aka. Herefordshire’s now Green and (hopefully will remain) pleasant land.

On the NHS’s 76th birthday, Dr. Ellie Chowns has abruptly ended ‘Sir’ Bill Wiggin’s 23-year tenure (similar to Hurricane Beryl’s effect on the base of two of his hedge funds), and over a century of ‘the Blues’.  Can we now hope for a better deal for North Herefordshire?  Our rural county must not succumb to a threatened ‘Starmergeddon’ coverage with significantly more unwanted housing.  A Labour government under Clement Attlee initiated the first Green Belt just after WWII.  Now that same party has declared its intention to build on it...

There is no doubt a large number of people voted tactically here, aided by an extremely concerted leafletting programme by the Greens (we sincerely hope all these, and those of the other parties, are recycled)...  Judging by the number of Green posters in Ledbury and elsewhere in the constituency in the weeks leading up to the election (this cyclist didn’t see anything from any other party in the area), they certainly drummed up some considerable support.  Greens, Lib. Dems. and Labour all claimed to be in second place to Mr. Wiggin and that a vote for any other party was effectively wasted.  However, the results were remarkable (source: Wikipædia):

The Greens’ persistence has certainly paid off - they won all 4 of their heavily targetted seats, these being North Herefordshire, Waveney Valley (Suffolk - gain from Conservative), Bristol Central (gain from Labour) and Brighton Pavilion (held).  Given that constituency boundaries are based on roughly equal population, North Herefordshire is the largest in area of these.  So (for example) fixing potholes here will be especially challenging..

Jesse Norman (Conservative) retained the City and South seat, but his majority was halved (from 61.2% to 32.6%) - and the seat was predicted to fall to Labour.  Likewise, the Tories held on to West Worcestershire (which includes Malvern) with a reduced majority, but lost Worcester City to Labour.

Aldi has recently introduced self-scan checkouts (robots) in its Ledbury store, though they are often non-operational (as in the photo to the right).

The number of ‘normal’ checkouts has been reduced from 7 to 5 to accommodate seven robots (three of which can now accept cash: all accept cards).   These incorporate cameras - the upper screen in front of the user displays their image while they’re using the machine.  I have asked Aldi customer services (by email) some pertinent questions:

1. Why are images of customers being shown without their consent on these checkouts?  I am wondering why you appear to be recording customer activity.
2. How do these checkouts ascertain if an item has a discount (eg. when an item will be out of date at the end of that day)?

Aldi’s first reply evaded both these questions, so I queried the legality of recording images of customers without their consent (I could not see at the time any warning notices that recording was taking place).  This evoked the following response:

“In relation to self-service checkouts, after an initial trial in a few selected Aldi stores, our self-service checkouts have proved popular with customers, so we are making these available in further stores.  Rest assured that our colleagues will still be on hand if you need them.  In fact, self-service checkouts mean that our store staff can spend more of their time on the shop floor helping customers while they shop.

“Also, we do still have the regular manned tills in the store.  The screens you are referring to are used as a theft deterrent however, please be assured that these do not record sensitive information such as your card details.”

Ah-ha!  To be effective as a theft deterrent, images would have to be recorded to provide evidence.  Whilst it would be expected that any recording is erased immediately after an honest purchase, there has been no statement that this is the case.  On 9th October, I followed with a request for an assurance footage of legitimate transactions would be deleted.  No relevant response has been received to date - just a survey form asking me how I felt about my customer service 'experience', to which I replied negatively...