Star Voices: Peter Rhodes on old soldiers, new technology and are we witnessing a global conspiracy?
An email arrived, announcing the re-opening of my old unit’s regimental museum. It came with a warning that parking is now “problematical” as the only parking near the place is a cashless system operated by app.
Here we go again. The global conspiracy to make everyone own a smartphone rumbles on, frustrating even the simple desire of old soldiers to meet their mates, or non-smartphone families to park close to the shops.
It’s good to see that the battle against this cyber-tyranny, highlighted in this column some time ago, was taken up this week by the Daily Mail (‘Millions of drivers stuck in parking app hell’).
It conducted a survey revealing that more than half of over-65s do not wish to use app-only parking and four in 10 would avoid town centres with no alternative parking system.
While plenty of politicians are prepared to denounce the app-only system now that these wretched systems are being installed, what were they doing in the planning stages – sleeping?
The only app defender I’ve come across was a councillor in London who took the view that if someone can drive a car, they should be able to download an app. Where do such people come from? How do they ever get elected?
The Daily Mail is, of course, the newspaper that Prince Harry despises and wants to hammer in the High Court. The Mail is today fighting for the rights of people who either cannot afford or do not wish to own a smartphone. It is defending ordinary citizens from the power of big business. I wonder what socially useful things the prince has been doing this week.
By coincidence, on Monday my latest bill from BT arrived declaring: “We’ve recently changed our prices so this bill looks a bit different.” It certainly does. It’s gone up by £20 a quarter. But that’s not the only change.
The bill also announces excitedly that Digital Voice is coming my way. This is the controversial new system replacing landline phones with a broadband-based network which has one rather alarming feature: if there’s a power cut your phone goes dead.
So how, in a power cut, do you call 999? The answer is that you must have a fully-charged mobile phone. Go on, tell me it isn’t a conspiracy.
