What a great day for liberalism and local democracy. The good burghers of Beddington and Wallington have enacted a “voluntary smoking ban” in the area’s public playgrounds. £3200 of honest, hard-working local taxpayers’ money has been allocated to the scheme which local councillors now hope to roll out across the rest of the borough.
This radical and presumably unique project has just one minor flaw: it has no legal basis whatsoever. Sutton’s LibDem councillors see no legal or linguistic impediment to the idea of a “voluntary ban” which in plain English would probably look more like a request. Deviant playground smokers flouting the voluntary ban run the risk of muted social disapproval. Serious and repeat offenders may find themselves being tutted at by council wardens.
Fortunately, the council has science on its side. The new “voluntary ban” is the permanent establishment of a pilot scheme that was enacted after Councillor Bruce Glithero complained that passive smoking left his daughter spluttering. His research findings can be read in more detail in the latest edition of the Journal of Anecdotal Evidence.
Sutton is to be congratulated for this bold experiment in local democracy. The beauty of a “voluntary ban” is that you can “ban” anything, just as long as you don’t ban anything. Everyone can have a go. It’s democratic, accessible and incredibly liberal.
I’ll be writing to my local committee to address the following issues with voluntary “bans”:
- Men not wearing shirts in public. “Ban” them.
- The word “whatever” used as a sentence substitute. “Ban” it instantly.
- People wearing hoods when the weather is fine. A “ban” is the only solution.
- Groups that cross the road in a haphazard and slovenly fashion. If a “ban” won’t make them cross brisky, simultaneously and perpendicularly to the carriageway, nothing will.
- Rainy weekends followed by fine Monday mornings. Surely a “ban” would be a step forward?
- Children sitting on steps and talking. “Ban” it immediately! Oh, they already did, for real.
What would you “ban” today?
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Updated on 19 October with a photo by Cllr Terry Faulds of a sign in Beddington Park.
This blog runs on WordPress and I have a love/hate relationship with it.
Actually, it’s just a hate relationship really. I hate the way it works, I hate the scrappy, crappy codebase and most of all I hate myself for not finding something better, or in lieu of that, making something better.
Phew.
WordPress 2.7 is currently in development and the wireframes show some improvements in the admin interface. That’s to be welcomed. However, as an encouragement to take usability further here are a few pointers for other improvements.
- Generally when I log in its because I want to write. I care little for the Dashboard. Take me straight to the new post editor or at the very least give me the option of configuring the admin so that it does it. A cramped “QuickPress” box isn’t a substitute for the real thing.
- Stop telling me about how much spam you’ve caught. The purpose of a spam catcher is to make it disappear, not to bother me further with reports on how successful the spam catching is.
- Matt Mullenweg’s thoughts on his breakfast, USian politics, the Amazon Kindle or indeed WordPress itself form no part of my workflow. If I want to subscribe to any WordPress development blogs I’ll do that in my feed reader. This functionality doesn’t belong in WordPress anywhere.
- You’ve just bought a brand new Moleskine notebook. Unwrapping it and opening it up, you discover that someone has already scrawled on the first page, “This is an example of a handwritten page in your new Moleskine notebook. You can write pages just like this yourself. Try it!” You then have to rip out the example page to actually get started. WordPress should employ effective blank slate techniques, not stuff the database with example content on a new installation that users have to delete before they can use it. Ditto, bookmarks in the links section.
- The default theme should be as minimal as possible both to encourage users to switch to something else and also to provide the simplest possible starting point for theme development.
- Uncategorized isn’t a category, it’s information architecture leftovers. Make the app work with no categories and start like that by default.
- I’m not your pardner. Please don’t address me with “Howdy”.
- Is it a blog? Is it a CMS? No, it’s a “state-of-the-art publishing platform“. This means nothing whatsoever. WordPress rapidly needs to work out what it is and who it’s for before it goes even further down the route of being jack of all trades and master of none. If this is the state of the art then the art is in a pretty poor state altogether.
Likely to say: “We’ve just moved to ZorbServeMAXX 5.0.7.19RC2!!1!1″
Previous Offences: Telephone helpdesk. Network installations. Overclocking. LAN Parties. Case modding. Aerosmith. Warez.
Will ruin your project by: continually pushing the server’s software one version ahead of your site’s code.
The Geek is a sysadmin at heart and he designs websites as a means to an end: testing new software on his server. Stable software is for girls. The good stuff has more patches than an audience participation production of the Pirates of Penzance. It matters little to the Geek that your site only exists to sell your minicab services to customers within five miles of Morden. He’ll pull out all the stops to ensure that it scales to two million visitors per month before he’ll even consider launching.
Fortunately, the Geek has a friend who works in a hosting company (in fact, all his friends work in hosting companies) who can get a good deal on just the kind of “big iron” that’d be absolutely perfect for your site. Despite this unexpected advantage, your hosting bill comes to six times what he’s charging for the web design itself, and that’s just for the first month.
Still, if your business ever gets featured simultaneously on all five national TV channels you’ll be able to handle the spike, even if the design looks suspiciously similar to the wiki-based documentation for the Geek’s server hardware. Odd, that.
Nine months after launch, your inbox still bulges with hourly reports on load averages, server uptime and critical security advisory notices that the Geek just can’t bear to keep to himself.
Likely to say: “This would be so much easier in Flash.”
Previous offences: Conceptual video installation art. Lomography. Tufte books. Graffiti. Manga.
Will ruin your project by: sacrificing content and functionality on the altar of aesthetic perfection.
For the Creative, working life is a huge comedown from those heady art school days when he could spend weeks rethinking sports cars, rethinking the iPod, rethinking television and rethinking thinking. But there’s no good reason why Scunthorpe Sanitary Services Ltd shouldn’t have a cutting-edge multimedia extravaganza, ‘cos design is democratic, innit?, as long as you’ve got the dosh.
After months of brainstorming sessions, storyboarding conferences, mind maps, mockups, teasers, trailers and “post-production”, the end result is as likely to pick up an Oscar as it is to persuade a jaded facilities manager that there’s a cheaper way to get his corporate toilets cleaned. Just as long as you’re standing in front of his Mac’s 30-inch monitor and wearing his £300 headphones, it’s truly awesome.
Whatever you do, though, try not to experience it via any kind of network or read the text without a microscope.
Likely to say: “Enlightened design requires the synthesis of effort, desire and serendipity. Sometimes the best design is… no design.”
Previous offences: Meditation retreats in Nepal. Burning Man. Environmental activism. Wind chimes. Veganism.
Will ruin your project by: confusing spiritual development with web development.
No matter what the specification says, the Zen Master knows that your soul yearns for something more. Something profound. Something timeless. Something a damn sight more interesting than building a virtual shopfront for your bunion pad factory.
The exploratory (indeed, only) phase of his “holistic” design process is pitched somewhere between Freudian psychoanalysis and a Socratic dialogue, concentrating on uncovering your repressed traumas, existential dilemmas and psychic blocks rather than shifting boxloads of bunion pads to the world’s hobbling masses. The Zen Master, centred, tranquil and placid, will be entirely undeterred by missed deadlines and enraged clients, seeing them as an opportunity for “growth” rather than a harbinger of lawsuits to come.
In the end, but far too late, you realise that arguing with him is exactly what he wants, so you pay him to go away, write the whole project down as a loss and leave him to return to his cloud, older, wiser, poorer and considerably more traumatised than when you started.
Five years later he’s still keeping in touch.
Likely to say: “What’d you say if I could build you a PC, hook you up to broadband, save you 20% off your phone costs and make you a website for just £49 a month over the next five years?”
Previous Offences: Man and Van. Lawnmower repairs. Painting and decorating. Minicab driving. Photocopier services.
Will ruin your project by: subcontracting it to the Barrow Boy.
Web design is a computer thing and Jack has a computer shop. Ergo, he offers web design to his customers. What they don’t suspect, of course, is that his design skills extend no further than choosing perforated chrome spotlights for his guest bedroom and that their website job will be done by the local Barrow Boy.
For this rare level of service he charges a hefty premium, but then he’s got his overheads to consider and face time costs money. Still, £49 a month (plus VAT) seems like a pretty good deal for five web pages, a choice of over 10,000 templates, the (refurbished) PC, the (unsupported, flaky) broadband and the deep discounts on phone calls to other customers of the same service within a two mile radius.
You get a free domain name, too.
Likely to say: “5 pages for £99! Choose from over 10,000 templates! Free domain name!”
Previous Offences: Barrow boy. Home improvements sales. Pyramid schemes. Pirate DVDs. No tax disc.
Will ruin your project by: spending longer closing the sale than working on the site.
His father, his father’s father and his father’s father’s father sold fruit and veg by the pound at the market. Now he sells web design as if it were fruit and veg by the pound at the market. Despite working far longer hours than his costermongering ancestors, his success in web design is constantly thwarted by his £98-for-ten-pages competitors and his inability to offer a service more sophisticated than pasting text between Word and FrontPage.
His skills are as blunt as his operation is sharp, but he’s no slouch. Your site is delivered by email the following morning, along with a receipt for his “design consultancy”, a list of his astronomical hosting prices and information about his “premium uploading service”.
Of course, you can’t fool people twice, so the next time you shop for web design your first port of call is eBay. There, you pick up a CD-ROM of 10,000 WEB DESIGN TEMPLATES!!! RESELLER RIGHTS!!! for only 99p (plus £9.99 postage) from barrowboy(694).
