Apparently my facetious suggestion re: hoodies and CCTV made more sense than I thought. Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph blames hoodies on “Big Brother”. I was expecting an anti-Channel 4 rant, but it’s Big Brother in the 1984 sense.

This is the usual law of unintended consequences. Just as the increasing sophistication of home-security systems has led burglars to conclude that it’s easier to wait till you’re in, knock on the door and punch you in the face, so the ever-present 24-hour surveillance devices have ensured that, even if you get a look at your assailant, you’ll never be able to pick him out of a police line-up. “Er, well, he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, officer.” “Did the shadow on his upper chest indicate any other features, such as the length of his nose?” “It might have, but I couldn’t tell, as the sweatshirt was black.” “Hmm. A black sweatshirt. Well, that narrows it down a bit.”

Via Nick: an anti-ID card Pledge.

PledgeBank, from those lovely mySociety people, provide the means to set up a pledge of the form “I’ll do X if N other people do it.” In this case, “I will refuse to register for an ID card but only if 3,000,000 people will sign up.”

If you’re prepared to join 2,999,999 other people in a mass protest, sign up and spread the word.

Supposedly, all young people wear hoodies and baseball caps so their faces can’t be seen on CCTV. That suggests this line of logic:

1. Crime in shopping centres
2. CCTV is brought in to video ne’er-do-wells ne’er-do-wellin’
3. These young ne’er-do-wells wear clothes that hide their faces, frightening shoppers
4. Identities concealed from the CCTV, they go about their ne’er-do-well business

In which case, perhaps this would help:

1. Get rid of CCTV
2. Ne’er-do-wells revert to morning suits (top hats not permitted of course) and ball gowns
3. Shoppers are no longer frightened
4. Ne’er-do-wells do as much ne’er-do-wellin’ as above, but without shoppers experiencing The Fear

This is, of course, a flippant addition to the debate. As is suggesting that for the uglier chavs, it’s better for all of us that they keep their hoodies up.

See also Liberal England, and the answer to chavs’ favourite song from Simon Titley.

So that’s the Guardian Sudoku and the Independent‘s Quick, Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced and Prize Sudokus completed before I arrived at work this morning – two of them in less than my seven minutes from yesterday.

It is very tempting to enter the Indie‘s Sudoku Championship.