Jim Stewart's Blog

The situation in Brasil looks dire, it has been on the news tonight. But I spotted one thing on the TV report that bothered me. There was an outdoor vaccination tent – and the people giving the vaccine were dressed in protective clothing. I watched as one of them pulled down their mask and wiped their nose.

Today I watched as groups of young people headed toward the beach – the weather was great so that is the thing to do.

I think this made an impact on me because of a TV programme I had seen. It was about a medical examiner. But like all good TV medical examiners they passionately rushed into situations without thought to get “the answer”. It was so extreme that it annoyed me – somebody that has a job involving carefully examining a dead body is pretty unlikely to take radical action without thinking it through. At least that was my thought.

But then there was the medical person in Brasil – and the young people here. In my work I presume people can behave in a controlled way for long stretches of time. But is that right? I wonder if this is something around attention span. There are various reports out, some say yes, others say no. But all of them seem to note that there are certainly tasks that we spend less time focussing on. And the changes seem to be dramatic with time.

Just another Victor Meldrew moment – the world is changing. Thank goodness robots are coming to do the menial tasks – maybe those automated checkouts are not as bad as they seemed.

Another odd lockdown day. A visit to Paris to see people and then a rush over to Greenland – and I managed to have a hospital appointment in to the bargain. Before this pandemic I would never have managed anything like this. I could really get used to it.

I’ve been trying to buy local to keep local business alive, but I’ve discovered it can be hard. I tried to set up a regular order with a local greengrocer, but apparently my order was not large enough and they were not interested in pandemic business. So instead I found an organic food distributor in Edinburgh that can deliver to my door in 24 hours.

I’ve had the same problem with other things – in fact I’ve had to resort to shopping in Austria and china over the past month.

At the moment the government are offering to supply a young person to a business for six months for free. The local greengrocer is apparently limited by staff resources. Why don’t they pick up a young person and train them?

The world is changing. Sadly a lot of small businesses are not seeing the opportunity.

During the war the story was put out that eating carrots helped you see in the dark – it was a cover story to try to explain the effects of radar. Interesting that the saying still goes round even though it was fake news. But that is nothing to do with what I am writing about.

I saw an advert for underwear on TV where the actor talked about how he would get it from his dentist for eating so much sugar. Lots of people dislike going to the dentist (at least they did before the pandemic). And it got me thinking – so much of the work of the dentist is correcting what we do wrong. They are always pointing out our failures, what we do wrong – as if brushing our teeth 10 times a day would stop all problems.

Some people object to the behaviour of some of the big multinational coffee companies so they campaign for us all to drink coffee elsewhere. I always think there might be a better approach. Companies like Starbucks have enormous power – and finding a way to encourage them to use the power for good would do more than trying to get 1000 small companies to take over their market share. Carrot and stick, where is our carrot? We know positive reinforcement works.

Why is it we always protest against?

It used t be a real bother – going round the house and changing all of the clocks. But recently there are more and more devices that change time for you.

My problem is now waking up after a clock change and trying to work out the time – has that clock already changed or do I need to press a button to change the time? It has got to the stage that I look out my old analogue watch that doesn’t change so I know what time it is when I wake up.

There has been talk of getting rid of time changes – I remember we trialled this when I was young. I got a nice reflective armband because of how dark it was when I went to school.

But I wonder what an architect will say when they excavate our ruins. Will they say we worshipped time- I mean we see images of clocks everywhere – we even carry an image of our God on our wrist.

Do we worship time – is it our God? How much of our life is controlled by this God?

In the news today there are protests about the use of an image of the prophet Mohammed in a school. The teacher that did it has been suspended, some people want him fired.

Being brought up in Scotland the idea of images like this being offensive is not foreign to me. No – Scotland is not a Muslim country. I’m talking about the protestant reformation.

I was taught that a crucifix was idolatry – it was wrong to have an image of Jesus. A cross was acceptable, but when you add an image of Jesus it becomes unacceptable. Not too far from the ideas being put forward by some Muslims – in fact some of them would agree that a crucifix is idolatry (images of Jesus are unacceptable to some in the same way that images of the prophet are).

During the Scottish reformation all icons were fair game – they were destroyed all over the place. They also took issue with the King wearing a hat to church. This is why you will find most Church of Scotland kirks are plain. There are a lot of the ideas still current – in fact most Churches of England would be seen as unacceptable or idolatrous. And that includes the one I go to – and I find some of the ideas expressed there bordering on offensive (things like communion rails – the barrier that says only the special can approach God and the common people should be excluded).

So does this mean we should close all catholic schools because they have images that are offensive to died in the wool Scottish Protestants? Should the Church of England conform to Scottish protestant ideals?

Should the Islamic groups that are offended by images of the prophet – and images of Jesus – have the right to have them excluded from all schools? Should all teachers that wear a crucifix be fired?

I am prepared to accept that others might do and say things that I find offensive. Just because we differ does not mean I am right.

So do we have a right to offend? If not I would like to register that I am offended by protests at school gates – children should not be exposed to that.

Green passes are the order of the day in Europe. Well, actually order of the day if the day is July. The idea is that they will be used for travel – and countries will be able to decide if they will be used for access to other places, like museums.

The concept is interesting, but just how will it work? Will it only apply to certain vaccines? Will it be linked to passports or ids (oops – there goes Europe’s open borders). Of course it will then mean asylum seekers will be trapped in the first country they arrive in. There is a lot to sort out before it works. No wonder it will take till July.

At the same Estonia is planning to issue a digital certificate (a different one to the green pass) starting in April, and is working with WHO to produce a global certificate in a couple of years time. How on earth will that work in poorer countries – or are we happy that only the rich will travel.

All at the same time as we start talking about how we will use vaccination evidence in future (notable that the press keep saying Boris denies – which is another way of saying the press want it).

I still say we have a mechanism that is effective and already in place to register vaccinations for international travel (IHR). Is that no longer acceptable? I guess the only difference is that now the rich countries are at risk.

Yes – I’ve been buying online again. My delivery came tonight. One item I bought was about 30cm in size – I had expected it to be 5cm. One of the problems with online shopping is that it isn’t always clear what the article you will get will actually look like.

But it isn’t just online shopping. I was asked for advice today based on a set of photos. I spoke to two other people and we all had different ideas of what the photo showed. I wondered if 3D photos would have helped.

And there is also the problem that we cannot always find it easy to understand what people type. I decided to use blue text in this blog to show humour. There is actually a good guide about how to write on the internet. It’s a really old document, but it has some good common sense guidance in it. The name is RFC1855.

Why not have a look at it and see if it gives you some ideas.

I’ve been doing well on Facebook recently. I managed to get an auto warning about vaccine information.

Now I posted a short candid camera type video and it gets marked as potentially disturbing. If it had been subject to film rating it would probably have registered as “yawn”.

Not that it bothers me much, but the one thing that interests me is whether this information is being tracked. And what can you do about it if Facebook decides to record the information about you?

Despite all of the regulations we can be sure personal information about us is tracked all over the place – while the rules add more and more burden to the companies that don’t have any interest in tracking you.

GDPR is great – it protects our personal info – except it fails miserably (and don’t get me started on the GDPR tax which the ICO says they expect most companies will need to pay).

This is the problem with a lot of legislation – it places burdens on people that would do the right thing and misses the dodgy bunch. A good example is the hotel quarantine – which hits people that will quarantine at home but misses people that will fake information.

The more laws like this are passed the more likely you will find yourself an accidental lawbreaker.

I’ve been observing some stuff on my daily walks.

• Many people step to the side to give space
• People smile a lot more
• Cyclists on pavements do not make space – and most do not follow recommendations of the highway code
• There are a lot of people doing virtual sponsored walks

In a weeks time I will be meeting a group that have almost walked round the world.

It is amazing how popular walking has become since lockdown. Almost every popular walking location is crowded these days.

Odd really. I wonder how this will affect us in the long term? Will we see a health blip because so many people are exercising regularly? Could COVID improve our overall health – odd idea – but maybe.

I managed a nice walk today – only to discover on my return that I have a 5cm rip in my trousers where they have worn thin. One of the down sides of walking.

I often say the human body is just like a machine – the more miles you put on the sooner it wears out. Okay – a bit tongue in cheek but a little bit true (look how young the first champion of jogging died). Maybe more exercise does both good and bad.

I have two diet related problems, one means I need to avoid fat, the other I need to avoid carbs. It seems hard to find foods that satisfy both of those conditions (that also satisfy me). In fact it seems that the very low fat foods are often the high carb foods and vv.

I think this is one of the arts of life – to understand the need for balance. I remember watching an Open University programme on catastrophe theory. It describes a system where you jump from one side to another, but can never stop at a balance point.

It has often struck me that we can get balance as individuals, but as a society we seem to operate more in line with catastrophe theory. So we jump from lockdown to mass protest. We jump from saving lives to saving the economy. We jump from left wing government to right wing government.

I wonder how we can get society to operate in a balanced way?