Bradshaw slunk in to the main entrance. The clean, light lines of the glass building’s vast atrium and its stylish matt black Conran-copy furniture with its brisk and business-like red trim still managed to inspire a slight awe in him, even in this hungover and dishevelled state.
He was still quietly humming that Billy Bragg tune that had been insistently spinning around (like a record baby) in his head – a vague but insistent memory of the brilliant Red Wedge gig just the night before – as he headed for the reception. What a night he mused as he crossed the expanse. Except for Peter’s printing cock-up that is. What were they going to do with 1,000 ‘Rock again Racism’ t-shirts? Typical Hammond cock-up. He’d been told not use that printer in Old Market.
Bradshaw arrived at reception. Sharon, resplendent as ever in shoulder pads and flick haircut, was obviously fully engrossed in urgent Avon County Council business as she kept her head firmly down and fully focussed on something – failing to acknowledge him in the slightest. Bradshaw eventually coughed.
Sharon looked up. God what a mess he is she thought. His cheap highlights were growing out while the Sun-in he was obviously using had turned much of his hair an unsightly orange. He also needed to give that big hair a good wash she mused.
“Don’t you think you should take your sunglasses off when you’re inside?” she snapped.
“Er,” Bradshaw muttered before elegantly pulling the Aviators from his face and delivering his best Tom Cruise toothy grin. Oh Jesus, thought Sharon, he’s got the nervous twitch back too …
“I’m expecting a.” Brashaw hesitated before saying the magic words. “A fax,” he heavily pronounced. “Can you bring it up for me when it arrives?”
“No,” replied Sharon.
“Why the hell not?”
“No one knows how to work the fax machine yet. There’s a two day course on it all next month apparently.”
“Oh,” said Bradshaw and headed for the lift sharpish.
“Pratt,” Sharon muttered under her breath as she returned to trying to puzzle out what this mornings weirdly 3-D style photo on the cover of the full colour Today newspaper actually was.
Bradshaw hurried down the corridor to his office. Knight was obviously already there, he could already hear his ghetto blaster.
Bradshaw stepped into his office. “Morning Colin,” he said.
Knight was at his Amstrad, staring, as if hypnotized, by the warm green glow from the screen. He didn’t look up. “Morning,” he replied.
“What’s this racket you’re listening to?” Asked Bradshaw.
“Oh it’s a cassette my sister did for me. It’s called home music? House music? Something like that.”
“Utter rubbish. It’ll never catch on. Anyway I’ve got the Morrissey solo album at last. On cassette too. It’s brilliant.”
Bradshaw headed for his desk. He stood before it for a moment, admiring the elegant lines of the brand new Amstrad PCW 8512 before him. He inwardly sighed as he sunk into his seat feeling just a little like Michael Douglas (without the braces obviously). He was, after all, about to become a master of his own traffic universe at least.
It’s incredible. Just incredible,” Knight, still staring at his screen, announced. “I thought Sim City on the Spectrum was something. But this is unbelievable technology. You know Mark with this stuff we’re going to create a city for the 21st century. There’s no doubt about it.”
“I know Colin,” replied Bradshaw. “Here, right at our fingertips is the powerful state of the art technology we’ve always needed to get the traffic moving in this city … By the way? How do I switch this thing on?”
“There’s a button on the keyboard …”
“Oh yes of course,” said Bradshaw as he reached for the MS-Dos manual.
If you’ve just spent a couple of hours today stuck in traffic in Bristol as usual then Steve Loughran, a renowned-computer scientist who works with CERN, the High Energy Physics establishment and Railway Path campaigner, may have discovered why.
He says that Bristol City Council’s traffic team and their consultants are using something called “SDG’s SATURN simulations” to computer simulate traffic flows in Bristol and work out what they think is going on and then to develop solutions.
Steve also says, “this is basically a piece of late-eighties code running on a single desktop PC – a box that just lacks the raw CPU power to do any decent modelling.
“This software doesn’t even make an attempt to model walking or cycling, or even BRT routes, making it utterly useless for modelling the effects of a BRT bus running over a walking/cycle path. Yet everyone persists in using it, for reasons I don’t fully understand.”
Brilliant. Well done Bristol City Council. Why not use completely useless out-of-date technology and base important decisions on it?
What next? Will Bradshaw be consulting astrological charts to decide whether to build a PFI rubbish incinerator in Avonmouth?
