his tactics needs help from a mental health professional. Denying him entry to the UK risks increasing his profile amongst the type of man who might go to his seminars - they also need to seek help just not from him.

And there's the other point, unless in the eyes of the law he is committing or has committed a criminal offence, which is debatable, we are dispensing with the rule of law. Let him in if no crime is involved and he can hold his seminars; protestors can picket outside those seminars. Both are exercising their rights to free speech.

I think what bothers me about the Julien Blanc case most is that we have allowed extremist preachers into the UK on many occasions to preach much worse sermons than his pick-up tactics. Again it's a curious kind of message about women's rights that is so partisan, as if Muslim women or minorities do not deserve a Twitter campaign or a petition. There was a related incident a month ago, where Bill Maher on his TV show tried to discuss the problems of homophobia, misogyny and general bigotry in many Muslim countries. His guest, Ben Affleck shouted him down, accusing him of 'Islamophobia'. Here's the clip:

Bill Maher

There's a really interesting reply to Ben Affleck from a Pakistani woman, Eiynah, who wrote a book called 'My Uncle is Gay' and since been declared an Enemy of God and threatened with death. Below is the link, it's worth reading in full. 

Open letter to Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck is a fine actor and director and no doubt his intentions were good, yet he sought to close own any further mention of the subject on a discussion programme with his peers. That's censorship, not free speech.

Let's consider a different case also in recent months, where an exhibition about slavery, with actors as live exhibits, was cancelled from the Barbican following a vocal media campaign and petition that it was was racist. The actors involved did not think so, nor did the Barbican or any of the countries were it was shown prior to the UK. Yet you and I will not be able to judge for ourselves, as protestors have ensured 'Exhibit B' will not happen. For more background, there's a link to the Guardian article.

Exhibit B

I realise at this point I should 'check my privilege'  - English, heterosexual male, educated at private school. That means I've never experienced discrimination or prejudice, apart from occasional jibes about being a short. 5'7" isn't that short, it's Tom Cruise height and in no way is it comparable to being on the receiving end of genuine discrimination.

Nonetheless, free speech and free expression cannot be defined as the freedom to say nice things that we all agree with - that's not real freedom. For reasons I cannot comprehend, people articles written by Peter Hitchens, who trades in bile and cant. To take issue with the errors, logical flaws and gross generalisations in a single article of his would take days; one could argue his writing promotes prejudice, intolerance and bigotry. But he's free to write what he likes, you may choose to read it ( I'd suggest you don't), or not. That's your decision. In my opinion, you would get more sense and potentially a joke or two out of even the most right wing cabbie.

By the same token, much as it may offend your personal values, free speech must be free, with as few restrictions as possible.

Oh dear, it looks like I've ended up defending Dapper Laughs and Julien LeBlanc....feel free to lay into me as much as you like. That's your right.

People Moving

I'd like to talk about immigration. Did a chill just pass through cyberspace? Did you look over your shoulder worried that this blog might not be work safe? Are you fearful that the next sentence begins 'I'm not a racist but...' Relax, this is a safe place. There will be no references to England being swamped or seaside towns being overrun; nonetheless even mentioning the word 'immigration' can be enough to shut down debate.

This strikes me as odd; no subject should be taboo apart from Morris dancing which is in my opinion nothing short of witchcraft. I've seen 'The Wicker Man'; one day you're skipping round the village green in a costume with bells on, next day you're sacrificing Edward Woodward to the pagan gods. My attitude to folk traditions may be influenced by a traumatic late night viewing of said film, aged twelve, when I had no idea of the ending. However I digress, back to the tricky subject of immigration.

Let me set out a simple principle: very few things are inherently good or bad, apart from Morris dancing which I've mentioned, patio heaters are another, as are leaf blowers (they are all bad just in case you were wondering). Inherently good things might include a small child laughing, Michael Palin and freshly baked bread (unless you are gluten intolerant). My point is that you cannot discuss immigration in simplistic binary terms, namely you are either for it or against it with no shades of opinion in between. The idea is self evidently nonsense, which these two hypotheticals will hopefully demonstrate.

Imagine that the only immigrants wishing to settle in the UK were highly educated, tolerant and hard-working people, with no dependents, who wished to work in areas where there was a chronic shortage of candidates such as physics teachers. Their numbers were modest and could easily be absorbed by the country without pressure on housing or social services. Ask anyone what they thought of immigration in this scenario and the overwhelming majority would be in favour.

An alternative scenario might be one where the only immigrants wished to settle in the UK were members of organised crime families, with convictions forserious offences, who intended to devote their time in their new homeland to furthering their criminal works. They too would arrive in small numbers, but in this situation nearly everyone would be against immigration. So it's a a meaningless question to ask is immigration good or bad, without context.

Think of it another way, I invite you to a fantasy time-travel dinner party, except you have no idea of the guest list. Do you say yes or no? Hard to decide. What if I tell you it's composed of the most famous individuals of the last 100 years? You would be intrigued yet the crucial question is the people attending. It might be Hitler or Gandhi, Stalin or Martin Luther King. The example is deliberately absurd to illustrate the futile nature of debating a concept without context. The devil is in the detail as the saying goes and it was probably said by Satan's lawyer.

Talking about immigration is a very touchy subject for mainstream politicians. Ed Milliband forgot to mention it during his conference speech, funny that. David Cameron looks like he's regurgitating a fur ball every time he's forced to discuss the subject. I think the reason it's become so toxic is one of the new axioms of modernity that we are all supposed to endorse, yet most know is ridiculous. The free movement of peoples is one of the stated principles of the EU, which on the surface sounds like a lovely idea. Except when you think about it, it's profoundly unfair. There are close to 500 million people in the EU, what would happen if they all decided overnight to settle in Bruges. It's a charming city, I've never been, but I've seen the film 'In Bruges' and it's nothing if not photogenic; there's no way it could accommodate half a billion people.

So logically, we can't all just settle where please, not least because it impacts the people already living there. If you need further proof, ask a Palestinian about their feelings on the matter. Okay cheap comment, but the concept is sound. The world is host to over seven billion people, some live in  poor countries, others in middle income ones,  a minority in prosperous lands. There is no conceivable scenario, where anyone would suggest total freedom movement of peoples as the most likely outcome would be huge migrations from the poor to the rich states which in turn would cause chaos and ultimately make everyone worse off than they were before. The Economist magazine, normally a perceptive and wise publication, holds to this dogma, irrespective of the practicalities. They also back free movement of capital and look how well that's worked out - a subject for another blog

You cannot discuss immigration without talking about who those people might be, however delicate our collective sensibilities. The question is not one of pure economics and in any event, economists cannot agree whether mass immigration is a net positive or negative for the host countries. Britain is a liberal society, under the rule of law, which does a reasonable job of protecting individual liberties. It's not perfect, nowhere is, something that the likes of Liberty seem to forget; it's a work in progress. Maybe there is heaven on earth somewhere, Sweden perhaps or Denmark? But they've seen a surge in far right votes recently, so there's trouble even in paradise. And it seems that immigration is the flashpoint, especially if newcomers reject liberal values, such equality for women or not stoning gay people to death, for example.

Of course there's xenophobia and racism towards new arrivals and none of this excuses that, but I wonder if the flowering of far right groups across Europe is the poison fruit of this creed about free movement. It undermines one of the fundamental attributes of a nation state, which is the control of its borders and the granting of rights to work and settle. If the aims of unrestricted movement of peoples in the EU was to bring people together, it seems to be having exactly the opposite outcome. That's not whant any of us want, whatever party we vote for.

Monkey Business

David Slater, a wildlife photographer, is in dispute with Wikimedia, the foundation behind Wikipedia,  over a photo. He wants the picture removed from the public domain, Wikimedia is refusing on the grounds that the monkey took the picture. It is now a very famous image of a crested macaque grinning into the camera - the ultimate selfie. Slater argues that the selfie was only possible because he had spent £1,000s travelling to the animals' habitat in Sulawesi and positioned the camera in the first place. Wikimedia's policy is that it is public domain -  there was no human author involved in creating the copyright, if anybody has image rights it would be the macaque. But primates do not have property rights, although the Planet of Apes films suggest that is only a matter of time.

I am a fan of wildlife photographers, Wikipedia and crested macaques, so this story leaves me very conflicted. It also may inspire the use of monkeys wore widely in professional photography, on the other side of the camera. If you are a magazine editor looking to cut costs, bring a gibbon with you to next photo shoot and let him operate the camera with remote control. Bazinga! The photos are no longer copyright so you don't have to pay.

Realistically, the costs of breeding, training and feeding a monkey, along with the handler's wages, mean that any savings on copyright would be offset by outgoings on tyre swings and bananas. So for the time being, professional photographers can relax - a monkey could potentially do their job but it's just too expensive.

There is a wider issue about copyright in the digital age which in turn is linked to content and content creators. Everybody likes free stuff: free beer, free food, free accommodation. All these words have positive associations, the best of all being free bar. The only time I've encountered a genuinely free bar, which included spirits, was at the Kobo party after the London Book Fair. It was excellent, I lost the power of coherent speech and have no memory of the taxi ride home.  Free trumps paying for things, whenever we have the option. And many of us have become used to paying very little or nothing at all for much of the media we consume.

It's a great deal if you are a consumer of content, like anybody who enjoyed looking at the monkey selfie or anyone who uses BitTorrrent or other illegal download sites. Now I know a lot of people download media illegally, I used Limewire before it was shut down. In my defense, a lot of the music wasn't then available on iTunes or Spotify - they forced me into a life of crime, your honour.

(Thus far I have avoided using the phrase 'pirate' copies or 'pirate' media, because it makes me think of a man with one leg and a parrot on his shoulder which is confusing.)

But it is still a crime, not a serious one like murder obviously. Yes, everyone does it, but lots of people drive over the speed limit that doesn't mean we don't accept the need for speed limits. Yet when it comes to illegal copyright, many people I've spoken to who include IP lawyers, TV producers and a social media analyst for a major tech firm, justify their actions with a range of excuses:

'It's not really stealing because the Warner Brothers makes so much money anyway.'
'People who download illegally also buy content.'
'The copyright system is obsolete.'

This sounds like a variation of Wikimedia's defence over copyright infringement - a load of monkey balls. We pay to go to the cinema, to a football match, to attend a concert, go clubbing and go to the theatre. Why then do we expect to consume content at home for free. Or put it another way, we don't generally work for nothing or give our property away to strangers, so why do we think musicians, photographers, TV and film writes owe us a freebie? What have we done for them in return, other than click the rating button?

The scale of the problem was brought home to me when I had a second broadband line installed (it's for uploading commercial video work, not porn in case you were wondering). The engineer was polite, helpful and then proceeded to tell me about how I could hack my Netflix box to access everything for free and a range of other hacks that unlocked online HD video libraries. This guy worked for BT, who has a vested interest in getting people to pay for content for example, sports rights. But free wins every time.

Perhaps the answer lies in a more flexible copyright system with the facility for micro-payments and streaming extended more widely. Much as I love Wikipedia, pulling the monkey trick to use a photographer's work without permission is not the way forward either.

PS  - In all honesty, I wish I had taken notes when the BT man was telling me his trade secrets. It's not like I was overcome with an attack of morals, it was that same syndrome when people start telling me directions, my brain shut down after the third word.

PPS - Here's a couple of excellent links on the issue of freebies

Harlan Ellison rants about working for free

Musician Whitey responds to a request for licensing his music for nothing

Discombobulation

I should offer an explanation for the pretentious title of this blog. As a guiding principle, I try to follow George Orwell's advice for writing English. He counselled against using a Latin derived term when an Anglo-Saxon one existed; arcane and obscure Latinate words are no substitute for clarity of thought. If only academics and would-be intellectuals writers took note. But there's something particularly fitting about 'discombobulation' to describe the modern experience where technology makes old practises redundant. The word itself is too long, it stumbles off the tongue in a mass of syllables, tripping out in an awkward jumble. It feels outdated and outmoded, just like many of us do when confronted by relentless change.

The bizarre protest of London's taxi drivers last Wednesday against the cab app Uber was a case in point. A revolutionary technology brings the price of minicabs down, making their use easier and simpler; the reaction of the black cabs is to protest. Maybe I would too if I had spent 4 years learning the Knowledge, which is how long it takes for the average black taxi driver to qualify. GPS tracking and sat nav have made that effort to a large extent pointless.

As an example,  last night I took an Uber from the West End to my flat. It was a mint condition S-Class Mercedes, that arrived within in 3 minutes of requesting the ride and cost £4 less than a black taxi. The driver did not have the Knowledge, he had sat nav - the whole experience was easier, less hassle and cheaper than hailing a cab. And he had a great sound system, what's not to like? There is the black cab equivalent to Uber, Hailo, but it's more expensive so I'll probably stop using it altogether.

Safety is the usual cry of technophobes, a charge levelled at Uber. The only flaw in the critics' case is that all their drivers are CRB checked, you have a record of their name and their license plate. And let's not forget than John Warboys, the serial rapist, was a black cab driver - there's risks everywhere but this system improves customer safety. Fact.

The problem with inventions is that you cannot uninvent them. Once cheap and reliable motor cars came to market, the horse-drawn Hackney carriage was doomed. Hackney carriage drivers no doubt staged a protest slow trot in Trafalgar Square, but given the option of travelling staring at a horse's bum at seven miles an hour or speeding at thirty miles an hour with no animal's anus at eye level, travellers chose the car.

Motorised rickshaws made human rickshaws obsolete throughout India, the clock cannot be turned back. Although I do remember one Western traveller ( a traveller being a tourist who stays in the country for more than two weeks, gets giardia, stays in the flea-ridden accommodation and never tips), telling me in all seriousness that he missed the poetry of the human rickshaws in Calcutta. By poetry I think he meant photogenic poverty; he was stoned at the time, so it might just have the Nepalese temple balls talking.

Balls or no balls, whether it's Uber or Kindle, iTunes or Instagram, technology moves quickly and moves faster than our ability to adjust. I liked the smell and feel of vinyl records and even toyed with the idea of going back to analogue, getting a turntable for classic albums only. And then I had a mental picture: a stack of vinyl, unplayed, unused whilst I listened to my music on Spotify or iTunes. Whilst digital music may not have the sensuality of records, it's so easy and user-friendly, you can't return to CDs or records.

Likewise photography has suffered a similar paradigm shift. Film has died a death, it laster longer than some predicted but is now the preserve of select professionals and keen hobbyists. The other 99.9% of photos are digital, many taken on smartphones. Most are terrible, but thanks to Instagram's clever filters, they look okay and much superior to the overexposed, out of focus  photos holidaymakers used to collect from Boots after their summer holidays.

As Stewart Lee said in his recent TV series, 'do you remember when we had things' and I do. I'm old enough to remember cassettes, vinyl, VHS, mini-disc and a whole host of outdated technologies. In due course, printed books may join that list. Yes, sorry to say, it's probably only a matter of time before most reading becomes digital. People are highly conservative when it comes to their media habits, yet I don't know anyone who has switched to e-reading that regularly buys physical books. None of this means that I won't miss printed books if they do disappear. Not only are they good for reading, they make you look smarter. Fill a room with intellectual tomes that you have never read, you lend yourself an aura of wisdom and learning. And hardback books are great for other uses, such as propping up things, acting as drinks coasters or raising the height of a computer monitor - to name but a few of their uses.

No matter how much I much like physical books, I'm not about to start burning Kindles in the street. They just won't catch fire, no matter how hard you try. Besides I love my Kindle, it's a library in the palm of my hand - apart from when I forget to charge it and then it's not even a decent coaster. Plus even a tiny spill of beer and it goes all funny. Some lovers of old technology say that what happens you have no USB lead, what happens to your fancy e-reader then? True, on a desert island, I would be stuck. However, a bunch of vinyl wouldn't be much use without a generator and I suspect that paper books might be sacrificed in the cause of lighting fires or toilet tissues, especially if it's a new novel by Ben Elton.

Besides if you apply that logic to our lives, then pretty everything we have is rendered useless on a desert island, save a penknife, a plastic tarpaulin and a tinderbox. The kind of people who carry around those things everywhere they go are usually the sort of people we should put on desert islands. There they can indulge their fantasies of black UN helicopters heralding the apocalypse whilst getting a really good tan.

Whether are happy about it or not, the new wave of technological change is sweeping the world and it's going to make a lot of people redundant. Uber will probably mean less black cab drivers, but more  Uber drivers and more people taking taxis. The new translation software for Skype may make translating and interpreting, at least for basic communication, something that doesn't require a person.

Lawyers, accountants and a whole host or professions will face similar disruptions. My limited experience with high street solicitors was so dreadful, I can't see how an app could do any worse. They managed to get the name on the deeds of the property wrong, three times, each instance in a different way and miscalculated the stamp duty. And at the end of the process, you pay them £1,000s. Give me Uber for solicitors any day.

Medicine will face the same issues where software replaces simple, process-based tasks. Basic diagnosis could in theory be done by an app, there I said it. These days most people self-diagnose before visiting a doctor anyway, why not formalise the process? Yes, I realise there is a lot more to it than that, but still... it's going to happen.

The real dilemma is how we react to these changes and it's safe to say that protesting about them is the wrong answer. Brussels has banned Uber, so its taxis will cost more. Europe generally seems committed to a Canute-like course of banning or regulating technologies in the hope that the status quo can be preserved. It can't. Eventually Brusssels will give in and its residents will have access to the cheaper taxis the rest of the world enjoys. We should sympathise with those affected; banning progress only makes us poorer in the long run. The best strategy is to keep the job market flexible, the business environment benign and maximise the chances for those made redundant to find new roles.

 Although on second thoughts, I'm not sure we want former black cab drivers doing other jobs. UKIP might be hiring.

Modern Privacy

According to Edward Snowden in last week's Guardian, everyone is now under surveillance, not just individuals but 'entire populations' by government agencies such as the NSA who operate above the law. Maybe he's right and we are living in an Orwellian nightmare, controlled by secretive powers. If this is The Matrix, then Snowden in his own mind is presumably Neo. The only glitch in the Matrix as it were, is that he lectures the West on rights and freedom from Putin's Russia. I assume Mr Snowden must have lost his sense of irony somewhere in transit.

I suppose it should make no odds, whether Snowden makes these claims from Moscow or a haven of freedom, say Denmark. Everyone likes Denmark, especially after watching three series of Borgen. They must be nice people and probably don't do much snooping or spying. Wait a minute, a whole plot line was the intelligence service victimising Muslims or was that The Killing Series 2 ?...erm...the point still stands. Either what he's saying is true or it's not, even if he does so courtesy of Vladimir Putin: the gay-hating, Stalin-loving, journalist-murdering leader of a kleptocracy.

There is a wider question, however, raised by his revelations about privacy versus security in cyberspace. Take for example, organised crime. Misha Glenny in his excellent book 'McMafia', describes how following the collapse of the Soviet Union, mafias from Eastern Europe have expanded globally. Their ranks swelled by ex-military and intelligence operatives, these crime organisations now rival the established mafias in Italy and cartels of Mexico. Globally, organised crime is estimated to account for 10% of world output. Much of that is presumably drug money, but their activities also includes fraud - which most of us have experienced.

Unfortunately for law enforcement, modern mafia are tech savvy. They use offshore tax havens,  sophisticated corporate structures and money-laundering schemes, making it hard to track down perpetrators. Terrorists from home-grown far right extremists in the US to Al-Qaida cells across the world are equally smart. Some avoid digital communication altogether; others use sophisticated codes and encryption methods to hide their presence. All of this presents a security nightmare for the police and the intelligence agencies.

'Crime' and 'terrorism' are not reasons enough to disregard legal norms and individual privacy on a whim. But we are surely deluding ourselves if we think old-fashioned methods of detection and prevention work in this new, globalised, internet-connected world. Sacrificing some privacy for enhanced security may be a trade worth making. Put the issue another way: would you mind if the security services trawled emails if it prevented terrorist outrages? It's not a simple yes or no proposition. It gets even more complicated, when you have to consider that the more the likes of NSA reveal their surveillance, the more their targets change behaviour in response.

In the UK, the moment you walk down the street, chances are you are on CCTV. Londoners are caught on camera 70 times a day on average. So at least when it comes to walking down the street, we lost our privacy long ago. The same is true for much of our web activity. When you sign up to Facebook and Instagram, you have also signed away the rights to any images or data you post on their platforms - it all belongs to Mark Zuckerberg. Google knows what you've searched and where you've been. Apple tracks your music tastes, Netflix monitors your viewing habits and Spotify probably has a better idea of what playlists you prefer than you do yourself.

Maybe emails are the last bastion of private communication. Except of course, if you email using a work address, it is, I hate to break this to you, company property. Perhaps if you email from your own computer from certain email services, you have retained a sliver of privacy. But we all now how easily emails are hacked and how slack we are with passwords - it wouldn't be hard for even an amateur to access many people's accounts.

The rise of cloud computing and software takes this process even further, where we handover our personal data to private companies to store and manage. I assume Dropbox employees don't go peeking in my folders, not sure how I would know if they did. But let's return to Edward Snowden's original claim, that we live under constant surveillance without privacy. Regardless of the NSA's snooping, digital cameras will continue to proliferate. Whether it's a Glasshole, sporting Google Glass, a camera worn on policeman's lapel, a Go-Pro attached to a cyclist's helmet or security cameras, they are getting smaller, cheaper and storing the data easier. At some point, it will be possible to record every single one of our waking moments in Hi-def, forever creating an endless Youtube feed.

In a planet, where we are constantly filming and photographing each other and Tweeting those results publicly, notions of privacy seem strange. We are conduct 24 hour surveillance of each other, so feigning outrage that the state has conducted passive data trawls is perhaps hypocritical. Despite months of front page articles, the Guardian's expose of state snooping has not caught the public imagination in the same way as MP's expenses, for example. Perhaps the reason is most people shrugged and had assumed that spying is what the security services do - it is in their job description after all.

This is not make light of the potential for abuse when state agencies can go prying as they please. But we are going to need a modern approach to these issues. You'll notice I've ducked out of providing an answer and as for privacy, that's so 20th century.