The art of stupidity

Remember the four minute warning? If you’re my age or perhaps the wrong side of 40 you will. For younger readers, at the height of the cold war, this was a mixture of sounds and warning films, which were designed to tell us that a nuclear attack was imminent and what to do to "protect and survive" – as if. It may have more significance for you if you were a Frankie goes to Hollywood fan and you remember the intro to Two Tribes.

Flash forward to today when the threat is less nuclear but terrorist orientated and the threat in London is ever present – especially since we are a few days away from the Jubilee and weeks before the Olympics and it is increasing by the hour.

The Southbank Centre is hosting the Festival of the World and this afternoon I have discovered that that, in part, means that if you’re unlucky enough to be on the Riverside Terrace you’re going to be subjected to a loop tape of multi-lingual chanting, rabbiting and other rubbish on multi-speakers, each of which is playing the same thing but at different times. It’s dementing. And hurrah! There’ll be four whole months of it. But the killer (no pun intended) is the mother-speaker. This is a Klaxon-type affair that sporadically emits a god-awful sound which is very, very reminiscent of the aforementioned 4 minute warning.

I spent a few hours there this afternoon and I can tell you that there was a lot of concerned and worried people around. People who were having a drink, meetings or having baby-dates who did stop what they were doing and assumed, judging by their their body language, that this was some kind of public warning. Many recognized the similarity that’s for sure. What should they do? Was it an alarm? Was it a disaster rehearsal of some kind? Should they leave? Many complained, that I do know, or asked what was going on. How very, very stupid, Southbank.

This is what happens when people have a "great idea" without thinking about the audience or the context they are working within or audiences they're playing to. It makes me angry: very angry indeed. For me it’s on a par with the (well known) sportswear company who named their trainers Zyclon B. Stupidity beyond comprehension.

As I left today all had gone quiet. Will tomorrow be, like this, a Brand New day? I hope not.