Attack of the drones - eye in the sky or public menace?

One way or another, yesterday was all about drones. In the evening I went to see Eye In The Sky, the terrific and tense thriller about an operation by the British, American and Kenyan military to take out a terror cell in a Nairobi suburb. Without giving anything away, drone technology in various shapes and sizes features centrally in the film, which stars Helen Mirren as the British colonel running the operation, Alan Rickman - in his final role - as her boss, and Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul as the US Reaper drone pilot operating out of a metal box in the Nevada desert while politicians from London to Singapore debate the morality of firing a missile to prevent a suicide bombing but which could also cause collateral damage.

It's a brilliant, thought-provoking essay on modern warfare, on the decision making, on the chain of command and the political blowback of the decisions made. Under taught direction by Gavin Hood, Eye In The Sky' articulates how drones aren't just pilotless bombers.

Even when the aircraft and its pilot are continents apart, someone is still responsible for pulling the trigger, even if that turns warfare into a detached video game, policed by politicians and lawyers, rather than generals. As Alan Rickman icily reminds a politician near the end, they might make the decisions, nursing cups of coffee and plates of biscuits in front of a big screen, but they should "Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war."

There's no dispute that drones have improved the effciency of prosecuting war. And while it might still be the ambition of would-be top guns to fly jets into battle rather than sit in front of a screen with a PlayStation joystick, such stand-off weapons do, at least, reduce some of the risk to military lives.

In peaceful applications, drones have plenty of uses: my company, Nokia, was recently involved in the trial of drones to improve traffic management in Dubai, something that will become particularly viable when 5G wireless technology comes into use later this decade; in film and television production, drones have become particularly useful for aerial shots - especially good when filming nature documentaries and you don't want to spook animals with a loud and expensive helicopter; and even Amazon and Dominos Pizza are considering drones for making deliveries. All examples of how drones can work in the right hands.

But in the wrong hands...? Yesterday, as I emerged from Eye In The Sky, news appeared of a British Airways plane being struck by a drone on its approach into Heathrow Airport, after increasing warnings in recent months of the possibility. This wasn't just a close encounter - the Airbus A320, which was carrying 132 passengers, was apparently struck by a drone on its nose.

Thankfully, it landed safely, but God only knows what would have happened if the drone has been ingested by one of the Airbus's engines. Landing a plane is tricky enough, especially on the Heathrow flight path that takes jets from the east to the west side of London, let alone with the instability of a single engine working.

Not long after yesterday's incident reportedly too place, I was in Kingston's Bentall Centre and walked past one of those gadgets-for-blokes shops. Piled high in the entrance was a selection of what the shop categorises as "remote control toys" - drones as cheap as £70. Now, drones at that price are unlikely to reach the sort of altitudes to bother an airline pilot on final approach, but for a few hundred quid more you could buy one that could reach up to 2000ft - about the height commercial aircraft are at over the boroughs of Richmond and Chiswick, five to ten minutes away from landing at Heathrow. Remote control aircraft used to be an expensive hobby conducted by enthusiasts who knew what they were doing. Now, a small aircraft can be put in the hands of people who chose one over buying a puppy or a hoverboard or whatever else was the in-vogue must-have last Christmas.

Speaking about yesterday's incident, Steve Landells, of BALPA, the British Airline Pilots Association, and a former RAF and British Airways pilot, said: "Frankly, it was only a matter of time before we had a drone strike given the huge numbers being flown around by amateurs who don't understand the risks and the rules." Between April and October last year there were 23 near-misses between commercial aircraft and these hobbyist drones in the UK. One incident involved a drone missing a Boeing 777 that had just taken off from Heathrow by just 80 feet.

Despite the threat of up to five years in prison, incidents like this (as well as people shining laser pens into the eyes of pilots) are on the rise. Heathrow, too, seems to be particularly targeted, with large parks like Richmond Park and Osterley underneath the flight path providing plenty of open space for someone to launch a drone. If an irresponsible idiot can do all this just for laughs, what could a terrorist do, given the obsession they seem to have with aviation. As someone who flies in and out of London frequently, I'd rather not die in a ball of flames in Hounslow as a result of some moron in a tracksuit thinking it might be fun to fly their Christmas present into the path of my flight.

Britain's Civil Aviation Authority maintains what it calls the "drone code", which dictates that drones of any kind - professional or amateur - should not be flown above 400ft and should certainly not be flown near planes and airports, usually within a two-mile radius. For pilots, however, the big worry is that drones in amateur or even some professional uses, like film making, are just too small to show up on their anti-collision radar systems, and certainly not on air-traffic control. As, no doubt happened yesterday, by the time a drone is in a position to potentially cause a problem, it is probably too late.

"Much more education of drone users and enforcement of the rules is needed to ensure our skies remain safe from this threat," Landells has said. The British Government says that work is going on with international bodies to develop a stronger regulatory framework. But if rules are going to be ignored by either the ignorant, the anti-social, or those with seriously nefarious intent, then laws need to be toughened, police enforcement needs to be improved, and the penalties made even more punitive than a five-year-stretch. Otherwise the next time a drone and an airline meet, the outcome could be a lot worse than just the chills yesterday's incident sent down my spine alone.

And the winner is...Black Tie, White Noise

Picture: JMEnternational

After a week of truly gloomy news in the entertainment industry, which has seen the deaths of David Bowie and Alan Rickman and, this morning, an announcement that Dame Barbara Windsor will leave EastEnders - for good!!! (I realise that this does sit at one end of the scale...) - it's time to allow regular sniping of the business of show to recommence.

Pop culture is, we must acknowledge without question, what it is. Almost by definition, there is little room for the eclectic and the obscure, and in an ideal world, elitist interests too. The Brit Awards, for example, began as a patriotic nod to HRH The Queen in her silver jubilee year with the appropriately stuffy British sobriquet, the 'British Phonographic Institute Awards', a celebration of the nation's music industry.

Over time, and via disastrous Mick Fleetwood/Sam Fox presenting combos, Chumbawumba tipping ice buckets over ministers of the crown and Jarvis Cocker goofing up Michael Jackson's grandiosity, it has evolved into a giant, paid ticket-only beanfeast at the 02 Arena.

No harm in that: in the 1960s, the annual NME Poll Winner's Party was the must-attend celebration of pop. And, as with all good awards ceremonies, the Brits always feature plenty to get annoyed about. No-one has a monopoly of opinion on what makes good and what makes bad, and taste is 90% subjectivity an probably less than 10% objectivity. But there are times when these awards dos - and I'll come to the Oscars and BAFTAs in a moment - and the nominations therein are just plain baffling.

For many years, the Brits were, as a celebration of the British music industry, less about artistic endeavour and more about recognising the number of "units" shifted. Personally I loathe those industry awards evenings where a load of predominantly male salesmen in hired Moss Bros dinner suits quaff wine, smoke cigars and behave boorishly, and then get the chance to stand on the stage of a London hotel ballroom to receive a trophy from some regional BBC news presenter. That, though, is the sort of environment where record company accountants would best enjoy acknowledgement.

The Brits, though, should be the Oscars of British music, where creative excellence is rewarded, where artistic daring is lauded and, more importantly, rock, pop and all the other genres get to be celebrated for giving those of us who love our music a damn good time. So, what about this year's Brits, nominations for which were announced this week? What sign is there of it being a superb festival of the last 12 month's grooviest choons?

Let's start with one of the perennial clangers, Best British Female. For years, this would feature almost exclusively Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Yazz, Sade and, possibly, Clodagh Rodgers, even when they hadn't been near a recording studio in centuries. This year's BFF includes a nomination for the definitely dead Amy Winehouse, purely, it would seem, for having appeared on the soundtrack of an admittedly breathtaking film about her ill-fated life.

Inevitably Adele features prominently this year, the living embodiment of both irresistible force and unstoppable object. Depressingly, I don't see there to be any other winner, and although it's good to see the likes of Florence Welch, Jess Glynne and Laura Marling, where are Ellie Goulding and Lianne La Havas?

The nods for British Male Solo Artist - ​Aphex Twin, Calvin Harris, James Bay, Jamie xx and Mark Ronson - just depress on account of the fact Britain is currently lacking any bloke making anything truly interesting. And this in the week that we lost one of its greatest exponents.

Blur lead the odds for Best British Group, ​but with the exception of Foals, the appearance of Coldplay and One Direction, for God's sake, are all too predictable. Would it have killed the Brits committee to have included Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds in one of these two categories? Johnny Marr? They are quite good, if you weren't aware...

The Best International Group category has traditionally been a platform for either U2 or Foo Fighters, or Foo Fighters and U2. I may be wrong, but in truly lean years I'm sure U2 have also appeared in the Best British Group category on account of Adam Clayton being born in Oxfordshire. This year the list includes Eagles of Death Metal. As noble as this entry is for representing rock'n'roll defiance (and I'm not going to tread on the sensitivities of those - including two friends - who were caught up in the bloodbath in Paris), surely EoDM could have received a special award? Are they really one of the international groups of the year? Good, though, that the category also includes Alabama Shakes and Tame Impala.

I'm not going to go through every category, otherwise I will end up very angry indeed at the inclusion of Adele's suicidally dreary Hello as single of the year and, worse, Sam Smith's truly abject Bond theme Writing's On The Wall (yeah, I'll say...) for British Artist Video of the Year.

I know that, at 48, I have ascended to that life stage where I can legitimately be a curmudgeonly old fart, but the Brits just seem to lack a certain excitement, true pioneers. They were always meant to be a corporate event, but since getting the Smash Hits treatment, The Brits should at least amp it up and celebrate the actually good things about the British music industry.

I'm not going to re-engage the argument that music was better in the 70s, because it was and it wasn't, and there is no shortage of adventurous, exciting, music coming through now, as there has always been and always will. But for a trade association representing a national music industry that, arguably, has had more impact around the world than any others (face facts America), it should reflect the still-burning furnace of British musical invention with a bit more than Coldplay in any category that will have them.

However, there are greater crimes being committed in this, the season of black tie showbiz piss-ups. This week we've seen the 2016 nominations for the Oscars and their slightly lesser (in the mind of the rest of the world...) British cousin, the BAFTAs.

Whereas the Brits seem too populist and predictable, the film awards have, to some degree, been less so. I'm not so naive that I don't realise how film business politics plays a big part in nominations for the Oscars in particular, but there is something cringingly dismal that, yet again, diversity gets such a poor showing this year.

It should, of course, never be about tokenism, but were this last year's films so bereft of strong performances from black actors and women that the main categories this year shouldn't have a more diverse profile? Creed, Straight Outta Compton anyone...? No. This year's Academy Awards will be the whitest, straightest Oscars in living memory.

But it's not just ethnic or cultural diversity that have been badly served by the Oscars and, indeed, the BAFTAs. What about populism? Sure, The Martian is a big, balls-out bucket o'popcorn blockbuster, and it's actually quite refreshing to see a film like Mad Max: Fury Road get a look-in on gongs (though surely someone's having a laugh putting a post-apocalyptic Mad Max film up for an Oscar in the Make-up & Hair Styling category...).

But where are two of the year's biggest films - SPECTRE and Star Wars: The Force Awakens? It's possible that the latter failed to appear in time for consideration but, still, the lack of properly good, properly popular films - action, sci-fi or broad comedy - in these awards is a frustration as annually predictable as waking up on Christmas morning and not finding the keys to a Porsche under the tree.

Even with its flaws SPECTRE was exceptionally entertaining, and the Bond franchise is continuing to show every other action series how to do it. Likewise The Force Awakens, a staggeringly good romp and one that will appeal to sci-fi obsessives and regular film-goers with equal measure - damn good fun for a couple of hours on a Saturday night, with plenty of humour and pathos.

OK, neither might have, like, 'heavy, themes; neither might have the heft of human emotion stretched to its limits by survival in bear-infested forests or transgender acceptance, but does that make them any less worthy?

For the BAFTAs not to recognise either SPECTRE or The Force Awakens is even more shocking. As an awards ceremony that bigs up its Britishness (and you don't get more cut-him-open-and-he-bleeds-pure-tweed than Stephen Fry as co-host), and yet doesn't recognise two of the biggest commercial hits of the year, which were made on British soil, mostly, and which represent the very best of British acting and production talent, is just embarrassing.

Did I mention daylight snobbery? Of course I didn't. That would be terribly naughty of me...