The Sunday Reflection #95 - Pubs, Pubs, Pubs - and what you can learn from visiting nine of them in one night!

 Last night, I visited nine pubs and had a drink in each one. We were on one of my best friends sons stag night. A group of fifteen of us dressed up as characters from the Super Mario game and went on a pub crawl organised by his other son. You may think that this is a strange topic for a Sunday Reflection, but I learned quite a lot and I really wanted to share it. We were on Brighton. We emerged from our Airbnb at 7pm and headed to the first of the pubs. We were on a tight schedule. The first pub we passed was not on our itinery. It was the Golden Cannon. It's in the heart of LGBTQ+ district, but is a proper old style pun , which wouldn't seem out of place in Burnt Oak. The locals saw us and and rushed out and invited us in, amused by our outfits. Given the warm welcome, we had to oblige. The scheduled beer for the first stop was a pint of Guinness. As I rather like Guinness, this went well. A local put One Step Beyond by Madness on and we all did the conga around the pub and down the road. The guvnor then gave us a round of Baby Guinness shots. It was a brilliant start. We then moved on. As we made our way down the street, people were stopping us to have their picture taken with a group of fourteen blokes, all dressed as in silly attire.

Now I am not going to bore you with the details of the other pubs and drinks, but I will share a few things.  Three of the venues we visited were not on the list we had planned. They saw us and invited us in because the saw we were good natured and having fun. We went in and I guess we spent £200 in each. We also had a great crack with all of the locals. All of these pubs were independent. We went in one pub, which we didn't feel especially welcome in. It wasn't a party atmosphere and I guess if you want a quiet pub, you don't want 14 blokes being silly. They did serve us, but it wasn't the vibe for either us or them. O'Neils refused to let us come in. It was pretty clear that they had decided that we were 'too large a group' to let in, despite the fact that it was clear that we were good natured and having a laugh. The other large chain we went to was Wetherspoons. Although they let us in, there was a scowling member of security standing by us for the entire duration of our visit. I found it quite antagonising really. I rarely drink on Wetherspoons, and it sort of confirmed my prejudices that Wetherspoons lacks atmosphere and is not really much fun. 

Another one of the highlights was an impromptu stop at The Little Havana bar for some impromptu Karaoke. As the night was warm and dry and we were having a good crack, quite a few revellers joined in. The bar owner got into the vibe as well. 

It was a brilliant night. I go to a lot of pubs and clubs, not usually so many on one night and I don't normally drink as much in one sitting, but such occasions are to be savoured. It confirmed my views of the large pub chains, which are run by people who don't drink in them. Soulless and dull. I also love quirky pubs, community pubs and best of all, bars with a bit of music on. I get that students etc, on a low budget, love a 'spoons' but to me they are horrible. 

What I found interesting was the different attitudes of the door staff. The big chains had aggressive door staff that were keen to assert their authority. The smaller pubs had doormen who saw we were up for a crack and got into the spirit with us. I get that the big chains have 'policies' but anyone who has spent any time around pubs at all can see straight away who is going to be a problem and who isn't. I believe that a visit to the pub should be good for the soul. If all it does is suck the energy out of you, then it is a bit self defeating. 

The bottom line for me was that we stopped by for drinks in nine different places and seven of them were a great crack. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that all had their own vibe. All were unique, apart from the 'Spoons' which just felt like you were in a 'Spoons', which is great if you like that sort of pub. I don't. I realised that I don't actually go to the pub to drink. I go to the pub to have a crack. Pubs that don't really want people having fun are not really for me. 

Friday Fun and Local Music Roundup

The Friday Joke - I love this one from our Twitter friend Mr Robert Wilkinson

Neil Diamond's favourite smoothie?

Swede, carob, lime.

Sing along everyone.

— Robert Wilkinson (@robertwlk) August 12, 2026

Watch Amy Winehouse skanking with #thefalsedots outside her favourite studio at @Mill Hill Music Complex to the banging new #ska track Crows from the bands new album #wedontliveinamerica

See the band live at @dublincastle and n Sun 23 Aug

https://wegottickets.com/f/22613/

Other local music this week

Friday 14th

Butchers Arms 9pm – 12.30am - Bear Pit Band (pop/rock covers)

East Barnet RB Legion 8pm – midnight £5 on door - Bop Street

Barrington Bar 8.30 pm - midnight = Karaoke with Neil

The Cavalier 7.30pm – late = Karaoke disco with Iain H

Ye Olde Monken Holt 9pm – 11.50pm = DJ The Real Slim Sadie (Disco)

Saturday 15th

East Barnet RB Legion 8.30pm - midnight £2 non members - Alan Carvell - The Human Jukebox 

Butchers Arms 9pm – 11.30pm - The Beatin Heart (Covers)

Toolans 9pm – 11.30pm = Billy Heneghan 

Joiners Arms - Leon Knight (Covers 50s – present)

Sunday 16th

The Kings Head 2pm- 4pm - Harmonica Lewinsky (Pop/ Rock)

Ye Olde Monken Holt 7pm – 9pm -  Brian Connell and Keith Haggis

Butchers 8.30 – 11.30pm -  Butchers Arms Jam Electric/Blues/Rock (Full backline available

Toolans 8.30pm – 11.30pm- Two in Accords

Monday 17th

Ye Olde Mitre Inn, High Street 8pm – 11pm (stables room) - Barnet Acoustics Session

Tuesday 18th

The Bull Theatre £5

Acapella & Accoustic Speakeasy 14+ (3rd Tuesday) 

Wednesday 19th

Toolans 5pm – 8pm

Declan Gaynor - Ye Olde Monken Holt 8.30 – 11pm Open Mic Night

Thursday 20th

Ye Olde Monken Holt 8.30 – 10.30pm - Irish Session

Malt & Hops 7.30pm - Open Mic Night (3rd Thursday of month)

Friday 21st

Butchers Arms 9pm – 11.45 - The Bluesbrokers (blues/rock)

Barrington Bar 8.30 pm - midnight - Karaoke with Neil

Chipping Barnet SC 33 High Street 7pm – Late - The Dream Mansion with Matt Backer

Ye Olde Monken Holt 9pm – 11.50pm - DJ The Real Slim Sadie (Disco)

Rock and Roll Stories #72 - You are never too old to Rock and Roll

 When I started the band, I started a scrapbook to document the meteoric rise of the False Dots to the top of the charts and world domination of music. We genuinely believed that we would become the biggest band on the planet. We couldn't play, the songs were crap, our instruments were the cheapest rubbish we could afford. What could possibly go right? Well nothing at all. The scrapbook is a litany of the many failures of various line ups of the band between 1979 and 1990 to be successful, it is laced with bitterness and acrimony. I wrote it for myself and in some ways it is the first example of my style as a blogger, although the targets were ex band members rather than politicians. Then it stops until 2000. This is the first entry of the new century.

I restarted  the band for a specific purpose. To record some of the old songs for my own personal pleasure, as I had my own recording studio. I had no plans to gig, no plans to release music, no plans to take the band seriously. Then fate intervened. My best mate and business partner, Ernie Ferebee died, we decided to do a benefit gig for his family and the bug bit again. That was 26 years ago and the band has been active ever since. I was 37 years old then and considered myself past it, so it seemed pointless persuing the Rock and Roll dream. However, it was a total blast and great fun, so I saw no reason not to do it. We settled into a pattern of doing one or two gigs a year, at local venues and usually for cancer charities and local festivals. It sort of scratched the itch. In 2010-11 we had a brief period when Connie Abbe joined as singer, were we returned to Camden Town and recorded some material seriously, with a view to getting Connie a deal. Connie left to join Emmanual Jal on a world tour and Allen Ashley rejoined. We settled back into 3-4 gigs a year. 

Allen departed during Covid. I returned to singing duties for the first time since 1982 and we started writing new material. A gig at the Mill Hill Music Festival followed by a gig at the Dublin Castle in 2022 confirmed something that had been bothering me probably since Connie was in the band. The music industry has always been focussed on new young bands. Of course it is right to make the primary focus on upcoming talent and new ideas. However, there are so many great bands and solo artists who are not teenagers/young musicians who are making great music. The industry is not at all intersted in artists once they no longer look like teenagers, unless they are megastars with billions of fans. The artists who have the biggest income streams are generally not teenagers, they are established bands, like Madonna and The Rolling Stones, who have an audience of an age where there is plenty of disposable cash. But the industry completely lacks the wit and intelligence to see that there is a huge market for new music for this age group.

Bands like The False Dots, playing a genre that is not in vogue such as North London style Ska music still get a great reception live. We have nuerous radio plays on specialist online Ska stations. Everyone tells us our music is great. People like the fact that we break all the rules of Rock and Roll, and we don't give a $h1t but the gatekeepers of the mainstream sneer at us. Online, our Youtube channel has had just shy of 100,000 views. One of our songs, Put me in the Spotlight, was used by Manchester City FC as the theme tune for their Goal of the Month show in 2012. It was played 47 million times. Our gigs are a blast. It is enough for me. But it is 100% clear to me that a wider audience is being failed by the gatekeepers. I don't say this because we are not on Telly. I am saying this because over the last five years, we've played dozens of gigs, with other amazing bands on the bill, making mindblowing music and none get a look in. 

One of the things that the False Dots have started to do regularly is matinee gigs at the Dublin Castle. For many of our audience, this works well. Many have moved out of London, so there is no stress of getting the last train home etc. They can come and see us, have a few beers with mates, maybe a bite to eat after and still be tucked up in bed at 9pm with the cocoa (or whatever their tipple of choice is). I have realised that bands like ours have to adapt the way we do things. I still love playing headline shows finishing at 11pm and we get many younger fans who are also up for this. However I realised that we were missing a trick when many of our fans said "We prefer it when you do support slots so we can get home". 

Any band that wants to have an audience needs to stay in touch with its fanbase. So we've tried to gear our programme around making sure that anyone who may like our music gets a chance to see us when it suits them. You are never too old to Rock and Roll, but Rock and Roll needs to make damn sure that it gives everyone a chance to join in the fun, be it as a musican, a punter or both! The current stage of the  journey started in 2000 and I still feel we are only half way to Paradise! I hope that there are a few more chapters of Rock and Roll Stories to tell!

And if you've not heard the music of The False Dots, CLICK HERE and if you want to come and see us, in a Matinee Show click on the picture for full details of our album launch and my birthday show, on 23rd August at The Dublin Castle

So does AI agree with The Barnet Eye's assessment of the risk level of an AI Doomsday apocalype - The results may shock you!

 Yesterday, I posted a blog detailing the risks of an AI doomsday apocalypse scenario, based on my 37 years working in IT, developing and supporting major banking payments networks. After I posted the blog, I asked Google's Gemini AI tool whether I was right. You may find AI's view of the risk shocking. Here is what it had to say

--

Evaluating the realism of the scenarios raised in the blog post requires breaking them down into realistic near-term risks, plausible worst-case events, and unrealistic extrapolations.

1. Highly Realistic: Minor Errors Causing Major System Failures

• Realism Level: 10/10 (Already Happening)

• Why it's realistic: The blog's anecdotes about payment system glitches creating tailbacks or test scripts flooding emergency services reflect how fragile complex, interconnected IT infrastructure is.

• Real-World Evidence:

  • The CrowdStrike / Windows outage (July 2024) proved that a single corrupted software update can instantly paralyze global air travel, emergency services, banking networks, and healthcare systems without any cyberattack occurring.

  • The 2023 NATS air traffic control failure in the UK was triggered by a single improperly formatted flight plan that caused the main and backup systems to enter a safety shutdown, grounding thousands of flights.

2. Highly Realistic: AI-Accelerated Cyberattacks on Infrastructure

• Realism Level: 9/10 (Active Threat)

• Why it's realistic: Criminal syndicates and hostile state actors do not need "sentient AI" to cause devastation; they only need AI tools that automate code analysis, scan legacy operational technology (OT) for vulnerabilities, and execute zero-day exploits at superhuman speed.

• Real-World Evidence:

  • National security advisories confirm that nation-state actors are deploying AI tools to map out power grid networks, water management SCADA systems, and transport infrastructure for potential sabotage during geopolitical crises.

3. Plausible: Human Deskilling & Loss of Fallback Control

• Realism Level: 7/10 (Plausible Over Time)

• Why it's plausible: The blog highlights the risk of losing the human workforce capable of manually managing systems when AI fails. This phenomenon—known in safety engineering as deskilling or the Paradox of Automation—is a recognized vulnerability.

• Where the realism holds: If organizations prematurely lay off experienced technical support staff or fail to train a new generation in manual troubleshooting, an extended AI or IT failure becomes much harder to recover from quickly.

• Why it isn't an immediate total collapse: Major utilities and nuclear facilities are bound by regulatory frameworks requiring physical air-gaps, analog manual overrides, and human operator sign-offs.

4. Unrealistic: Permanent "Apocalyptic" Fall of Society

• Realism Level: 2/10 (Highly Unlikely)

• Why it's unrealistic: The blog's dramatic conclusion—that a single AI malfunction or cyberattack could trap humanity in a permanent, unrecoverable "post-apocalypse" where no one can keep the lights or water on—overstates system fragility and understates resilience engineering.

• What would actually happen: In a major systemic breakdown, societies experience acute, severe disruption (rolling blackouts, temporary supply chain freezes, economic loss) lasting days or weeks. However, engineering protocols mandate physical isolation switches and emergency manual procedures to restore basic utilities at a local level.

--

What interests me most is the fact that the only one of the four scenarios that it stated was highly unlikely was one that I didn't actually predict, which perhaps gives an interesting insight into the way AI itself works. I never stated that society would end as a result of an AI apocalypse. I assume that the AI misunderstood my use of language. What I meant by the term was that it would be an apocalypse for AI systems in terms of society trusting and relying on them. When we see a major disaster, with loss of life, and massive society impact, financial impoverishment, major loss of savings, property, etc, civil unrest usually follows. Of course society adjusts and some degree of normality eventually returns, boy our faith in technology may be permanently undermined. What I said the in fnal paragraph of the blog was this. I do not believe Gemini AI's analysis properly represented this

"But that is not what interests me most. I believe that we will see a major catastrophy, with loss of life caused by one of these scenarios. And when this happens, we will see a massive re-assessment of our relationship with AI. The thing is, that may happen after the point where we can put the genie in the box. If all the people who AI replaced no longer are around or have the skill sets to clean up the mess, we are in an apocalyptic situation, where we have to keep software running that we cannot trust, to do the basic things our society needs, like keeping the lights on in winter and the water flowing. It will be bad enough if the problems are just down to glitches or hardware problems. If they are down to a malicious actor gaining control of the systems that run our lives, using AI systems that we cannot circumvent, who knows what will happen?"

Is AI smart enough to understate the risks it poses to society? Perhaps we can conclude that. 

What will the world be like the day after AI doomsday

 Let me tell you about my mate Aaron. Apart from being an Arsenal fan there is nothing I don't like about the guy. I used to work with him in IT and he was always a good laugh. He was also extremely good at his job and very savvy with technology. I can recall talking to him about the opening of the Channel Tunnel. He said "I won't use it until someone has died on it in an accident". This seemed to me to be a very strange thing to say, but he explained. "When new technology is deployed, I never use it until someone has died and then they iron out all the bugs that they left in due to cost cutting". He wouldn't fly any new make of aircraft, use any new train or do anything, until there had been an accident and all of the problems caused by cost cutting ironed out.

I met Aaron for a beer last week and I was thinking about this in relation to AI. We see AI being used for management of all manner of IT systems. We even saw a report in the Guardian last week stating that AI was designing new viruses. 

What could possibly go wrong pic.twitter.com/ihy9lyvlcK

— A Better Mill Hill 🔸🌈🇬🇧🇪🇺 (@ABetterMillHill) August 7, 2026

What could possibly go wrong? Well I worked in IT for 37 years, mostly in support of systems. My job was to fix things and get things running when they'd gone wrong. Generally when things went wrong, it was when new systems were introduced. You soon learn the limits of what resilience you can design into systems, when you have such a job. About 90% of the problems we dealt with were not caused by really difficult and obscure issues, they were caused by absolutely basic mistakes and misunderstandings. Generally they were fixed in hours. As I worked in Payments (card transactions, ATM technology, etc) that operate 24 x 7 and have to be available I saw the effects first hand of the most basic errors. Let me give you a couple of examples

In one, a basic operator error resulted in all electronic cash tills at a service station on the M1 being unable to take card payments for 1 hour. People were pulling off to fill up, and being told at the till that they couldn't pay by card. Within 30 minutes, there was a 5 mile tailback on the M1 as people were trying to pull over to fill up. After that, I never let my fuel light come on again on a long journey. It took about 20 minutes to code a fix to prevent that. The second was when a system that used to dial into company card systems to retreive card payments was being tested. Some test data had been input and all of the test telephone numbers were set to all 9's. When the test was performed, at 3am, the West Midlands emergency services 999 service was swamped with calls from the system. Genuine emergency callers could not get through for over 2 hours.

 I was on a contract at one of the UK's largest banks at the time. The chairman was woken up by the chief of police demanding an explanation. I wasn't working on the test, but it was hugely embarrassing. 

Both of these made me realise just how vulnerable our society is to the effects of IT failures. These incidents happened in the 1990's. Think how much more embedded in our lives IT is now, and how much more vulnerable we are. Now lets consider AI. AI offers huge opportunities for good. Advances in medical science, all manner of goods and services that we never dreamed we needed. It will remove many jobs, make all manner of services affordable. It sounds great. However technology doesn't always work and the more we trust it and let it do the things we need to do, the bigger the shock and the problems when it goes wrong. 

I've given a lot of thought to how it could go wrong. The first thing to bear in mind is the old IT acronym GIGO. That means Garbage in Garbage out. When an AI system is fed bad information, it will produce bad results. Whereas humans generally tend to realise when they've got stuff wrong and things are going badly, if things are outside of the AI models parameters, who knows what it will decide. SO much of the information on the net is wrong, so I would find it hard to trust something AI tells me without doing my own homework. This doesn't matter when you write blogs about obscure punk rock bands, but if an AI system is managing a nuclear power station and the data it is fed is spurious, I do worry. Human systems tend to have things like checks by other people built in to spot calamatous decisions. Who vets AI?

The second thing is coding, programming and hardware are never perfect. The unexpected happens. Now of course the vendors of AI systems will claim their systems are resilient, but I had a job for the best part of 37 years dealing with the problems caused when systems don't do what they are supposed to. I recall going to the opening of a automated warehouse, for one of the UK's leading retailers,, where a pallet full of tellies was squashed into the roof because a sensor wasn't working. I also know someone who had a car with an automatic parking feature that wrote his car off the first time he used it. A sensor malfunctioned. These sort of things make me wary.

The third thing is that there are teams of malicious hackers. These fall into three main camps. Criminals, hostile governments and malicious ne'er do wells who love mayhem. All of these are hugely interested in the potential of AI for making mayhem for us. One of my last big IT jobs was looking at the resilience of a major UK company in the face of a serious, malicious IT attack. My boss had to present a paper at a conference. He asked me to write it for him. I looked at all the ways a hostile intruder may try and get in compromise the company's IT systems. I realised that all sorts of assumptions had been made that were completely ridiculous. The power of an AI system to exploit these weaknesses was simply mind boggling. As a matter of urgency the weakest vulnerabilities were fixed. My boss presented the paper. He said that the room was aghast with the conclusions. Many massive companies, particularly in the US had almost no protections in place beyong basic password controls. To keep a malicious party with an AI running on a super computer at bay, they had no chance.

It lead me to conclude that the West is walking a tightrope blindfolded when it comes to IT security. We can't see the crowd throwing rocks at us. If they all miss, we'll be fine, but we are unprepared for where it hits.

But that is not what interests me most. I believe that we will see a major catastrophy, with loss of life caused by one of these scenarios. And when this happens, we will see a massive re-assessment of our relationship with AI. The thing is, that may happen after the point where we can put the genie in the box. If all the people who AI replaced no longer are around or have the skill sets to clean up the mess, we are in an apocalyptic situation, where we have to keep software running that we cannot trust, to do the basic things our society needs, like keeping the lights on in winter and the water flowing. It will be bad enough if the problems are just down to glitches or hardware problems. If they are down to a malicious actor gaining control of the systems that run our lives, using AI systems that we cannot circumvent, who knows what will happen?