Is online retail the future?

Just motivated myself to do some (albeit limited) reading for one of my assignments and came across this article: www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/09564230110694820. It provides a good counter to the argument that all non-food retail will end up taking place online, largely because of the paradox that the main reasons for choosing to be an online retailer (low startup and running costs, infinite scalability, less reliance on human beings) go against the requirements of successfully growing and maintaining competitive advantage (because you need to continue offering an acceptable or better level of customer service as your business grows, which requires more quality staff).

My counter to that would be that it's still more efficient to house all your staff and stock in call centres and warehouses and take payment before shipping the item than it is to pay rent on a load of stores where people can walk in and nick stuff and the customer experience can vary hugely... but there.

Of course that's just one element of a retailer's context, (my next stop is supermarkets and whether my specialist retailer actually offers better standards of CS than supermarkets... I don't think it does) but I thought the article's argument was an interesting one.

And with that. I'm going to watch CSI NY now methinks.

I've never voted Labour before, but...

My quick, dirty and critically faulty contribution to ConservativeHome's mylabourposters campaign. Check out the website for the best examples.

"Love Clean Streets" goes live

Nigel Tyrell of LoveLewisham has recently launched LoveCleanStreets, a " site (that) allows you to review and submit environmental issues and have your local authority deal with it, and then let you know how they got on." - basically an index of the bad and the ugly in and around London, and how quick (and effective) the Council have been at making it good.

I'm genuinely looking forward to see how Cleansweep respond to this challenge.

What's going on with that?

As usual I've been remiss in my posting (though certainly not through lack of things to say and do). Tonight I would like to quickly and simply draw attention to the various groups of people rightly upset by the poorly advertised (whilst I was aware that major works would be taking place, I didn't know the full details til reading the Phantom's article last week) and (in my personal opinion) ill conceived decision to close the Blackwall Tunnel to southbound traffic from Sunday to Friday for the forseeable future.

The facebook protest group and Blackwall Tunnel Special Report blog (recognise the style sheets on it ;-) ?) articulate the case against TfL's decision succinctly, so I shan't reinvent the wheel here, but merely highlight the (sadly unreferenced) statistic that "this closure and lack of contraflow is not acceptable by 92% of local residence and tunnel users" and note that the tidal flow operated without public protest or "catastrophic fire" from 1978 to 2006, so why would reinstating a contraflow in off-peak times for a couple more years be more risky than back in 2006?

Perhaps I'm missing something glaringly obvious here, and I'm by no means a civil planning expert or someone with an army of surveyors and accident statistics at my disposal, but in my ignorance I feel the decision made here doesn't feel right.

Watch the space.

Do you like absorbing the politically banale? I do

Maybe this is for a rare hybrid of a person who a) has an unhealthier than perhaps is normal interest in politics (I'm thinking geek more than activist here) and b) a longing for the return to good old voyeuristic banale reality television as it was before producers started engineering conflict at every turn.

Eyespymp is billed as the successor to an anonymous Whitehall tweeter (executive paralysis does wonders for civil service creativity I'm sure) who was game was blown by James Kirkup in the Telegraph a little while ago.

I feel like I shouldn't enjoy it, but I do. I wonder if they had a Greenwich version what they would see? "Easton walks across road for bacon sarnie before returning to move some more paper around the Museum". Still can't be any less surprising than the thought of Eric Pickles munching doughnuts in the lift...

Well done Charlton :-)

Now don't get me wrong - I will happily admit to knowing very little about association football (I'm more of an RFU man), but since I happened to be down in Charlton delivering leaflets earlier this evening (Peninsula's boundaries stretch along the railway down past the flyover beyond Anchor and Hope Lane. Even though it's a different post code and I'm not permitted to park there, apparently I'm still allowed to put myself forward to represent there! The joys of ward boundaries.. but I digress) I had a chance to see the fans making their way to the game.

It's a warming sight, and one that takes me back to the odd occasions when I went to watch Norwich play at Carrow Road (back in the period when we were falling fast out of what was then the Barclays Premiership, we nearly always lost :-( ) - seeing groups of friends and families getting together to share a common cause.

I'm going to end this before I get accused of being oversentimental, but mainly I just wanted to say well done to Charlton on their win. :-)

Surveilling the surveillance

Returning from my Christmas shopping travels in Norwich yesterday, I passed a GATSO speed camera on Ipswich Road (the one by City College if you know it). Last few times I was in Norwich, it had been put out of use by local hooligans/vandals/vigilantes/heroes (depending on your viewpoint - my personal view is that mobile police speed controls are fairer and more effective at reducing casualties on the road, and that speed is just one of many variables affecting road safety. But I digress). Now it has been reinstated - but what caught my attention was a yellow sign on the base of the camera, stating that the camera was subject to "24hr CCTV surveillance" - the surveillance has its own surveillance!

Strange times indeed. But I wonder: just who or what's watching the camera that's watching the camera?