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Author Topic: Flying With Camera Gear  (Read 21852 times)

Mark D Segal

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« Reply #60 on: January 20, 2010, 08:59:02 am »

Quote from: michael
Mark,

As you well know anything run by a government, administered by bureaucrats, and operated by undertrained and underpaid staff is bound to be FUBAR. What else is new?  
Michael

Nothing - and at very high cost to individuals and to the economy.

Mark
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Rob C

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« Reply #61 on: January 20, 2010, 11:45:07 am »

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Nothing - and at very high cost to individuals and to the economy.

Mark




And if by govt. employees (in the UK at least), you have the reassuring knowledge that you will be paying for their very high pensions too. Who'd be a freelance! Don't answer that - I know, I know, I know!

Rob C

andyptak

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« Reply #62 on: January 20, 2010, 12:45:46 pm »

I doubt that these poor buggers get a pension. They strike me as poorly paid and poorly trained individuals. Tough airport security is here to stay, maybe it's about time to put some effort into making this a decent job for people, commensurate with their responsibilities and our expectations. I for one wouldn't mind an extra $5 added to the cost of my ticket for a professional security force that kept me secure and didn't take their job dissatisfaction out on me.
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Mark D Segal

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« Reply #63 on: January 20, 2010, 01:10:31 pm »

Andy - we - especially in Canada - are ALREADY paying for all that - and through the nose. We have amongst the highest surcharges anywhere I know of. The issue may be more a question of management and training than of salaries and benefits.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Marlyn

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« Reply #64 on: January 21, 2010, 04:58:15 pm »

In the race between Arms and Armour, historically  Arms wins every time.


Unfortunatly it seems we do live in the Nanny state where a vocal minority can make enough noise to scare people in charge (politicians) to do almost anything.  
It is a classic problem for intelligence services.  Their failures are public, their success, private.  With the way politics work they must be 'seen' to be doing something, as well as actually doing it.
A line from the british comedy, yes Minister, springs to mind.    "We must do something, this is something, therefore we must do it".


For reference, I am ex military(navy, submarines) and I do belive in having decent security at airports and other places, but what we have now is ridiculous and IMHO the terrorists have indeed won, or are at least winning.
They forced us (the world)  to change our way of life, and be grossly inconvenienced, whilst they are really not.

The case of the man with the twitter page is a good example.   Is what he did dumb in the current climate ?  of course it is.  The problem is the climate and the current rules.    The famous quote by Benjamin franklin from 1775 pretty much wraps that one up.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety"   In this case, the essential liberty is being able to speak without censor, and express thoughts on topics or make jokes without fear of the police crashing down on your house !.

Using another example, an extremley common expression of frustration is  "I'm going to kill you for that', or  a teenager (or married person for that matter !)  "I'm going to get killed when get home (this late, this drunk,etc) "   or any other variations on this theme.   Yet when this is heard in general conversation, people do not rush off and call the police about an attempted murder,  report a potential homicide, or even get arrested for making a deadly threat.     Are there exceptions, of course there are,  but not normally.


Mark.  
(Sydney, Australia)
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Robert Roaldi

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« Reply #65 on: January 22, 2010, 08:09:54 am »

Quote from: michael
Mark,

As you well know anything run by a government, administered by bureaucrats, and operated by undertrained and underpaid staff is bound to be FUBAR. What else is new?  
Michael

You mean, as opposed to bankers and insurance company CEOs?

It's traditional to make fun of civil servants, and they're often not undeserving may I add, but I worked for 25 years in the private sector before working in a federal civil service related job for the past 3-4 years, and the notion that private companies are efficient just makes me laugh out loud. Some are, of course, and I worked for a couple, but many are not, and I worked for a bunch of those too.

Jokes about the wasteful civil service usually crop up when economies take a nosedive and people in the private sector get "negatively absorbed" (overheard once in an elevator). Do you want 25% of the police services or snow plow operators to be laid off just because the economy is tanking for a few months? How come the leaders of those private corporations are never taken to task for failing to plan for the bad times, thus necessitating the private sector layoffs? Isn't long-term strategic planning the reason why their CEOs make big bucks, at least that's what I remember from the Mazlow pyramids in those pretentious talks I used to have to attend?

I am not an apologist for the civil service, far from it, just that you don't have to look far to find incompetence in the non-governmental world.
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Mark D Segal

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« Reply #66 on: January 22, 2010, 08:26:31 am »

I was a public servant too for a good many years, and I well know there are excellent people working for the public service of Canada. Including personal friends. And I also know that incompetence and inefficiency exists in the private sector, as does excellence - depends on who, where. The difference is that if we don't like what they are doing we can punish private companies by not buying their stuff, but we have no control over the government; we pay and they decide. We are at their mercy to make sensible decisions and implement them in a sensible way, and the specific instance which is the topic of this thread was not sensible either in concept or implementation. Fortunately the worst of it seems to be over - for now.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Robert Roaldi

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« Reply #67 on: January 22, 2010, 09:18:01 am »

Quote from: Mark D Segal
I was a public servant too for a good many years, and I well know there are excellent people working for the public service of Canada. Including personal friends. And I also know that incompetence and inefficiency exists in the private sector, as does excellence - depends on who, where. The difference is that if we don't like what they are doing we can punish private companies by not buying their stuff, but we have no control over the government; we pay and they decide. We are at their mercy to make sensible decisions and implement them in a sensible way, and the specific instance which is the topic of this thread was not sensible either in concept or implementation. Fortunately the worst of it seems to be over - for now.

I don't disagree. Decisions usually take longer in the civil service, but sometimes that's justified because the impact of the decisions will have effects over a generation and not just the next quarter. Sometimes the delays are not justified though, and when those hit the papers people are angry, and they should be. Then there are situations in which politicians need to score public points in a hurry because everybody is watching and the pressure is on. Politicians in a hurry and real-world public security, a bad combo. Lots of things need a long-term view, but where do we get that nowadays?

As for the current issue, it's the nightmare of our times, isn't it? We've reached the point where even an incompetent third-rater like the Dec. 25 underwear-fire bomber can cause major havoc in the world. It's understandable that people are upset. We keep being promised security if we just buy this next contraption or subject ourselves to more personal invasion, and then those are shown not to work that well. Makes it that much harder to believe the next promise. It all makes the job of the terrorists a little easier, in the sense that they don't need to do as "good" a job to achieve the same aim. But I'll be damned if I know what that aim is anymore.

I have no idea what to do about any of this. But it's beginning to look a little to me like the drug war. After decades of active "warfare" against those criminals who distribute illegal substances, there is no shortage of any of the product anywhere. In some countries, the criminal gangs challenge local governments. So then maybe the entire drug war approach is wrong. No one can claim it's working, not with a straight face. Despite having massive armies there, and despite being inhabited by people who we are told have strong conservative religious beliefs, Afghanistan is supposedly the world's main supplier of opium poppies. How can that be? And I read in Macleans this week that terrorist organization forge strong alliances with drug exporter/importers as a way to raise funds. Supposedly strongly religious-influenced terror groups rely on drugs and random murder to further their aims! There is a disconnect here. It doesn't add up.
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Mark D Segal

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« Reply #68 on: January 22, 2010, 09:23:09 am »

I see you have a blogspot for rants. Perhaps that's a good place for the more far-reaching aspects of this situation. As far as L-L is concerned, let us just be thankful for the time being that some sanity is returning to air travel for photographers.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Robert Roaldi

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« Reply #69 on: January 22, 2010, 09:33:28 am »

You're quite correct, Mark, I got caught up in it there for a moment. Sorry for the tangent.
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Philmar

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« Reply #70 on: January 22, 2010, 12:04:23 pm »

Quote from: michael
It's a judgement call. I feel that with at least two fully charged batteries in my camera bag I'm good until my lost bag arrives.

Michael
There is still the risk that it may not arrive or it may not be able to follow/find you.

Imagine, if you will. your trip to Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. If you had planned (due to time constraints) to embark on a 5 day camping trek in the national park the day you arrived in Osa, I daresay your airline would not have been able to locate you and provide you with the spare batteries you'd so desparately want.

I once arrived in India for a month long trip with no luggage. Alitalia was unable to find my luggage (it had been sitting in Tehran?!) until 2 weeks AFTER I returned home to T.O. Luckily I had my laptop, camera and lenses, spare batteries, rechargers, sensor cleaning equipment et al. in my laptop bag. For me the biggest hassle was calling the airline to let them know of my hotel (as I moved every 3 to 4 days) in the faint hope they'd locate it and send it to me.

GeraldB

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« Reply #71 on: February 26, 2010, 05:39:56 pm »

I'll be flying next week from Ottawa via Toronto to Vegas for a shoot with a whole whack of camera gear on my back. Has anyone heard if there have been any changes (improvements hopefully) at Pearson as far as the "holding area" is concerned? Is it still complete chaos there?

Looking at the carry on restrictions it seems that one can fill a fairly large camera bag with gear as long as it fits the main carry on size and weight and even put additional camera gear in a "purse" as long it fits the size restriction (10x12x5.5 in).
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