Recycled

Three bits of news recycled from yesterday's Guardian, read in paper form, having been bought from a machine, for once without needing any help from a human, in the small Waitrose by Vauxhall Station.

At reference 1, I have a go at politicians who lie to the public. So it was useful to be reminded that corporations do this do, that politicians have no monopoly on mendacity. So here we have Amazon working on robots to take over some of the more dreary jobs in the their warehouses, possibly partly because they like fancy computers and machines, but also because they see these things saving them money in reasonably short order, denying that the objective is to cut out some roles (today's HR speak for jobs). It may well be true that with their staff turnover (which I assume to be high), the likelihood of this resulting in redundancies is very small, but that is not quite the same thing.

Readers who share Amazon's enthusiasm for computers and machines can read all about them at reference 3, from where the snap above is taken.

Next up we were told of a game show host who thought it was OK to behave badly off-camera, or to be more specific making coarse remarks about lady contestants. It seems that studio practice is for the sound recorders to be kept on the whole time, the upshot of which is that the remarks have been made public and the host's contract has not been renewed - although he has gone to law about it. Now while it seems likely that this host has a big mouth, better suited to the public bar of a public house than a television studio, I don't think that remarks which he thought were being made in private should be used in this way. Maybe the next step is for Alexa to report bad language to the Amazon morality police. Not that Amazon are in a terribly good position to get all holy about anything much.

Lastly, we have what on the face of it looks like another piece of gross overreaction by the police, arresting and handcuffing a youth whose water pistol was mistaken for something lethal. This brought on by a passing policeman noticing the youth and summoning an armed response unit. OK, so maybe an honest mistake in the first instance, but why did it get as far as handcuffs and arrest, by which time it must have been obvious that the weapon in question was a water pistol? Might the water pistol have reasonably been mistaken for something else? Maybe the youth was a big lad who completely lost his cool and restraint was thought appropriate? Are the family now busily stirring in hope of a compensation payment, rather than trying to calm things down? Are standards in our police forces being driven down by years and years of cuts? We are not given anything like enough information to make a judgement, but we are given enough for me to think that the onus lies with police to explain what happened here. And if it was overreaction by half trained young police officers having a bad day, why not just come clean and say so - much better than stonewalling, which seems to be the usual.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/politics-on-edge.html.

Reference 2: Amazon tests out humanoid robots but denies jobs at risk - Callum Jones, Guardian - 2023.

Reference 3: https://agilityrobotics.com/.

Reference 4: TV company 'was aware of Williams jibes' when it offered £1m deal - Alexandra Topping, Guardian - 2023.

 Reference 5: Boy, 13, 'still has nightmares' after arrest by armed police - Vikram Dodd, Guardian - 2023.