It has been rumoured for years, often perhaps with the cynicism of local distributors wanting to get a flood of orders, but it looks as if the Technics SL-1200 series has finally been flushed away by Matsushita (Panasonic to most) like a dead bug, an unwanted distraction.

Most will have some sense of its greatness, but it worth remembering just how remarkble it was. This was one of the most important musical instruments, design icons and unintended pieces of genius in the history of technology. Originally released in 1972 as a tough, feature rich for the time hi-fi turntable, the base Mk2 model DJs especially love to use was introduced in 1979. Unlike belt driven turntables (which are much much better for hi-fi use really – yes you need to replace the belt but who cares), it used a magnetic motor that made it just perfect for scratching, spinning and generally turning vinyl records themselves into expressive musical instruments. Most of the millions built are still in use as they are one of the perfect Japanese pride products of the 60s and 70s.

Technics was for Panasonic what Lexus is for Toyota – a chance to sell top of the line kit to people who might be prejudiced and also have a mental price limit for what they would pay for a product made by a firm known for budget transistor radios. The debut of electronic, belt free ‘direct drive’ turntables created the widest impact. There were lots of lovely Technics components far into the 1980s well beyond turntables, but over time this slimmed down to just a few items and then nothing except for a few models of headphones, turntables and DJ sound mixers. In a post iPod world, hi-fi is a pretty small place to be and Panasonic no longer is involved except at the margins with a few cheap ‘micro’ systems. People these days are happy with very low quality compressed digital audio files played via ‘docks’ or PCs with 5 watt rubbish speakers.

DJs are a small but important market who have stayed true to the SL-1200 and Technics. Many top DJs use Technics turntables with special interfaces and software to control digital files, often in preference to colder ‘CD’ or ‘Digital’ turntables that simulate an SL. DJs and those who pretend to be them are a very small market, but high margin and with no small influence in the cool stakes.

The excuse in the official announcement is that due to market conditions where analogue sales are small, it is hard to get enough components and many suppliers for a 35-40 year old product are gone or certainly a bit diminished. Fair enough, but it is not difficult to reengineer to take a few different bits as needs be. There are plenty of firms that market SL imitators, many with the same components. Did Porsche cancel the 911 just because some firm that supplied a wire harness or knob stopped doing so? If Technics was a stand alone business solely selling the SL, tee shirts and headphones it would be doing just fine. So what is the real story?

If the SLs were a named Panasonic product, they would never have been cancelled. The halo effect of niche premium products is far too great, and well known. Many times the Chevrolet Corvette programme made a loss or barely broke even. GM would not touch it even when in the throes of bankruptcy. Canon hand builds some special lenses for sports photojournalists that sell a small handful of units a year for barely what they cost to make. And why on Earth does Yamaha make pianos and guitars? In a purely accounting sense these products should not exist – they are a distraction. Of course that is not how a brand works, however. The Corvette and the Canon lenses are a living demonstration of brand excellence designed for the interests of key influencer groups. You might buy a low end Canon or Chevrolet because of the halo effect of credibility earned with influencers and all kinds of media, on and offline.

Panasonic is one of the greatest technology firms on Earth. I began to turn to them in the early 1990s when my old Discman (which was lovely) stopped working for some minor reason and I noticed some Chinese OEM made the modern equivalent in vile, thin plastic. The Panasonic was Made in Japan, had a metal chassis, better sound and was a bit cheaper. Thus began my renewed love of Matsushita, whose components I noticed in my Mac as well. Now Panasonic is my default brand for everything from TVs to rice cookers and compact digital cameras. All these products are uniformly excellent.

Panasonic are also technologically stubborn in the Japanese way when they feel they are correct, as Sony was with the Betamax videocassette recorder. They have stuck with the ‘obsolete’ plasma television technology abandoned by the rest of the industry as expensive to make compared to LCD because it is just better (it is capable of real blacks, higher contrast and richer colours). I would bet my life that had DJs and the public knew the same SL under a Panasonic badge, it would be immortal.

I am amazed and disappointed Technics was not sold as a brand with all the tooling needed to make SL turntables to someone like Stanton, Vestax or Audio Technica but again this is not a Japanese thing to do business wise. Maybe someone will pull a Polaroid on it and get the tooling before its too late.

In the end the SL was killed off because it had the wrong brand name on it. This is a far sadder and more inexcusable fate than the cover story about components could even hint at. Eternal shame has been earned by the casual vandals responsible for this cultural atrocity.

Whenever it feels confused or threatened Hollywood reaches for 3D like a desperate salesman trying to half remember a ridiculous promise to close that crucial deal.

In the 1950s television looked like Death to the industry so the challenge was to find a way to pack more bums on those seats with something the little flickery bit of new furniture could not hope to compete with. 3D was a big part of it and was rolled out mainly in the context of horror, kids oriented cartoons and exploitation. It fizzled away as most big screen novelties do. From the same era though the technically simpler panoramic wonders of CinemaScope (which we would call widescreen) probably had a far greater impact. The long forgotten 70mm Super version of it remains spectacular to this day. I remember repeatedly seeing the 1992 Director’s Cut of Blade Runner in that format and its one of my best movie memories to this day.

In the 1970s and early 1980s home video looked to be the next big threat. 3D was disinterred again with versions of Jaws, Friday the 13th plus random porn etc before returning to another vision of past futures.

And now it is back again. This time, as always, is different as consumer electronics brands are on board as well. The trouble they have is the upgrade cycle – most people in the West that want HD have it and their sets are perfectly capable of most stuff that games consoles and the LaserDisc 2.0 that is BluRay can handle. Our Panasonic plasma will last rather a long time. So how to get upgrades going again? 3D! Put on some glasses or sit still in one place and get the great gilded experience.

Or not. Because by all accounts 3D in 2010 is not much better than in 1975. You need still those annoying glasses. Colour levels are cut by 30% and everything looks miniature as in the diaoramas of a second tier museum. I think this could be another false dawn for most concerned.

Mark Kermode and others have articulated many objections already. But the market is always a better judge than pundits and I think that 3D programming shows the direction it will go in. There are the handful of big budget vomingly awful CGI epics like the closet furry advocacy that is Avatar on one hand and kid oriented spectacle like the rather more wonderful Toy Story 3 on the other, and the good old straight out B and porn bringing up the rear.

The only place for B to be has long been where Hollywood cannot or will not go – and that is exploitation. Many people misunderstand this as involving nudity etc but it really is about exploiting a popular theme or genre. Pirhana 3D involves blood and Kelly Brook’s remarkable physique. Street Dance 3D is all about bad acting and the stage school amazement of elastic kids popping and spinning about. That is the main future of 3D. It is a shame that artist exploiters like William Castle are rather thinner on the ground these days than investors or there might be some coolness involved.

So not the total fools gold Kermode et al allege, but certainly little more than ephemeral electroplate and the consumer electronic giants need to look elsewhere for the next CD/DVD/HD payday. There is more to be made in cloud based delivery of HD content and maybe someday 2k or some other really appealing format rather than this goofy glasses based 50s novelty nonsense.

Two approaches in a nutshell

Once again I have been very very absent for a long time. This whole work/life/whatever thing is pretty easy to choke on and sadly its the blogs that get cut first. So to the web spiders, spam linkers and relatives that read this – my apologies. I’ll endeavour to do better.

I’ve been provoked back into ranting buy the current Apple/Google/Adobe thing. In terms of Adobe, they began to kick Apple when it was down in the 90s and have let their Mac software portfolio drift, being the last developers to fully adopt OS X even. Flash is a bloated relic that can choke even the latest PCs from time to time, so one wonders what it will really be like on the go. The sooner it can be shifted from its dominance in web video and animation, the better. It is true that you really do need Flash today to have anything like a true ‘full’ web experience, no matter what Apple says. Given the number of iThings out there though it will force an evolution away from this old ‘skip intro’ provoking bloatware.

The Steve’s wonderful exchange with Ryan Tate also offered some insights into the thinking behind the lack of Flash. Ryan did not seem to realise though that the whole ‘Freedom from Porn’ thing is widely misinterpreted – and it is this misinterpretation that is at the core of a lot of anti-Apple ire. You can look at as much porn as you want on the web – Apple just does not want any porn apps on its platform or store. Much like Sony or Nintendo or Microsoft’s consoles in fact. The great Video Game Crash of 1983 also informs some thinking here – Atari lost control of its platform which was sunk to a large degree by garbage games and, yes, porn.

The Steve does have a point about losing platform control and the dangers of third party frameworks. The original Mac alienated and upset many programmers and DIY tech types because you had to use the Macintosh Toolbox API set (in ROM) and could not just code wild and free in assembly language etc like on the PC. Hardware modification beyond memory expansion was not really allowed. The Toolbox had guidelines too, but they were widely ignored to the point that the Mac’s old fashioned co-operative multitasking model and shared memory space led to increasing instability. Devs also widely used third party IDEs like CodeWarrior which could be a couple OS and hardware revisions behind, leading to compatibility and support issues all over the place. The Mac got worse and worse as a platform till OS X because Apple lost control of it.

On a deeper level though, you can detect a major anti-Apple backlash developing across the tech blogosphere in favour of Google’s Android platform. The real Fake Steve Jobs, the wonderful Dan Lyons, has opined on why he’s switching from the iPhone to Android
and makes some convincing parallels with the early days of computing, where Apple blew its lead by refusing to licence its technology and locking others out of its platform. However, Google is effectively a monopolist in web search and ads, just as Adobe has been in web video and authoring tools. To see themselves as tech insurgents freeing us from The Steve’s pornless, locked down iWorld is a bit silly. It is also arrogant as it assumes the very underrated RIM and Microsoft will not have much to say here either. Developer comments in the Kara Swisher piece I link to there also are a reality check. 60 devices, all of whom will be running subtly different builds, could be a fat recipe for crashes, confusion and mediocrity.

In the end though, Steve’s vision of computing has always been much more controlled, sanitised and design led than anyone else from his era – or the new generation of Web2 DIY hack it techfolk either. That is the source of the militancy – they want total freedom and hack-ability with religious fervour. Any platform that does not allow it must be evil and every alternative to it celebrated. I’m sympathetic to a lot of their sentiment – but it is undermined by the fact there is a choice out there for everyone and vis a vis smartphones they are a making a classic‘Category Error’. These devices are not PCs just as a game console is not a PC. If you want to make a game for a console, you have to use a certain set of approved tools and the platform vendor will have some veto over what you do with them. They also will take a cut of what you make in exchange for giving you access to it in the first place. That’s life and it is like that because of what happened to Atari. If Nintendo won’t allow you to do what you want to do, make it for another platform that will.

The original Apple II (which Cory Doctrow cited in his iconic The iPad and Steve are Evil piece), came with a set of full schematics so you could hack it into anything, add expansion cards to measure humidity, whatever.

Totally wonderful, funky and free.

Steve’s Apple //c had all you need in one lovely box – all you can expand is the memory but that is it, and it’s designed to be perfectly stable and reliable forever. A totally different vision and one far closer to game consoles and consumer electronics than conventional PC thinking.

Here are the two Steve’s with their visions for all to see in one vintage photo. The original Woz designed, wonderful, funky Apple I set against the //c. It is no secret and nothing to be militant about. iPad and iPhone will max at sub 20% share of their markets so it is NOT oh my God Evil The Man etc etc like Microsoft, Google or anything else. Just a very, very different approach to computing and a beloved minority platform that reflects it. We’ve all got a choice if we disagree.

Better than life...

A few weeks back Kodak made the tragic, inevitable announcement that they are to cease production of Kodachrome. This is the first, the oldest, and the most wonderful colour film on the planet because in one sense it is not colour at all. Three layers of black and white film simulate the primary colours and filter light accordingly. It will last for centuries without fading. In the very very complex and toxic processing (done in just one lab in the world), which is also ending next year, colour is added. It is just like the wonderful Technicolor process of old Hollywood which produces ‘better than life’ eye popping colour of a kind seen in Robin Hood et al.

Kodak had a point of course – it is expensive and complex to produce and is responsible for less than 1% of Kodak’s film sales. With the development of several new emulsions in the last few years, Kodak’s commitment to film photography looks strong for now.  The film is 74 years old so one wonders why they could not wait just a year and end production on more of a high? 75^th Anniversary collectors packs, maybe bring back 120 format and the lost ASA 25 and 200 versions for a limited time before saying goodbye?
That said, Kodak’s efforts were pretty impressive. They positioned the whole thing as a celebration, have made enough to satiate demand for a good while, and are letting it trickle out of the channel.

Too many iconic, tried and tested or just cult products are just dropped without notice, without fanfare and without consideration for those that rely on them.  Cases like this are when marcomms should shout loudest – that product worth 1% of revenue might be a positive symbol that puts a halo on the rest and thus be worth keeping on life support. Or if it just has to go give it a proper send off like the old friend it is.

Sigh...

Mind the hose, please

Much like an electric snake that has consumed several goats I’ve been gestating too many posts for too long and have been far too busy to boot.  Normal service now looks to be resumed…

It’s long since calmed down now of course but a post on the ever wonderful Jack of Kent’s blog and a namecheck of the dreaded Dolly Draper in Metro reminded me of the whole Damien McBride thing.  Most aspects of the affair have been discussed to destruction. The dislogic of sending such a potentially hot mail from a traceable address to someone as indiscreet as Draper is quite amazing. As are the low grade of the lies themselves – vague and readily deniable trivia.  Quality mud would have been much more darkly creative, impossible to disprove and leave far more questions in voters’ minds then gossip in the papers. Old Damien should have studied the work of the Prince of Lies himself, Lee Atwater, first. He could make people believe some properly absurd yet deeply damaging libels.

In an era where ideas and solid policy discussion are largely absent from mainstream media I fear we can suspect a General Election campaign based on character assassination.  Especially from an enraged yet enfeebled Labour, which is filled with a blinding, Nixon like hatred of and disrespect for the Opposition (or indeed any opposition).  This book has been doing the rounds of the Westminster Village.

Of course, the Web will need to be a part of HMG’s potentially doomed attempt to secure a mandate.  But the pathetic Red Rag attempt at tittle tattle (is Dolly not a kind of Midas of mischance?) combined with the horrific semi-official PC Zombie forum that is LabourList – which has less spirit and purpose than a discarded, rain sodden Foxton’s brochure from 2002 – suggests they have a lot to learn.  The US Democrats might be able to help, if it is not far too late already.

Why has HMG and Labour generally used social media so poorly? I think partly because it is a tool of insurgency. Social media at its best tunnels around and through a bland mainstream media, which is usually based on some stultifying consensus of right or left.  Those in power create much of that consensus so there is nothing to tunnel around nor real conversations they feel are worth starting.  All that is seen is a binary world of the consensus and an equally distorted polar opposite.  The rough and tumble (along with the depressingly frequent genuine radical weirdness) of online debate is handled much better by the British right as it is happy to shout back at what offends it, rather than just try to deny it any ‘platform’.

The very nature of the British left in 2009 would preclude anything or anyone like Guido Fawkes emerging. Ironically it could not work for the same reason a Daily Mail sponsored conference into reproductive health would collapse into an orgy of recrimination – there would be far, far too many ways to give and receive offence.  The only way out of the potential strife is to impose a kind of soft corporate blandness that speaks only to itself and within a very tight ideological straightjacket.  Which just makes all its bustle and fuss a silly, muffled kind of noise that passersby will scarcely notice and most certainly not respect.

A masterclass in Fail

While marcomms at its best is a kind of alchemy, sometimes there really is no way to mask the cynical reality of a product.

Lots of premium brands are little more than well dressed, youthfully aspirational riffs on common mutton, but the key is not to make the illusion (in which consumers are implicit collaborators) insultingly obvious. Chasing a handful of fools with gilded versions of commodity products can cost years of credibility with a brand’s core customers and advocates, who may not come back at all. The auto industry is especially guilty of this self destructive caprice.

American auto firms (and the Rover of the 1980s) have often made the mistake of assuming some faux woodgrain and a wink to the snobby side in all of us represents some kind of alchemical process which can turn a painfully ordinary car into an object of desire.

As a petrolhead, I’ve always paid special attention to the automotive sector and have been sad to see the self-inflicted wounds of the industry get septic and deadly with the aid of the global economic thing.

In Europe, GM’s indifferent stewardship of Saab drained it of any brand value before ejecting it out into the cold night like an unwanted zombie offspring. Allegedly, up to 20 vultures have some interest in picking over the corpse.

Opel is too big to fail, but GM is desperately seeking some kind of ‘outside investor’ to take even a majority stake in what along with Holden represents the brains and future of the whole firm. This is a horrific act of corporate self harm that few other automakers understand because GM Europe is where all the IP needed to turn things around Stateside comes from.

GM’s public ‘proposal’ for Opel’s future literally is like going down some backstreet to sell a kidney. The main issue is that the US government can’t be seen to bail out the foreign bits, even if that’s where the exciting cars and potential are coming from.  Thus the reckless desperation of trying to flog off the best bit of the whole firm. Maybe the EU will want to avoid the blame for letting the most recently profitable part of GM die and will step in to help.  Saab looks too far gone and small for such a reprive, though.

Saab was the quirky, Californian, tech led and somewhat organic cereals based alternative to Audi et al before The General turned it into just another home for mass market Opel platforms. Saab became to Vauxhall what Rover was to late 1980s Hondas – a slight luxo gloss on a decidedly blah mass-market repmobile. Consumers can smell this kind of gold leaf wrapping on a Big Mac thing a mile off. It is a con more insulting than placing biroed Franglais Post It notes on bottles of Gallo swill and adding £4 on to the price tag.

I’m not sure what kind of future Saab has – it will need to raid the parts and platform bins of some big carmakers given the low volumes involved (but then so does Aston Martin) while somehow creating vehicles that are unique. A tall order indeed. Especially as there are still too many brands out there and far too much capacity in the industry as a whole.  Perhaps it can take advantage of the situation and cut deals to get ‘best of breed’ parts from all over the place and somehow blend this with Nordic engineering excellence and flair.  I doubt it will work well, though. The slow motion Rover debacle proved that being a small, upmarket volume car maker can be a paradox too far.

Ironically, it was GM itself that had the first big, nasty experience of lazily forcing a priceless brand to commit suicide. The ‘Cadillac’ Cimarron was an attempt to obscenely increase the amount of chrome and profit margin of the J-body (GM’s cheapest, nastiest front wheel drive platform of the 80s) while distracting yuppies from BMW et al. It was such a disaster that the current head of Caddy has a picture of one on his wall inscribed ‘Lest we forget’. Ford (Mondeo based Jags?) and GM itself surely have done and will do, over and over again. If you must dress mutton as lamb at least have the common courtesy to make sure that the zips don’t show.

This is the future - if you suck

Creative destruction can be a nice aspect of a downturn. Duff retailers are going.  Shops that looked squatted anyway in my area and sold the same bootleg dross and gone off veg as all the others are now shuttered.  They had no reason to exist except for the usuals of easy money and lack of imagination.

Many papers and media outlets have had little reason to exist for a long time. A friend showed me an Indy last Friday and it seemed like an Evening Standard for the shrivelling Soft Left. Maybe the rumours of going online only or selling out are correct because otherwise it makes as much sense to produce as a dinner plate made of organic, ethical and wholly sustainable butter.

It is not an original idea on my part, but I sense that the muddled middle of the media and redundant, poorly defined and funded titles will hit the wall. This could leave a world of nourishing news and thought alongside the delicious trash.  Junkets and voyeurism vs. real seriousness. There can be little room in such a world for broadsheets in particular who put out transparently biased, tabloid grade churnalism without the simple honesty of the real thing.

Pick up a Forty Quid Bloke targeted music supplement on a Sunday and you’ll soon realise it is far more fanboyish and PR-driven than even the Sun’s Bizzare pages.  It just would never admit to using the Sun to clean up after its vegetarian dog.  If you want to learn about music, go online or read something relevant and critic run rather than PR led like Wire.

Sadly, the curtain twitching petit bourgouis stereotype baiting papers that used to be called the ‘midmarket’ will continue to set political and cultural agendas.  This is a scared, superstitious and monochromatic world where facebook causes death, cannabis leads to cannibalism, immigrants eat swans and cervical cancer jabs lead to underage orgies. They are geniunely dangerous to civil society in a way the much maligned, simple and fun Red Tops could never aspire to be. I fear their shrill blare can only get louder as horizons darken.

In better news, Pearson’s stable and the heavyweight monthlies such as Prospect and Standpoint are doing well. Maybe when everything has gone wrong serious people look for real anchors to guide the way.  In fact, I noticed a banner for the FT’s heavily trailed China Confidential premium service which further hinted at a future where organisations with the resources and contacts to conduct serious newsgathering and analysis will give away a lot of their stuff but charge you more to know more about what you know you really need to know.  Like provincial politics in China if you are an investor or insurer, etc.  Trade media could slim down and go the same free for the basics, pay to get the need to know stuff direction. This new clarity could be a boon for many…

I’ve not mentioned it because I wanted to be sure it was legitimate – but something wonderful is happening in the Netherlands.  The hollowed out shell of Polaroid ended production of its traditional film products in June of last year.  Harman Technology (Ilford) and others apparently tried to do a deal with them, but it was not to be.

After the dust has settled, it now has emerged that the same components and methods of making Polaroid’s ‘Integral’ film (ie the sort you don’t have to peel apart that consumers used) have been utterly unchanged since 1972.  You just cannot get away with that kind of stagnation.  Component availabilty and cost was cutting into margins at the end, though I am of the view that had Polaroid bothered to make some simple changes, they could have kept their magical, beloved product going and made it price competitive per print with digital.  Before the announcement of the end of production affected prices, Polaroids were about £1.60 an exposure – much too much to compete.  Those film packs are ridiculously complex, containing a battery, springs and all sorts.  Most of it probably is unnecessary. Kodak’s legally stopped but innovative late 70s riff on it all (which lives on outside the US as Fuji Instax) is battery free, much simpler and much cheaper at 50p or less per shot.  This shows that had Polaroid made some easy changes, the fate of its iconic product could have been different. The company sure was full of talent. In fact, its had to licence some back that it carelessly let go to make the interesting but poorly marketed Pogo instant digital cameras.

One of the geniuses behind the whole Lomography thing has gotten together with Harman and the cream of the crop of the old Polaroid operation to launch the ‘Impossible Project’.  This gorgeous site has just been put up but invites user comment on the seven biggest challenges to making new kinds of film for the millions upon millions of inexpensive, lovely Polaroid cameras out there. The old factory and production line have been bought and saved, experts from Polaroid rehired.  The same outfit seems to have got a hold of the remainder of Polaroid UK’s stock and have given the presentation of the same a brain transplant into a world of beauty and relevance. Harman’s been helping too, intelligently engaging with the photographic community via social media.

If all goes well, just as the last of the ‘real’ Polaroid stock is out of the channel, something wonderful will reemerge as a great example of how a brand community orphaned and ignored by its creator can take over and replace the original. I just hope that unlike ‘Lomography’, which was based originally on taking one of the worst cameras ever made, glamming up its context and selling it for 100x its worth, Impossible BV makes a competitively priced product.  If Polaroid had done that well, it would still be the company it was today.  I have been amazed to witness the suicide of one of the most iconic brands in the world – songs, art galleries and whole  artistic subcultures have been based on Polaroid but it never seemed to notice or care.

Pick through the guff and moralism though and there is always a nice nugget of journalistic goodness to be found, usually in the business section.  The other week, the always wonderful Anthony Hilton wrote one of the most perceptiveaccounts of the economic crisis I’ve yet read.  He reminds his readers that most commentators have some interest in their prognostication (or shouting) and that when it comes to economics we can only understand things long after they’ve happened or have been happening. Qui bono indeed.

Today it was the turn of Simon English to offer some wisdom. I’ve noticed a lot of billboards for Norwich Union (with whom I just renewed my car insurance because it had the best quote and a very trusted brand) listing famous name changes before announcing its becoming ‘Aviva’. Given that the bus company responsible for daily transport atrocities in my neighbourhood is called Arriva things already seemed a bit confusing. A name that is older than most standing buildings, conveying trust and depth seems discarded as casually as a Halloween mask. Why? Especially when all the messages now in consumer finance are about trustworthiness and value?  Global firms often try to make some marginal savings by rationalising their brands, but it can be a mistake.  GM has debated whether to dump Vauxhall in favour of Opel for years but each time has realised that avoiding a few plastic badge and letterhead logo differences is not worth trashing decades of brand equity.

I never noticed the slebfest Aviva adverts as I have Sky+, thus all above the line on TV is just a surreal blur for me. They are trying their best.  Simon’s analysis is hard to fault. When you consider that the whole exercise of Norwich Union becoming Aviva costs just 25% less than a recent deal to media buy all the surfaces on the New York subway for a year you have to wonder again: Qui bono?

The Revolution never ends...

Been dead quiet here for a very good reason. Changing gigs takes some doing, especially these days. But all the blood, sweat, tears and sacrificed chickens look to have paid off…

In the meantime I could not help noticing the modern day Millie Tants of ‘Plane Stupid’ et al getting up to more mischief. However, on a PR level these techniques have jumped the shark more times than a blocky 1980s video game character.

A little while back there was a pathetic, Mitford-esque attempt to hijack the anniversary of the Suffragettes ‘Rush’ into the Houses of Parliament. In terms of historical association obscenties this was like naming a municipal sewage works after Nelson Mandela. Leading the charge for justice was the fruity Boden catalogue ready baronet’s daughter Tamsin Omond. A media darling, she bragged about being a modern day Rosa Parks who was ready to break her bail conditions in order to save the world from naughty planes via ‘direct action’ stunts. Unfortunately, exposure to a police cell proved a less than optimum lifestyle choice, despite the champagne radical bluster spewed beforehand, so she has disappeared sheepishly back to Belsize Park.

Picture the scene: you’ve got far enough out of the bottom of your overdraft to sneak off to Barcelona for a few days to pretend everything is OK, the economy will recover, a life of debt, stress, cramped housing, third world infrastructure and big bills is tolerable etc. You get in a taxi costing the GDP of many tropical nations to slide into Stanstead for a 6am cattle car flight and lo and behold, a load of chanting, novelty haired poshos have profaned the tarmac – meaning your pathetic little break is a no-go. If I was the protagonist in this story, the next chapter would involve a hijacked chemical toilet servicing rig, an improvised flamethrower and a trip to Broadmoor.

Whatever the politics of the matter (the idea that a load of carbon emissions were ‘prevented’ is more childish than taking a battery farmed egg home and sitting on it to save the chickens of the earth) and the futility of UK self flagellation on climate change in a big big scary world where global limits and cap/trade is the only way, the tactic backfired as badly as the consumption of tinned chilli in a gas cooker showroom. Yes, there was a tonne of coverage of the plucky, joyous crew, but the organisers seemed to have taken the false adage that ‘all publicity is good publicity’ literally.

For almost all the coverage focused on BAA’s rubbish security, angry holidaymakers and the fact that most of the ‘protesters’ come from privileged backgrounds. Some so much so that Daddy’s South Bucks back garden is large enough to get lost in anyway, so who needs Ryanair? This will have done untold damage to the anti-aviation cause. A better case could be made around resident’s rights, lack of need in a recession, BAA is evil, etc etc in the old patient, reasonable way that actually gets things done. Like the anti-Heathrow folk.

Which brings me to a strange PR absence that I’ve only seen noted in an FT leader and an Evening Standard profile with BA’s Willie Walsh. Why has this industry let loud, often inaccurate opponents have all the running for years? The UK’s airports are full to bursting and new runways can actually mean LESS carbon as there is less circling and time on the tarmac, planes get quieter and more efficient every year etc etc. Air travel is a small and growing source of carbon, but will remain a marginal problem compared to electricity generation and other sources for many decades.  No-one has even begun to make this case, leaving green dreamers and a shamefully opportunistic Conservative Party to dance on the grave of much needed infrastructure upgrades and, yes, the right of ordinary people to travel.  In the end, many climate experts say that loft insulation is more important than aviation in emissions terms, but of course that would be a rather diffuse target for world changing fun days out.