Spent most of the day at a workshop looking at the CRM Business Benefits Calculator. Interesting what local authorities know or don’t know about the ‘customers’ (or citizens, or comrades;).

This particular council didn’t know how many telephone calls they receive, nor how many letters or emails. Fairly basic starting points for CRM. And I suspect they are not alone. And that’s not a criticism of anyone, just an observation.

I was then faced with a drive from south of Manchester to just west of Newcastle. It should be obvious that it is possible to drive across the UK on unclassified roads, but it never occured to me to try this until I’d spent 2 hours on the M6 travelling about 30 miles. Bored with staring at the back of 40 tonne containers I headed off to Burnley, and then to Skipton, and passed there, it started to get really scenic.

Skipton up to Grassington and then through Conistone, Kettlewell and Starbotton up to Askrigg. This is a b road, but after Askrigg I headed off to Muker and then across Stonesdale Moor to Barras. Not a soul did I see. I should have gone over Lune Forest but headed off to Barnard Castle instead. But I did one more run over the moors between Eggleston to Blanchland , listening to Moby’s ‘Hotel’ (I growing to like this having listened to it for the last six hours. Some very big references to Bowie’s Low. This is another bit of cultural change. I bought this in a supermarket of all places).

On the last few miles a great rolling bank of white cloud came tumbling over the peak of Bolt’s Law; it might be springtime but it’s still possible to get a monsoon like sleet shower. The sky went white, the road went white, the sun went a pale white and a great damp mist covered everything, the wipers couldn’t go fast enough to clear the water to see properly through the windscreen. And then it was gone, or I was through it into the brilliant sunshine of the evening and a photographically lucid rainbow emerging from the boiling clouds. Fantastic.

Ok, travelling by b roads and unclassified roads might add an hour or two (I reckon it added about 90 minutes to the overall journey) but well worth it for the spectacular scenery and that liberating feeling of having been somewhere else for a while.

And all the while I was thinking ‘this is a long way from new technologies and e-government and things like that’. But a quick look on the internet from references to illustrate my story makes me ask the question - is there any place in Britain that doesn’t have at least several websites? And what does this do for our understanding of the place we live in? What are the implications of having blanket coverage of Britain on the internet?