Announcement

ST17 raises air ambulance charity cash

by Mark Rowe

Professional Security’s final Security TWENTY 17 event of the year, ST17 London, raised another bumper total for charity at its evening networking dinner. For more pictures of the event, visit the gallery section of the magazine website: https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/gallery/st17-london-at-heathrow/.

The raffle and donations before the heads and tails game raised £2450 for London’s Air Ambulance. A further £265 was raised by table two at the dinner at the conference-exhibition venue, the Park Inn at Heathrow, who auctioned off to the rest of the room of diners their raffle prizes.

Damian Marsh of Anixter was among the raffle prize winners, but no longer the coin-tosser for dinner and heads and tails game compere, Professional Security magazine MD Roy Cooper, as the ‘heads and tails’ is no longer purely a game of chance. No; now diners have to do some thinking. Instead of placing their hands on their heads if they think the toss of a coin is heads and on their rears if it’ll turn out tails, Roy asked questions, about the 50 best-selling music artists of all time, according to their album units sold in the United States. He started: Madonna sold 64m – did Led Zeppelin sell higher (put your hands on your heads) or lower (put hands on backside – your own obviously, not someone else’s)? Answer: Led Zeppelin sold 111m, so anyone who put their hands on their bottoms had to sit down.

A lot of people guessed wrongly that U2 sold more than Led Zeppelin; actually U2 only sold 52m. And so it went on until the only two left were Mike White, and Sarah Black. They actually both went for Queen selling more than Kenny G – wrong! So Roy asked a further question and Sarah Black was crowned winner (not that there’s an actual crown, or indeed any prize, just the satisfaction of winning the game).

Pictured after the dinner are Roy Cooper and Lucy Brooks, corporate development manager at London’s Air Ambulance.

On the day, Thursday, November 2, another goodly crowd attended the exhibition of 70-plus exhibitors, and the conference chaired by Mike White began with Tony Porter, the Surveillance Camera Commissioner, who had arrived in good time, although he’d had to wait some time to land thanks to dawn mist over the airport. He reviewed his work so far and spoke of the ‘foothills of a new revolution’ in video surveillance, pointing to body-worn video as rolled out to police forces and others; drones; and facial recognition and automatic number plate recognition, and video analytics. He repeated his viewpoint that surveillance should be done for citizens, not to them; and that as a former senior detective he’s not ‘anti-surveillance’; but he is ‘anti-bad-surveillance’.

Another return speaker to ST London, the chief executive of the Security Industry Authority (SIA), Alan Clamp, gave the latest on the regulator, including the possibility of Project Griffin training for security officers (in awareness of hostile reconnaissance) being a requirement for renewal of the SIA contract guarding badge; and a review of the SIA’s approved contractor scheme (ACS) leading to a refresh of the ten-year-old scheme.

Afterwards Roy Cooper thanked the ST17 sponsors Anixter, Hanwha Techwin, Hikvision, Seagate, CSL and Jacksons Fencing; visitors, exhibitors and everyone else who made the event possible, and for giving towards the Air Ambulance, which is a charity that delivers trauma medical care by helicopter to traffic accident victims and others in the metropolis.

The next ST event, the start of ST18, is as in previous years at Nottingham, but slightly later in the year than previously, on February 21. For the ST18 dates and to register for free to attend ST18 Nottingham visit https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/security-events-and-conferences/security-twenty-home/. And if ST London is the one in the year that you visit, the ST18 London date is Thursday, November 7, 2018.

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