big brother | Wh0ops

(Wired.)

The Scottish city of Glasgow has won a £24 million grant from the UK’s Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to become Britain’s first “smart city”.

The money will be spent by the council on services for residents that will make the quality of living in the city better. Glasgow beat 30 other UK cities to the prize.

Projects on the table include real-time traffic information, apps to check when buses and trains are arriving, and a pothole reporting service. Facial analysis for the city’s CCTV network and energy use monitoring to make electricity and gas delivery more efficient are also mooted.

“Glasgow has some quite extreme challenges – it has the lowest life expectancy of any city in the UK for instance – and the hope is that if we bring together energy, transport, public safety and health it will make it more efficient and a better place to live,” Scott Cain, the TSB’s project leader for Future Cities, told the BBC.

Spot the scary part?

Facial analysis for the city’s CCTV network and energy use monitoring to make electricity and gas delivery more efficient are also mooted.

Jesus.

Well, it’s that time of year again. Just as you think all the celebrity-reality-mindwipe-nonsense is over with for another year, you are reminded. Oh Christ, there’s still CBB isn’t there…

Argh!

So the nation’s minds will be distracted from all the important stuff going on in the world for another few months, and it will be pointless trying to illuminate them on the finer points of politics, freedom and the faux Coke vs Pepsi choice they will be offered in the spring, as they ruminate on what Vinnie said to ‘Sov’ and Alex Reid and that one out of the boy band discussing what it’s like to shag Jordan (I can’t imagine it’s very nice). Oh well.

Still, it’s nice to see Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss alive and well. After the suspicious death of her DC counterpart Deborah Jeane Palfrey in 2008 (allegedly committing suicide despite going on the record to say she had no intentions of doing so), one could have been forgiven for thinking Ms. Fleiss been David Kellyed as well. I guess it’s different if you’re only convicted of facilitating celebrity cock-washes and not politician’s. Celebrities are there to be torn down and embarrassed in front of the populace, after all.

Actually I was quite pleased to see one of the Baldwins and Vinnie Jones in there, so at least when people are banging on about it there will be somebody I’ve heard of. It just seemed a bit strange tht during his extensive resume there was no mention of Midnight Meat Train, a cinematic marvel.

It’s a funny old world…