Sight And Sound

It has been an instructive week.   Two performances and a new machine and new operating system installed which is taking a lot of getting used to.  This is going to take a long time in which much experience will be gained and a lot of temper lost.

It is all a lot more fancy and highly sensitive and therefore demanding.  All this digital progress makes life a lot more on the edge, never mind the spacing and the formatting.

I feel like a locomotive driver who has been plucked from the driving cab of "The Flying Scotsman" and asked to replace Neil Armstrong at the last minute because he felt the moon was a step too far.

At one of the performances it was a new production.  This was a live production but we were treated to some heavy duty digital and video efforts which were all very well but rather got in the way of what the performers were doing, never mind the story.

The digital skills were very clever but in fact took over the show.  Quite literally you lost the plot and all the flashy insistent imagery and sound meant that at times you began wishing it would all end and soon.

In the meantime the excitements of the world continue unabated   One crisis arrives well before the other one finishes.  Important issues need attention but do not have it because of all the fuss that is going on.  Everyone seems to be chasing shadows.

This is how government is at the moment, along with international affairs and almost everything else.  But those alleged to be in charge in this dark new digital world are so far behind the technology, the movement and the stark realities that they resemble those antique philosophers who declared that Earth could not go round the sun because it was not written so by the ancient fathers.

More to the point are the vast sums that have been squandered to little or no purpose.  Jobs may have been created and activity and publicity gained.  But at the end there is only the expense. The notion of "Flagship" projects forget that flagships can sink as easily as any other.

As Cloudesley Shovell discovered in October 1707 when he went down off the Scilly Islands in HMS "Association", one of the more expensive wrecks in history.  It is said that a midshipman tried to tell him his bearings were wrong but was hanged at the yardarm for his trouble.

Our latest row is that lobbyists can buy politicians.  

The surprise is that we did not know.    Or at least our creaking media did not get round to telling us, especially when it was about matters which they happened to agree with.  Or they themselves had been bought in to the project or deals.

For the discerning searcher it does not take too much time in many things to find out more and come to a different view these days.  It is not just that truth might out but that information will far more easily these days.

And these old politicians in their 50's and 60's have not yet really cottoned on to how easily it can be done.