ba

i have to confess that i have paid little attention to the british airways strike.
i have guffawed at the posturing of the unite union as they describe the cabin staff as being the vanguard of the workers revolution. the idea of tony woodley storming the barricades is an impressive one. both marx and lenin would be perplexed, not quite the cadre of comrades they had in mind, but hey any port in a storm.
the media has been quick to point out the links between new labour and the unite union. quite why there is a surprise that there is a link between a union and a political party that, ostensibly, promotes itself as a party for the working man (whispered with pride) is beyond me. still when it is considered to be a surprise that there are a few eton boys in the tory party it comes as no shock.
the problem with the strike action is that no matter how it is presented most people just think that the british airway cabin staff are just plane (geddit) greedy. (oh ok i stole that from the plane stupid campaign). from what i can make out the cabin staff have the best pay and conditions in the industry and they are not keen on losing them. (no shit!)
there is an ancillary problem for the cabin staff: the style of the union. pitching themselves somewhere between arthur scargill and bob crow (rail, maritime and transport union leader and oddly born not far from me, that will be my brush with fame them) full of bluster, full of rhetoric and lots of talk of battles, struggles and war. this is compounded with the lack of clarity of their argument. in essence it comes down to “british airways management are just nasty”.
so even when they talk about how the union had proposed approximately £60 million in permanent savings it all just falls on deaf ears.
but just as i get to that point when i am fed with the union telling us all how proud the cabin staff are to be british airways cabin staff, up pops an expert.
along comes the expert and pontificate about the industrial relation crisis that is british airways. one of the things they always say is that the ba cabin staff are the best in the world, they provide the best service. that the strike will hurt the ba brand and that people will go elsewhere to fly, even though the service is not as good. so, continues the expert, ba needs to make cuts, ba has been losing money; it needs to break the union. oh yes the ever-present digby jones while on the one hand praising the ba cabin staff to the mile high club had to point out that they were also guilty spanish practices and that their union was letting them down.
hold on a minute.
think about what those experts have said?
they have said that the ba cabin staff are the best. that they provide the best service. so perhaps the best deserve to be paid the best? not paid the industry standard. or does the reward culture only work if they are bankers or ceo’s of large companies? of course it does. if you happen to be a worker you shouldn’t expect to be paid good money, that would be outrageous. nope you should sweat, bow and scrape and be very happy that sir digby and his ilk smile at you while you count you meets national minimum wage pay pack.
though i am sure if they could do it then the digby’s of this world would also like a tug of the forelock with a bow and curtsey every time a worker came near them.
experts like that are a reminder why unions are important. just a shame that they don’t work on their presentation skills as much as they work on their class war rhetoric.

inflation

there was a time when i could happily sing - here i sit broken hearted, paid the penny and only farted.
couldn't be saying that today.

it was a day of wandering around the city. got to a point where my bladder was ready to pop. in a panic i adjusted my trajectory towards euston station. have not been inside the station for quite awhile. some changes have taken place. look over there a nice new ticket hall. check out that: starbucks has been turned into a pret.

at the least the toilets are still where they used to be.
i waddle as fast to them as i can.
how much?
that is daylight robbery. thirty pence to piss? outrageous. out-fucking-rageous.

no choice. have no option. i can feel the flood approach.
no change given. cunting hell, don't make it easy you thieving whores. fish around in my pockets. there is a 10 pence piece. third of the way there. three 5 pence pieces. oh you total wankers you don’t take 5ps – it is the fucking coin of the realm you sweaty nutsacks, why are you not taking it? shit! shit! shit! ah bless the back pocket there it is a magical lovely twenty pence piece.

come on! come on! get in the slot. i need to pee. no don’t reject the coin you bastarding piece of shit machine, don’t you fucking dare. one coin in, success. second coin in, success.
push on through the barricade.
where are the urinals? where are they, don’t hide them.
panic over.
there they are.
come on! come on! shit fumbled the zip. phew pecker out before the torrent starts. i am an adult.
aaaaaah. bliss. aaaaaaah bliss. aaaaaaaaaaah.
empty. shake. shake.
wash hands. leave. curse the douche bag that made the lav thirty pence. though at the same time i can’t help but think it was the best 30p i have spent today.
get back to the planned journey.
walk by the british library. berate myself for forgetting it was there. i could have pissed for free.

fuckity fuck fuck. that took the shine off the day.

when

i treated myself to a coffee in my favourite coffee shop today. some of you may think i do that every day, but i don't. it just seems i am there all the time.
so there are two young hip trendy types discussing clothes, sorry i mean couture. prada this, dior that, lagerfield the other. my how they prattled. quite how they get so excited about fashion is beyond me, though i suspect they would be less than impressed with my discussions of the relative powers of superman and thor with my pal paul.
no matter how you dress it up (oh i am so funny) (sorry that should have been i am sooooo funny) clothes are clothes, it is all schmutter when it comes right down to it.
at some point in their, loud, conversation one of them exclaimed "it was sooooo good".
when did 'so good' cease to be enough.
at what point is something good enough to warrant moving from so to sooooo? is there ever a time when it moves from being just sooooo good to being sooooo gooooood? when does it become ‘fucking excellent’?
perhaps the answer is obvious to those who shop in abercrombie & fitch, stella mccartney or vivienne westwood, but when you shop at peacocks and the best brand you can afford is george at asda then it is lost in the semiotics of the fashion world.
doesn’t look like i am destined for a job in the rag trade any time soon.

pain

the current financial crisis is one that has several people commenting on how we all have to share the pain. we have to pull together, make sacrifices and in doing so we will come through it.
the confederation of british industry is quick to say that the raising of national insurance rate is a tax on jobs, and will stop employers taking on new workers and so unemployment will not come down. they are keen to see the government provide details of how to reduce the amount that has been borrowed (in order to bail out the banks). don’t worry folks the cbi have a solution to the problem – cut public spending. this they say can be done by efficiencies such as councils combining their back office functions (they are keen to say that none of what they are suggesting will affect frontline services). such efficiencies will get rid of duplication, save money, cut the deficit.
oh and put a lot of people out of work.
yup that helps the unemployment figures.
the tories are singing from a similar hymn sheet. cut public spending, quickly, in order to reduce the deficit. oh hold on george osborne is saying that the 50p top tax rate is something they see as a temporary measure.
mmm perhaps we are not all going to share the pain. just the less well off.
i don’t even know why i am surprised, still at least with the cbi’s plan there will be frontline staff around to help those who get swept away.

papers

on the quiet my pal paul (mpp) is a bit of a genius. every so often he will throw out an idea that not only taps into the cultural zeitgeist but radically moves it on. just the other day he suggested that celebrities get together, co-ordinate their stories/antics and work to keep the election out of the news. if he had suggested the idea to max clifford, rather than me, it would have been in full flowing operation as we speak. (just think what would happen if celebs got together and declared themselves a political party? no chance of a hung parliament there).
titter ye not.
just look at the red tops, see how much news there is on the front covers, and see how much is celebrity gossip.
there i was in my local coffee shop (little surprise there) and i chanced across a copy of the daily mirror, their tagline: real news...real entertainment.
the front page was dominated with ‘news’ about the failure of mark owens marriage (i care so much), a small piece about jermain defoe signing on as a columnist (i care sooo much) finally there is a picture of nadine, a girl aloud, and the question ‘what’s up with nad?’ (i care sooooo much).
ironically inside there is a little news, less than you would expect, and some of it actually has relevance to the current political situation. a piece about a conservative being slapped down for misuse of nhs statistics, a piece about a comment from a conservative mp concerning ‘our way of life’ and a bit about how george osborne is under pressure for his job. in an election run in they are gold. though you would hardly know it from the daily mirror.
give the sun credit it doesn’t stop its attacks on new labour. reading the sun you would be forgiven for thinking that the outbreak of the first world war was due to gordon brown, that herod’s murder of first born was an outcome of gordon brown’s nhs policy.
just recently they had a story demonstrating david cameron’s ‘broken britain’ was all down to gordon brown. lisa lovatt is the example, she is their proof. she is an unmarried mum of 35 who has had 5 children with two men. the sun say she “epitomises the slide into state-funded family chaos under 13 years of labour”. her eldest is 18. lisa says when she was sacked from her job 17 years ago she gave up looking for work and concentrated on having kids.
as described lisa is prime jeremy kyle material, but let’s have a quick look at those dates.
there are many reasons for the ‘broken britain’ that cameron and company go on about. some of the problems are real, some of them are imagined. sadly for the conservatives some of the reasons for the situation were created back when they were last in power.
just using the sun’s one example you can see that ms lovatt had decided her course under the previous conservative government. her first child and beginning of her permanent unemployment both began under the tories.
the ‘feral children’ of tory nightmares are, in the main, children of those that grew up under the conservatives where the seeds of lack of respect, lack of social mores, lack of work aspirations were planted. we are reaping what was sewn then.
this isn’t to absolve new labour for not addressing the issues, it is just a reminder that the tories may promise the moon on a stick, but they don’t mean it for you and i, it is just for the already well off.

democracy2

there is no doubt that the british national party is an odious little political party. the important word here being ‘little’, in political terms the bnp are no more than an irritant. while their electoral chances are slim that isn’t to say that the bnp do not give voice to some nasty views (and it can’t be denied they also air some legitimate concerns).
in recent european and local elections the attitude toward the bnp had been to attempt to deny them a voice while demonising them. all the while allowing that the bnp is a legal political party and as such have a right to campaign, if as far from the public glare as possible.
the political class had neither the courage to openly debate with the british national party nor to outlaw them. preferring a curious halfway house position that gave the bnp an amazing amount of publicity and cast them as victims.
where the politicians feared to tread the equality and human rights commission (ehrc) was happy to yomp. at first the ehrc insisted that the bnp removed the ‘whites only’ membership policy as it contravened race relations law. even with this done robin allen, who was representing the ehrc against the bnp, said that asking potential members to support the "unity and integrity of the indigenous british" was highly suspect and ‘unquestionably racist’ as it would in ethic bar some people from joining. now i confess i am not a lawyer – but surely the clue is in the bnp’s name? it is a nationalist party and all that entails.
now the bnp are just ‘indirectly discriminatory’
given the bnp’s track record you can’t help but wonder, which ethnic minorities are banging at the doors, to be let in. though as a bnp spokesman, gwynn price rowlands, said the bnp has “several jewish members” recalling the classic ‘some of my best friends are…’ line.
it is not that i agree with the bnp, far from it. the way to ‘defeat’ them isn’t to make it impossible to hear them, but to argue against them and prove that their viewpoint is wrong, that their reasoning is flawed. there seems to be a fear of doing this because the questions of immigration, multiculturalism and diversity are now such a minefield that it appears almost impossible to have a rational debate over the issues.
the simple solution seems to be to find ways of banning the bnp. that won’t make the issues go away, it will just lead to further disenfranchisement on the part of certain parts of the electorate.
i remember years ago mick hulme (then of the revolutionary communist party) say that they were against banning the bnp because that was the thin end of the wedge. once it was done what was to stop the banning of far left political parties?
there are no moves to ban to socialist workers party, a party who talk about armed revolution and smashing the state, and i guess the main reason is that sensible heads realise that the swp and the various offshoots, such as respect, are only ever going to be minority interest parties who hold little sway over the electorate. the same is true of the bnp.
legislating the bnp out of existence or banning them is not going to change people’s views. debating the issues and winning the arguments will do.
oddly that is what democracy is all about and it is democracy that is the best tool to defeat the bnp and what it stands for.

democracy

democracy is a funny old thing. we take it for granted.
it has to be said that on any list of least liked people there would be estate agents, richard littlejohn, simon cowell and members of the british parliament.
there are various reasons why people no longer respect members of parliament the most recent, and the most damming; reason has been the expenses scandal.
this has led to a lot of hand wringing and self-flagellation on the part of the political class. this has led to suggestions that politics needs to be cheaper, and one of the ways offered to achieve this has been to cut the number of members of parliament.
unsurprisingly david cameron and the conservative party like this idea, they have even said they would reduce the numbers of mps by 10%. another example of the conservatives desire for a smaller government, and cutting is their default response to anything. (the liberal democrats have also argued that a cut in the number of members of parliament should take place.)
jack straw, the justice secretary, has described this as being undemocratic, and i agree with him. he also claims that the other reason the tories are interested in reducing mps is a cynical attempt to make sure they have more seats in parliament. i don’t know if that is the case, but they are tories so let’s just agree that jack is right.
the outrage over the expenses wasn’t because politics was expensive; it was because people who were earning a decent wage were supplementing it by claiming all kinds of things as legitimate and necessary expenses when really all they were doing was to line their own pockets. it wasn’t the cost of having members of parliament that got people annoyed it was that many of the ones we had were cheating.
if anything there should be more mps. we elect them to represent us. the fewer of them there are, the larger the number of people they have to represent. the larger the number of constituents that they have the less chance there is that they can know the issues that are important to their area.
with more mps they would have to work harder to ensure that they got re-elected as they would be relying on a much smaller number of people, who would be able to see if they were doing a good job at the local level. it would also mean that there would be easier access to your local mp because they were dealing with a smaller catchment area.
we want mps to be accountable to us the people, rather than to be accounted on by bean counters.

why

i have often wondered why eurosceptic members of the european parliament bother to go to brussels.
the most sensible reason would be that they are there to campaign on behalf of the uk, to make sure that those devious johnny foreigners do nothing that might upset blighty.
then there is the slightly less noble reason of being there to kick up a stink, to be a fly in the ointment. maybe like nigel farage the leader of united kingdom independence party’s (ukip) european parliamentarians. recently nigel gave a rabble-rousing speech, oh sorry that should have been: he gave a boorish and deliberately insulting speech.
our nige described the new president the european council herman van rompuy as having "the charisma of a damp rag" and that "nobody in europe had ever heard". unlike mr. farage who we all know very well and would recognize in an instant if we saw him in the street.
the boys at the european parliament haven’t taken kindly to this and they have punished mr. farage.
now mr. farage sees himself as a legitimate ‘voice of opposition’ to eu policies. hurrah to that man. i can’t claim to know how true this is, and i am sure mr. farage works tirelessly for the good cause of removing the united kingdom from the clutches of the eu. i can say that a quick look over his speeches shows that mr. farage hasn’t quite gotten over the cold war and he sees communists everywhere (i am sure he would ban santa for being a big old red) and when he is not complaining about the infiltration of communists he is just insulting people.
but he is aware of the fact that whatever the eu does, somewhere along the lines the british taxpayer is stumping up for it, and he doesn’t like that. another hurrah for that man.

how have johnny foreigner decided to punish the brave mr. farage?
they are fining him ten days allowance – three thousand euros. that is 300 euros a day.
according to the ukip website mr. farage has said, "free speech is an expensive business in the european parliament." it also seems that the allowance for an mep is pretty generous as well. still as mr. farage employs his wife i am sure they will be able to make ends meet.
there are 13 ukip meps, which adds up to a fair chunk of euros. money which will come from the british taxpayer. perhaps ukip could look to help cut the british contribution to european parliament by not being there?

maybe that is the other reason why eurosceptic politicians take their seats in the european parliament: it pays well.

march

new month.
year is flashing by.
still as quick as it is going it is nice to know that some things never change - that we love celebrity news and misery.
as i sat drinking coffee today - the shop had a copy of the sun on the table. the headline was all about how cheryl was scared, how she was terrified of leaving ashley.
i was left thinking whatever happened to grrl power?

still while cheryl wrings her hands - sun readers would be hard pressed to know that there was a natural disaster and chile and that cameron was making a bid to drape the flag over his shoulders in an attempt to rally old school tories to his new school (but very much just like the old school) tory army.

i guess that as fast as the rest of the year goes by - celebrity drivel will be with us all the way.

old

there i was chatting to one of the lovely young ladies who serve coffee at my local coffee place. somehow we got onto the subject of computers and the internet (no this is not going where you think it is going ems, or where you hope it is going shep).
we both agreed that the internet is a serious time killer. go on to check emails and before you know it the night has passed while you look at clips on youtube or photos on facebook.
i mention that i am not overly keen on facebook as it just serves to point out how dull my life is compared with other people's lives.
she smiled sweetly and said 'i am sure that isn't true', i didn't bother to try to persuade her that i am as dull as dishwater.
i followed this with 'to be honest i prefer myspace'.
the look on her face was priceless. i may as well have declared myself from the 1800s.

the look of pity i got.
i am so not with it.

whiners

(this is another of those blogs that you can file under – wrote it a few weeks back, did nothing with it, but now seems to have a bit of relevance again, so while i have a chance i am using it. feel free to ignore.)

no one likes a whiner.
sometimes it is just the grating tone that they affect.
other times it is the self-belief that they are being unfairly picked on, that it isn’t their fault, that life isn’t fair to them and that life owes them.

aside from members of parliament the most recent, and most vocal, whiners have been bankers (and yes i am aware that not all bankers are whiners and that a lot of them are hard working souls who do their jobs for less than stellar money, but who am i to go against the common shorthand of ‘bankers’). the old masters of the universe, as the financial whiz kids were called, have been recast as villains and they don’t like it.
long story short – the bankers fucked up and the state had to bail them out.
ouch not quite how the free market was supposed to work.
bit of a blow to the old ego. no need to worry, as bankers know how to salve the pain of a bruised and battered ego: bonuses. big bonuses.

strangely at a time when the economy is in the toilet and the state is up to its ears with debt (mostly because of having to bail out the financial institutions) the idea that a few bankers could line their pockets and live in hog heaven didn’t sit well with quite a lot of people. mostly those people were the ones who had to get on average salaries or jobs that are advertised as meets national minimum wage.
so perhaps there is an element of the politics of envy involved in the criticism of the bankers bonuses, as many of the bankers supporters have claimed.
but it may be, and perhaps here i am going out on a limb, that people could see that no matter which way you sliced and diced it you could not easily justify big bonuses in companies that were posting large losses or were being propped up by taxpayers money. while the rest of the economy was busy tightening their belts it seemed only right and proper that the people who contributed to the economic clusterfuck also had to do their bit of scrimping and saving.

nope to ask them to do that would be unjust and unfair.

so the government decided that the only way around this was to levy a windfall tax on the bonuses. up went the cry of horror. you can’t do that. what will we live on if our bonuses are taxed heavily? lots of wailing from the city.
the other thing the government has done is to raise income tax to 50% for the highest earners. why? well to get some money back into the government’s coffers to pay back some of the debt they have taken on in order to bail out the banks. crikey the gnashing of teeth and the assertion that you just can’t do that sort of thing, as it will mean the great and the good, the best of the best will leave. (personally i can’t wait to be in that 50% tax bracket.)

based on the outcry from the financial services one would have thought that their first born had been sacrificed and the rest of the family had to go around with armbands with a big £ sign on them so we could all point and go “banker”.

the result of these two measures would be catastrophic said financial commentators. the best in the industry would leave and go elsewhere, this would be the ‘best’ who got them into trouble in the first place? you can’t expect these financial heroes to work for just their basic salary, they need the bonus, they need that incentive to get out there and take risks in order to justify their bonuses. which when it works is fine, when it goes tits up isn’t fine. except when you are a banker when you expect your bonus come what may.
so lots of threats about how all these financial brains would go and work elsewhere.
do you know what? if this were a patocracy there would be a simple solution to this, the policy would be simple: “fuck off cunts”.
sadly such decisive political action is unlikely to take place just yet.

what made the bleating harder to take was that every other commentator couldn’t help but say “these are pointless moves anyway as most banks and individuals know how to avoid paying the windfall or the tax.”
what was unsaid was that the reason why there was so much complaining and whinging from the financial sector wasn’t so much that they were being asked to pay a little extra in the form of a windfall tax or additional income tax, but because they were being asked to pay it.
tax accountants around the country were rubbing their hands with glee as they began to kerching the work that would be coming their way.
bankers on the other hand just had to get out a sob story about how it was unfair that they be asked to pay because they got a bonus – didn’t we all know that they deserved it after the year they had?
it wasn’t the money that mattered – no what seemed to matter was that someone had asked/threatened to take some of their money away from them. they are entitled to it, and no one can stand in the way of it.
poor bankers.

just when it was all dying down and being forgotten the bosses of the banks pretty much all decided to pass on their bonuses for this year, but the bonuses would have to be paid out to all the important staff. it was contractual, so they had to pay. (of course banks have never changed how they do business at the drop of the hat when it comes to their customers – so i guess that is a different type of contract).

currently the royal bank of scotland is reporting a loss of £3.6 billion. pretty bad one would say. not that bad if you work for them because a number of very lucky staff are going to benefit from the £1.3 billion bonus payouts.
the usual reasons were trotted out to justify this large amount of bonus payments – it is all about rewarding and retaining the best staff they all say (they generally being employment consultants who work in the financial sector and who seem to have a vested interest in keeping remuneration packages as high as possible). naturally the definition of ‘best’ seems to be one that is very loose, as ‘best’ implies top notch and top notch doesn’t get you the disaster of the last couple of years where banks have had to go cap in hand to governments around the world to bail them out.
with reference to their lower bonus payouts than other banks stephen hester, chief executive of royal bank of scotland, explained "we've had a small experiment in this respect... some of our best-performing people have been leaving in their thousands…”

there are several points that come out of this. i find it hard to believe that any organization has thousands of best-performing staff, unless you stretch best to mean adequate and doing their job.
secondly, and ironically, royal bank of scotland performed much better than expected this year, and according to mr. hester has done it without ‘thousands of his best’ which proves that his best, wasn’t all that hot and the reserve team has done a much better job.
thirdly if thousands of people have left rbs – they are only doing it for the money, they want to get paid more and get bigger bonuses (and let’s be fair you can’t blame them for that we would all do the same). in effect there is a surplus of staff they have all buggered off from one company and gone looking for work elsewhere. in the real world too many staff fighting for the same amount of jobs means wages are pushed down. doesn’t seem to be the case in the financial world.
fourthly there can only be so many high paying, high-powered jobs – so what happens when all of those are filled? what do the bankers do then?

the crucial argument that gets made all the time when it comes to paying out the bonus is that the bankers deserve it. the economy depends on them (which is why the banks were able to take risks – they knew they would be bailed out) they are doing an important job, that only a select few can do and because there are only a few who can do it then they should reap the rewards.
and if they can’t reap the rewards then they will leave the country and go elsewhere.
need i remind you what would happen in a patocracy? they would be told to “fuck off cunts”.
why?
simply put i don’t think it is that complex a job (not saying i could do it, i can barely make sure i have enough money in my pocket to do the shopping) just that i don’t think it is not beyond the wit of man to train people to do the job. i am sure there are a lot of graduates who would jump at the chance of a decent salary, sure they might want to move on and earn more money elsewhere, but as i say in reality there is only a limited number of those type of jobs out there.

failing all of that the simplest solution is one that the banks have been using for a long time in other parts of their service – outsource their financial trading to india. lots of quality graduates out there let them do it all and let them do it cheaper.
let’s be honest it is a win win situation for the banks. one they get the job done very well and at a much better price than they were paying previously. two with the jobs outsourced they get the sympathy of the public back again.

see it is win win for them.

i should be in charge.

samaritan

every now and then i do a good deed. i know, i know it hardly puts me in the nobel peace prize category. call me parable pat.
there i am in the local newsagent. i am chewing the fat, shooting the shit, setting the world to rights. when my flow is interrupted by a request: “can you show me how to get to x?”
the street name rang a bell, but we couldn’t place it. so we consulted one of the shop’s a-zs (the newsagent being a good egg and generous chap). (a digression here: as i get older i am finding the a-z a more and more mocking publication as it cries out – you need new glasses.)
road found, journey planned, directions written down, explanation given.
it didn’t take a genius to realise that my directions were falling on deaf ears. (yet another digression here – this is something that i find happens a lot when i am explaining things, obviously my english is not as clear as i think it is.)
decision time.
bloke needs to get to a street that isn’t far off my trip to the coffee shop in brick lane so i do the good samaritan bit: “don’t worry mate i am going in that direction, follow me.” well in for a penny in for a pound as they say.
it is an easy route as well: along whitechapel high street, up vallance road, into dunbridge street and just need to turn a corner and he is where he needs to be.
so we walk, we chat. he has come over from uxbridge, visiting his aunt. never been to this part of london before. i tell him i have not been that far west for years. he tells me he came to england in the 90s. we walk down vallance road. he tells me he was robbed on the tube over from uxbridge – his mortgage payment. i am sympathetic. he tells me he was punched in the face the other night. i am still sympathetic. he tells me he hasn’t eaten all day, i begin to think i have stumbled into a misery memoir.
we are closing in on pedley street when his phone rings. he tells them where we are, then hands me the phone so i can tell them where we are. a curious broken conversation ensues – not helped by the poor reception and the poor english at the other end.
upshot is get to bethnal green over ground station.
not a problem.
down dunbridge we go, to get to bethnal green station.
now we just have to wait for the call, he can’t call, as he has no credit.
while there i check the station map. shit we have walked in the wrong direction – didn’t need to come down dunbridge, should have turned left into cheshire street.
have to go back.
can tell he is a little worried about this. try to put him at ease.
he sees a fellow asian. they tell him to go in a different direction. i insist i am leading him right. he still looks worried, but is trusting.
he tells me how no one has been this kind to him before. i shrug it off as hyperbole.
we cross valance road again.
little further on and we find the street he needs to be on.
now just find the street number.
his phone rings.
another awkward conversation as i try to get him to tell them to come to the front door so we can see them (and they can see him), it falls on deaf ears, he hands phone to me, i tell them to come to the front door so he can see where he has to go.
eventually they do.
family reunited.
job done.
he thanks me, he is grateful. we shake hands and about to go our separate ways.
he says something about seeing him tomorrow. i think not.
i wander along cheshire street safe in the knowledge that i have done a good deed. like the samaritan i have been good to my neighbour, like the lion i have done a small kindness.
the coffee tasted better than usual.

but the real moral of the story? check the map first, write better instructions and don’t offer to be a guide.

twat

just listened to the member of parliament for macclesfield, sir nicholas winterton. what a total tosser.
a glowing example of a conservative mp.
(and i never thought i would say this) hats off to stephen nolan for giving him a grilling over his expenses and his upset at being told not to travel first class on the train. sir nicholas came across as a very petty person who doesn't want to mix with the common folk.
a traditional tory - i hope that everyone who sees him on the train doffs their caps to him, he deserves it - nay he demands it.

sir nick - you are the current holder of the 'twat award'.

motivation

winter olympics are on.
curling is featured. it is a big event because in a previous winter olympics team gb won a god. big woop!
sadly it isn’t all going to plan the two gb teams have lost a game (still time for them to get through to the final though).
of course such a loss is a good excuse for the radio to drag out a motivational specialist to give us all tips on how to turn our lives around.

the, oddly, less than confident motivational guru basically said it is all about visualisation. you become what you think you are (in sociology it is called a self-fulfilling prophecy; darn i could have turned that degree into gold).
hypochondriacs are ill because they think about being ill (though it could be argued that they are excellent visualisers).
if you lose it is because you think you will lose.
winners think about winning.
so all that talk about putting a 'game face on', 'being a tiger' or 'eyes on the prize' all serve a purpose.

if you take anything away from this blog it is that you too can be a winner – if you just picture yourself there at the top, clutching gold. you are number 1, don’t just dream the dream live it.

what have i taken from this nugget of wisdom? i now know why people call me a wanker.

inflation

infaltion has gone up.
the governor of the bank of england has to write to the government to explain why it has moved beyond the agreed limits.
so the vat rate has returned to its normal level. check. it was expected. move on no worries here.
mmm price of oil has risen. one of those peaks and trough things. not too much to worry about there. well at least not in the short term - oil maybe running out on the planet - but hey let's not worry as we can be sure that all those oil companies who have been making record profit have been doing their level best to find alternatives. of course they have, haven't they?

hold on what is this?
price of cauliflower has gone up by 60% and has thus impacted on the rate of inflation.

crikey i am just pleased that they haven't included the cost of my regular coffee tipple - if they had then inflation would be in double figures.
coffee shops: the new robber barons.

pointless

we all do pointless things.
currently i am engaged in two pointless things.
the first of them is to work through the 19 days worth of music i have on my ipod and then when i have done that delete it all and start again. i seem to have a lot of laurie anderson on the ipod.

the other pointless thing i am doing is reading a book.
not that reading a book is pointless. i love reading books, i love owning books, i love looking at books, i love holding books, i love the smell of books. oh hell i just love books.
now i don't make any claim to the quality of my reading, mostly it is graphic novels and genre fiction.
there is little that compares to finding a new author, especially one that has a back catalogue.
so years ago i tried a james patterson 'alex cross' novel. i'd enjoyed the alex cross movie i had seen. patterson is incredibly popular. the two things together seemed to indicate that there was a good chance i would like the book.
it was shit.
very shit.
total shit.
so patterson was never going to make it to my list of authors to read.

fast-forward a few years.
i am in sainsbury's checking out their book section. there are times when they have a nice bargain.
there is one of the latest james patterson books. i say latest as patterson has turned his name and fame into a factory operation. several series are co-authored. it means he can have several bestsellers on the go at the time. curiosity got the better of me. so i had a look. it is part of a new series of books featuring a new york detective with ten kids, yes 10 kids: the brady bunch in nypd blue. it is written in a pacey first person style.

so what is the pointless thing i am doing?
i am reading it while it is on the sainsbury’s shelf. the co-author, michael ledwidge, has done nothing to improve the style or quality of the book. even with speed-reading it i think i am wasting too much time in sainsbury’s.

but it is one of life’s little pointless tasks.

metal

happy birthday heavy metal.
40 years ago today black sabbath released their genre defining album and the world was a better place.
40 years of air guitar.
long may it live.
woooooooooooargh.

lottery

the forthcoming euro lottery might be the biggest ever lottery pay out in the uk, and i would be lying if i didn't say i hope it is me (in it to win it).
at camelot there is an advisor who is there to help you decide what you will do with your winnings.
spend it comes to mind.
i can't believe that anyone who does the lottery - hasn't planned what they will do with their winnings.

i remember when my mum did her first lottery. she didn't win. he question was, did she keep hold of that ticket for next week? she was a tad upset to discover she had to buy a new one each week. then there would be the conversations that would start off with: "wouldn't it be nice to win £5000. i wouldn't say no to £10000... £25k would be lovely". as the conversation progressed so would the amount my mum would have liked to win. she never did with that £1 million, £5 million or even that £10 million.

i know what i would do with my winnings, but i will share that with you when i win the big one.

camelot suggest that you go on holiday to mull over your options if you have a big win.
so they are telling you to start spending straight away. good for them.

twat

it always worries me when i agree with the conservative party, though not as much as i am frightened that i will agree with the daily mail. yet here i am thinking that the conservatives have it right with their demand that john healey, labour’s housing minister, apologises for his comment that for some people having their house repossessed "can be the best option".
that he also said it on a day when repossessions hit a 14-year high, either shows callousness on the part of the minister or, worse, demonstrates an idea in government that they can ‘justify’ repossessions. neither is something you want, or expect, from a labour government.
mr. healey is right that repossessions are a fact of life and that when you buy your own place there is always a risk that you may default on the payments. of course one of the problems of the housing market has been the move from the house being a place that people live in to the house becoming part of an investment portfolio.
even so you just don’t expect a labour minister to try to spin such an event into having a silver lining. i guess that when he is in his constituency surgery the level of support and advice he gives is: “smile, it might never happen (and if it did it will probably be the best option)”.

logically it follows that if you can’t keep up with the rent it will be the best option that you are made homeless. mr. healey must be cursing his bad luck not to be alive when the workhouse was still in existence, so he could say that ‘for some the workhouse can be the best option’.
perhaps i am being flippant.

the real problem with mr. healey’s statement is that it reminds you that members of parliament are in a very privileged position, they get paid a lot, they get hefty expenses, and when they lose their seat they also get a generous golden handshake. in short they don’t have the worries of most of us.
if you want a reason why there is a disinterest in parliamentary politics then you don’t have to look much further than the attitude of members of parliament like mr. healey.
if he were to lose his seat at the next election it can only be the best option.

1200

i have done 1200 of these things.
not sure if that is a good thing or not.

oh well many many more to come.

conumdrum

now i confess i started writing this a few days ago. then it was somewhat more topical and there was even a touch of humour in it (i know i know – but i thought hey why not try something new). for some odd reason (laziness) i never finished it and now it has been voted for and carried through.

oh sorry i haven’t told you what it is i am on about.

a few days ago gordon brown made the surprising and, slightly, radical proposal that members of parliament would vote on a proposal to change the method by which we elect parliament. the idea is that we would move from the current ‘first past the post’ system to the alternative voting method (basically you rank candidates in order of preference, if someone gets more than 50% they are elected, if no one has reached that target the candidate with the lowest vote is eliminated and their second choices are distributed among the remaining candidates. this is done until the magic 50% is achieved. simple).
parliament passed the vote today, february 9th, and the plan is that the public will now get a referendum to choose between the two methods.

of course the announcement was greeted with the usual level of derision and scorn. the liberal democratic saw it as a ‘deathbed conversion’, albeit a small step in the right direction. the liberals want full proportional representation; it is their only hope of touching power. the conservatives talked about how brown was trying to fiddle the system (they don’t say how, they just say ‘fiddle’ – which is a nice word and carries the implication that gordon brown is a thief and untrustworthy). the conservatives are happy with the ‘first past the post’ system, i tend to agree with them (i know a bit of a shock there).

one of the reasons for this proposed change, according to gordon brown and jack straw, is an attempt to let the electorate know that politics and politicians are aware that their standing is pretty low and that they are prepared to change in order to win back public confidence. another reason given for this change is that it is a sop to the liberals, a shout out that tells the lib-dems that labour cares about electoral reform, so if there is a hung parliament you know who to work with.

ok, ok i can hear you muttering where is the conundrum, where is the humour, what is the point of all of this.
i first heard about this proposed change on the radio. one of the commentators on the change was from one of the, seemingly, many organisations who are concerned with/ interested in electoral reform and they said something along the lines of ‘without troubling the public for their views, ministers hand-picked the voting system they favour’.
and this is where the conundrum and an irony pop up.
the irony? a bunch of self-selecting unelected and unaccountable talking heads can pontificate about electoral methods. quite why i should favour their opinion over those who are elected is beyond me.
the conundrum? their basic criticism (aside that the preferred option isn’t one that they chose) is that a decision has been made, an option presented and the opportunity to pick offered.
i can picture them now. sitting down, discussing the various methods of voting weighing up the pros and cons and then making a decision as to which is the right one.
hold on but how do they come to that decision?
do they just say, “this is the right one”? not very democratic.
they must vote. surely?
do they have a vote on the voting system used to vote on the best voting system? after all they can’t just use ‘first past the post’ as they have told us it is not good enough for parliamentary democracy, so it can’t be good enough to vote on the method to vote for the method that we are going to use to vote for parliament. even before they vote on the vote for the voting system, there has to be a vote to make sure that the vote for the vote for the voting system is the best one to use. though that also implies that there should be a vote on the vote on the vote for the vote for the voting system.
and i haven’t even complicated this by asking if there is a voting system to make sure that all the potential voting choices have been correctly voted onto the voting choice ballot. of course once you have asked that you need to check has the right voting choice been made for the voting system to make sure all the potential voting choices have been made. which leads to the question: was there a vote on the vote… oh hell you know where i am going with this.

as much as it may annoy the self-appointed guardians of the pure flame of purity (or something equally wonderful) there is a reason we have an elected parliament – we put them there to make choices for us, but at the same time we have them there because they are accountable.
we can vote them out.
whatever voting system there is.

(you can file this under – was it worth the wait? you decide.)

cynical

a sigh. a sob. a choke. a tear.
alastair campbell has a moment on the andrew marr show.
not a great start to a sunday for mr. campbell.
or is it?
lots of coverage for mr. campbell.
which means lots of coverage for his new novel.

cynical me?
of course.

sport

sport is an amazing thing: it brings out the best and the worst in people. it unites and divides. sport can make you happy or it can leave you sad. it can have you on the edge of your seat or bore the tits off you. sport is filled with heroes and villains, winners and losers.
in short sport is a metaphor for life.

as i have gotten older my interest in sport has become more and more academic. i no longer understand the passion it brings out in people (though i will readily confess to welling up during sports movies). i now listen to the results of my favourite team and go ‘yay’ or ‘boo’ and then move on to whatever else i was doing. though i still get a little antsy when the english rugby union team takes to the field to play, and i let out a ‘coooooome on you booooys’ in hope that my voice of encouragement will help them win.

from the vantage point of the cynic it is easy to see where sport has gone wrong: money. the more popular the sport the more money there is in it (fishing doesn’t count – it is as much as a sport as train spotting is), the more money there is the bigger the amount of wankers who are involved.
you only have to look at formula 1 to see proof of that. lots of cars just going around and around and around and around. drivers claiming it is their skills that are paramount when really it is the technology that is in the car that really matters. save the environment and just have them race scalextric cars – it would be just as exciting and a lot cheaper to do.
or look at football where players can get paid enormous sums of money and then complain that they are asked to work too hard (yeah a couple of games a week and some training sessions… get real). or the fans of football who want their clubs to spend more money than is sensible but will complain the moment there is financial trouble with the club.

yet sport has shown itself to be a universal language, one that can bring us all together – such as when the world watched and gasped at the performances of usain bolt and michael phelps. we follow global sports stars such as david beckham, roger federer, tiger woods. sport has brought countries together – such as south africa, when the springboks won the rugby world cup.
yes sport has much to commend it.

sport’s change to a leading powerhouse financial brand, with global sponsorship, super rich performers, international support and reach has taken place in a world that is a lot less ordered than previously. now sport and politics don’t just mix they go hand in hand. sport is now a legitimate target for terrorists – financial and political. on the one hand you have businessmen getting involved in sport because they see it as a way to make a lot of money – they have no love for the sport as such, just what they can get from it. on the other hand you have political terrorists (or freedom fighters depending on where you stand) that will now attack sportsmen because they will create the shock and awe that the modern terrorist wants.

most recently we saw that with the africa cup of nations when the togo team bus came under attack, with the result that two of the party were killed. unsurprisingly the togo government withdrew their team from the tournament. at the time there was much sympathy directed at the togo team.

now it seems that the reward for being shot at and having members of the their delegation killed is that they are being banned from the next two africa cup of nations tournaments. seems perfectly reasonable to me, in a warped and twisted way. the confederation of african football has chosen a letter of the law type approach – something to do with state interference in sport meaning that the team has to be banned. of course what should have happened was that togo be allowed to play in the tournament because anyone with half a mind could see why they withdrew.
commonsense is something that sports administrators seem to lack.
one would have expected fifa to pop up and say something but i guess joseph s blatter was more concerned with women’s football wearing tighter tops than to point out to one of the affiliated organizations that it was making a bit of a tit of itself by a totally stupid ban.
blatter, like the rest of the world, must be hoping that the 2010 world cup in south africa is like the 1995 rugby world cup there – successful and with a feel good story for africa.

that is the other thing about sport – it encourages you to live in hope.

overheard

there i was in my favourite coffee shop.
i was supping a nice strong latte and reading. mainly minding my own business. if there is a problem with the coffee shop it is a place where lots of trendy people go to hang out and let everyone else know that they are hip and trendy. it is not enough to be there showing off, you have to be loud so people can hear you being hip and trendy.

so i am sipping coffee.

couple of tables down from me a couple are chatting. well he is doing the talking she is just providing the audience as he does his one man show.
there were a few things that made me rankle (and in my defense i wasn't earwigging the conversation, just that the volume of it was such that you couldn't ignore it) with my usual disdain of youth who believe that the world owes them a shot at fame just because they think they are good.
but he dropped a gem.
"what is it with lady gaga? i don't get it. who likes her? she can't sing, she can't dance, she wears big pants. sure she writes her own songs, but they are shit!"

can't say i disagree with him.

iwant

iwant (see what idid there - and there) the apple ipad.
iknow (see doing it again) that in saying that iam (call it a style thing) marking myself out as an apple junkie, but idon't (icould be in marketing) care.
call me shallow, but the ipad looks very very cool.
iwant.

(and at some point apple will make a piece of tech and they will just call it the iwant and it won't have to do anything more than be sexy because what it does will be in the title - it's sole purpose will be to an object of deisre...)

(also it can't be long before apple launch a line of perfumes - the ismell line. mmm hold that don't sound right, maybe the ismellsweet line. there will be the clothing range - the idress. crikey steve jobs give me a job i have extended the brand into totally new ranges.)

(mmm perhaps i should do this for a living - i could be ipat.)

playing

did you know that there was a time when there was no violent crime, no rapes, no binge drinking, no robbery, no riots, no single parents or no divorce? a time when all the police did was rescue kittens from trees and tell people the time (even if they didn’t want to know) and the workers doffed their caps to their betters.
i know i know it is hard to believe that such a time ever existed, but it did.
i know it did because david cameron has told me so. this golden age occurred under the conservative government of margaret thatcher.

moving on from his ‘broken britain’ idea cameron now talks about ‘social recession’ where all the ills of british society are laid at the feet of gordon brown.
the solution to this new version of ‘broken britain’ seems to be as simple as the cause: tax breaks for married couples. a neat packaging of several key favourite themes of the tories: tax cutting, traditional family life, crime and morality. (so much for the new conservatives.)

now i may be cynical but the ‘social recession’ catch phrase (not as good as ‘i love it when a plan comes together’) saw the light of day at the same time the sentences were being passed on the two boys involved in the edlington torture case. cameron was quick to use this case for political gain and to blame the labour government for the decline of social order.
while lip service was paid to the extreme rarity of such cases the implication was clear: under labour the country is going to hell in a handcart. to save the country we need the fresh, morally correct conservative party (led by david (i may or may not have been involved with drugs at college) cameron) to lead us to the faintly remembered time when the only person who came into your house unannounced was the tooth fairy.

in some ways cameron’s morality attack is an echo of gordon brown’s ‘toffs’ strategy. the difference being that when cameron is attacking binge drinking or divorce we all know he doesn’t mean us – he means those poor people over there. when the right wing press go on about how the young are easily influenced by images of sex and violence they don’t mean the children of their readers – they mean those poor people over there.
after all when prince harry and his set get pissed it is all a jolly jape. while the antics of amy winehouse or peaches geldof may cause some newspapers to complain about their conduct they also know that they sell their papers, and of course there is no chance that their responsible reporting of these people will influence anyone.

the idea of broken britain that is in a social recession is a strong one, but it is not an honest one. it is just a crude way for cameron to tell his core support that he really is one of them and that when he gets into power it will be conservative business as normal.

back

been ignoring this for too long.
this is about to change (well that is the plan).
new dawn and all that sort of thing.

overheard

there i am in my favourite coffee shop.
it is christmas day.
most of the punters there are just happy to have somewhere to escape from the christmas festivities.
italian woman serving up the lovely hits of strong coffee.
young middle-class couple, media types, recently moved into the area. they are pleased to have found the coffee shop as they used to drink at the other one in brick lane. they remember the woman from years ago. they chat a little.
they leave.
bloke comes back.
bloke: do you have any spare cloves?
woman: yes i have spare clothes.
b: can i have some?
w: they won’t be your size..
b: (laughter) no cloves, i want to make mulled wine.
w: (laughter) ooh no, we don’t have any cloves.
b: that is a shame, i have the oranges and cinnamon, just don’t have the cloves.
w: cinnamon is good, we have some of that.
b: no i am fine for cinnamon, it is the cloves we don’t have. i suppose i could make it without the cloves. do you think that would be ok? just oranges and cinnamon?
w: sounds good. should be fine.
(all seems to be resolved, both seem pleased with the outcome.)
b: how do you make mulled wine?

did he find out how to make mulled wine? i have no idea?
are cloves essential? who knows?
it did make me smile.

010110

happy binary day.

2010

welcome to the new year.
the new new.
a time of changes.
a time of choices.
a time of challenges.

a little like michael owen i am approaching 2010 with hope (though i have more chance of playing for england than he does).

the new decade is filled with possibilities. opportunities. all that is needed is the will, the desire, the dedication and the drive to go for it, to push through the pain barrier, to go the extra mile. blah blah.

who the fuck am i kidding. it will be the same as last year but with a big chance that the tories will be in power.

the tories in power - lawks that is a depressing thought with which to start the new year.

2009

end of the year.
cusp.
between here and there. then and now. before and after. past and present. this and that. tom and jerry. bill and ben. yadda yadda.
a time of reflection.
a time of resolution.
a time of oh fuck that.

like a member of parliament caught in the expenses scandal i am happy to see the back of 2009.
a truly shit year.

time to move on.
time to move up.

out with the old. in with the new.

happy new year one and all.

x-mas

so that was christmas?
hope it was good for you.

bring on the new year.

gutted

some facts.
i like books.
i like stephen king.
'under the dome' 900 pages of new stephen king goodness.
i am broke.
borders are broke.
borders are liquidating stock like there is no tomorrow (for borders there isn't, they ceased to exist today).
90% off.
i am broke.
still go in.
lots of people.
lots of empty shelves.
stacks of books. no rhyme. no reason. just piles.
nothing of interest.
hold on i recognise that book and someone has it in their pile of books.
bloke with the copy of 'under the dome' is less than helpful.
hope he chokes when he is reading it.
mooch around for a bit more.
no sign of another copy of it.
gutted.

i still like books.
i still like stephen king.
i don't have a copy of 'under the dome'.
i am still broke.

christmas

although it started earlier this year, it has taken longer for me to get into grinch mode.
a lot of that is that i am avoiding the retail experience and it seems that christmas doesn't exist beyond shops.
time for me to dig out the dr. seuss books again - just don't expect me to be smiling come christmas.

bah humbug.

overheard

there i was at the, rather excellent, sophie calle exhibition at the whitechapel gallery when i overheard the following.
"because the paper shakes it is really intense."

made me smile.

moan

it has been a remarkably mild start to winter. warm and bright. most people have enjoyed pleasant temperature, the winter clothes left in the wardrobe for a few more weeks, the heating left off (ah the savings, the savings), the bright days filling our hearts with extra joy.
well that is until you get on a 15 or 25 bus where the heating is cranked up as high as it will go. i suppose it is churlish of me to complain afterall saunas are not cheap so it is nice london transport to provide me one for my journey into the west end (perhaps it is part of the price increase strategy - your journey will cost you more, but there will be additional benefits. depending on the bus you catch it might be a sauna, there might be a gym,a swimming pool, a petting zoo just something extra to help the journey go by.
the problem with the sauna approach in mild climes is you end up at the end of your journey somewhat baked, somewhat red in the face and with big sweat stains on your shirt.
i would put up with that if the buses ran smoothly, but they never do. there is always a 'schedule delay' as they even out the times between buses (always seems to happen to the one i am on, never the one behind me). or they decide to stop a few stops too soon, because the driver is coming to his lunch break, oddly the driver never admits to this, not does he remind passengers that they can get a credit to catch the next bus in order to complete their journey.
i like the bus. there is something exciting about driving through the city and being able to look at the world around you, seeing the city from different angles. however i would like to do it in buses that were not trying to cook me - and if they are trying to bake me then i wish they would get me to my destination in a timely fashion.

boris - before you put the prices up make sure you have the service working smoothly.
not sure why i even moan at boris - it is not like he cares, if he did he wouldn't be putting the prices up.

smile

it is a monday morning. always a good time for a smile. so here is my little attempt to brighten the day for you.
there i was scanning a copy of marie claire (oh i am so metrosexual) and there was a little bit about wives of plastic surgeons. a couple of the wives did look like dolls who had been pimped out to the max (perhaps there is a tv show in that, the only problem is the title 'pimp my ride' has been taken and 'whore my wife' is just wrong).
anyway one of the wives was married to the president of one of the professional bodies that deal with plastic surgery. i give you the 'british association of aesthetic surgeons'.
baaps.
baaps.
you couldn't make it up.
baaps.
oh i have to wipe away a tear. i tell you material like this and i am going to be getting a bbc3 series pretty soon.

stuff

things that i have learnt this week.

1] video art is to be endured and not enjoyed.
2] that sainsbury’s move their food around not to get me to buy different items (oh look i have never seen spices before – let me get a full rack of them) but to annoy and infuriate me. it works.
3] that i now have even more people to blame that i am overweight. at this rate my porkiness will soon be totally guilt free. the world is full of enablers.
4] that celebrity biographies are so badly written it is not true. you can’t blame them for doing them, the money is good, but you would at least expect them to be vaguely competent rather than shit. katie price is exempted from this, as she is a literary giant.
5] that downloading a film you have wanted to see for years is not always the great triumph you thought it would be, especially if the reason you wanted to see the film in the first place was based on a cinema trailer you saw in the 70s. that said i am sure that when i download the doc savage movie it will still be as great as i remember it.
6] modern sculpture is rarely more than stuff thrown on the floor or against the wall. i defy anyone not to be able to create a modern sculpture in an evening while watching tv. i am pretty sure the results will have chin strokers around the world going: “yes it speaks to me”.
7] halloween has some great tat to accompany it and if i had lots of money i would buy loads of glow in the dark junk. that said if i hear another student ask, “what are you doing for halloween” i might be guilty of committing acts of violence.
8] tracey emin is stalking me. evidence? i visit the hayward gallery and tracey is there. i go to the zoo art fair and tracey is there. the fact that both exhibitions were months apart has nothing to do with it. up until her recent outburst over the 50% tax all tracey had to do was ask me if i wanted a coffee (i know i know it makes me sound cheap) but not now. i am just not interested tracey, do you hear me. not interested.
9] that if you piss in the street you have to be careful where you stand: especially if your trainer has a hole in the sole.
10] that 100 gigs a month isn’t enough, or perhaps i am just too greedy.
11] that squeezing a zit on the end of your nose just ends in disaster.
12] that winter is my favourite time of year because more girls are wearing boots. yes i know that makes me sound very shallow.
13] that i am very shallow.

(un)sympathetic

(this is a long rambling semi-coherent piece of political bilge - feel free to skip it)


well it is the day after question time and the world has not changed.
it is hard to imagine the circumstances in which you could feel much sympathy for nick griffin and the british national party, but the last week or so has come close.
why?
well let me tell you, i do warn you though it will be a long and rambling road that probably takes a diversion here and there, a rest stop or two and more than likely a few dead ends.

let me start by saying the obvious (but regardless of how obvious it is i am following the convention of the last few days here) i have little truck with the british national party they are a bunch of odious people who have a warped view of the world (but then i think that of the conservative party as well). (it got to the point where i was expecting people to say “none of my best friends are bnp”.)

back during the euro elections over 900,000 people voted for two bnp members to join the european parliament. leading up to those elections there was a lot of hand wringing and wailing on the part of the major parties as a lot of politicians had been caught with their hands in the expense tin. no one trusted parliamentarians. the media joined in with talk of protest votes. this quickly became scare mongering that the british national party would benefit from all of this and how bad that would be.
in fact it would not just be bad it would be dangerous.
yet the more politicians and the media went on about this ‘danger’ from the bnp, the more they told the electorate not to vote for the bnp. the more they argued that the bnp should not be given a chance to be heard. the more likely it was that they were going to have a strong vote.
it is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
during those elections i could imagine nick griffin and his cohorts just rubbing themselves in glee at all the free publicity they were getting. to make matters worse it appeared as if they were being victimised for their beliefs. the bnp could have planned it better if they had tried.
election held. ballots counted. close to a million votes for the british national with the result that they get to send two of their party to the european parliament.
it is generally accepted that a large bulk of those votes were a protest vote aimed at slapping the main parties in the face and to punish them not only for the expense scandal but for not addressing some of the key issues of the day.
that said i think there was another reason for the strength of the bnp vote – people didn’t want to be told who not to vote for, when the people telling them not to vote gave no reason why they should stick with the main parties.

the result was concrete proof of the legitimacy that the press and political parties had given the bnp in the run up to the elections. if they had spent their time saying ‘oh woe are us for being bad boys, punish us by voting for the greens’ the result might have been different.
now sensible people would have learnt from that.
politicians it appears are not sensible people.

with their two european seats the bnp could expect to make an appearance on the bbc’s ‘question time’ show. now it is not like representatives of the bnp have not appeared on the nation’s screens before. nor is it unusual to hear their voices on national radio. often when they are allowed to speak they shoot themselves in the foot (and the ankle, the kneecap and at least one gut shot as well). given the chance to talk more often than not the bnp hoist themselves on their own petard. so much so that you could be blamed for thinking that they were a comedy act satirising far right politics.
that my friends is one of the strengths of democracy, it is the beauty of freedom of speech: not only can you persuade people of your veracity but you can show yourself up. the bnp are very good at showing themselves up when they are given the chance.

the bbc make the right decision to allow nick griffin his hour of glory by appearing on ‘question time’. cue the outraged politicians. the protestations of how evil the bnp are, how no one should share a platform with them, how this just gives them legitimacy they do not deserve (even though they got close on a million votes).

we have been here before.

in the main i have faith in our elected politicians. i know that there are fine and decent people in the labour party, the conservative party and the liberal democrats. i also have faith in them to be able to sit down at the same table as anyone from the bnp and to be able to win the argument.
see that is how it should be in a democracy – hear the opposing views and show where there are wrong. simple really. they do it all the time with each other. yet when it comes to the bnp they seem a little scared.

the bbc, to their credit, stick to their guns.. it doesn’t matter that people such as peter hain, diane abbott and andy slaughter were vociferous in their condemnation of the bbc for allowing the bnp a platform.
all three are members of the government yet they don’t want to instruct the bbc to ban the bnp because to do so would be create martyrs of the bnp (though quite how the bbc banning them from ‘question time’ would not create martyrs of them is never explained). in fact all of them are keen for the bnp to have their say, but not on question time. so it is sort of freedom of speech and it is sort of democracy – just not the freedom of speech and democracy that would be extended to the green party.
nor did the three politicians want to see the bnp be made an illegal party (skipping over the current controversy over their membership rules – which didn’t seem to bother people while they were a loony fringe party).
the politicians didn’t want to make the hard decision – they wanted to pontificate about it rather than do anything about it – they wanted the bbc to become the guardian of the democratic process. to their credit the bbc did. nick griffin was allowed on to question time.

outside broadcasting house (where ‘question time’ is recorded) there was a mass demonstration of people who didn’t want to let nick griffin have his say. the irony of using bullyboy tactics seemed to be lost on them. again no calls for the banning of the bnp, just their ability to have their views heard.
even ken livingston was to be heard saying how terrible it was that nick griffin was to be allowed to speak. this would be the same ken that had meetings with the ira who were involved in a bombing campaign on mainland britain.

the one main lesson to come out of the ‘question time’ incident was how little we respect democracy and freedom of speech. it seems we only believe in it when it agrees with us.
the problem is that for democracy to be strong and vibrant, for it to remain valid it has to be able to deal with dissenting voices and views. a strong democracy should have no problems with the less than pleasant views of the few. as bonnie greer said on ‘question time’ democracy is the least worst system we have come up with and it needs to be defended. you don’t defend it by banning and curtailing all the things you don’t like.

before the programme took place there were a number of bbc radio talk shows. on several occasions where there was a member of the bnp on the panel – the other panellists were at pains to tell everyone how uncomfortable they were to be seated next to, near, in the same room, building, street, city, county, country as the bnp member and that they would go home and would use a scrubbing brush on themselves before they would ever feel clean again. each one seemed to up the ante for how debased they felt, i was expecting them to commit hara-kiri to regain their honour. (i am exaggerating here, but not by much.)
several times people made the rather spurious argument that the bbc wouldn’t give this sort of time to a party of paedophiles, which somewhat ignored the issue of legality and that we would be a pretty fucked up country if close on a million people voted for such a party.
several times it was mentioned that david copeland, the london nail bomber of 1999, had been a member of the bnp and therefore you could not have talks with bnp. copeland left the bnp because he was unhappy with their move to being more democratic. by the same argument you could tarnish all muslims in britain because of the july 2005 bombings.
a few even suggested that they shouldn’t be on there because they were never going to get elected as the government – crikey nick clegg there goes your spot on ‘question time’.
most of the people being interviewed followed the line of politicians such as peter hain and andy slaughter: that the bnp should not be given the oxygen of publicity that this event was giving them. missing the point that the only people whipping up the publicity were the protesters themselves. in fact the protesters were doing the work of the bnp publicity department.

what the protesters had ensured was that more people than ever were going to tune into ‘question time’ and were going to hear nick griffin and the bnp.
job not quite so well done on the part of the protesters.
so much energy was put into demonising the bnp yet all it achieved was to cast nick griffin in the role of the underdog and provide him with a much larger audience than he could ever hope for.

the show went ahead. if it were a prison movie nick griffin was gang shanked in the showers. the other panellists picked on him, bullied him and hectored him. he was clearly shaken and intimidated by it all. so much so he is now complaining that the format of the programme had been changed so that everyone could gang up on him.
well tough shit nick what did you expect them to do? welcome you with open arms and tickle your tummy? was never going to happen and he should have known it.
yet the funny is it seems to have backfired and instead of seeing nick griffin for the odious chubby man that he is what many saw was someone being victimised.
so when someone like sayeeda warsi (who, along with bonnie greer, was the star of the show) in the follow up interviews went on about how scared griffin appeared you wanted to shout ‘well he was facing a very hostile panel and audience, not to mention a potential violent mob who wouldn’t be scared?’

if there was a problem with the programme it was that it concentrated solely on nick griffin and the bnp, not touching on issues such as the postal strike, the recession, bankers bonuses, more troops to afghanistan and other issues of the day. given the run up to the event it was probably inevitable that it would have been this way. yet a golden opportunity was missed to quiz the british national party on what its’ policies are on a whole range of subjects and to show that a vote for the bnp is effectively a wasted vote.
ironically this also let off the main parties – for once they were not under fire, they could sit back and bask in the glow of nick griffin being beaten down by the sheer weight of disapproval that surrounded him.

why it would have been important for the parties to engage in a proper political debate around the issues that affect the country right now is that the bnp have secured a hefty chunk of votes. not all of these votes are from racists a large chunk of them are from people who feel like the political process has ignored them.
there are issues that worry people. there are concerns and confusion about the effect that the european parliament has on daily life, some are worried about immigration, where it is not a question of race or colour but a question of numbers, some are worried about the breakdown in values and traditions, others are worried about the loss of identity. they are worried about the recession, they are worried about violence in the streets, concerned about the war in afghanistan, the encroachment of the state on daily life, the power of corporations and much more.

for the time being the bnp can pick up support for as long as the major parties fail to address these questions in a way that is accessible to the general public.
it is easy to tar the bnp with a racist tag – but is more complex than that the bnp have received votes from the ethnic community (which in and of itself is pretty jaw dropping) and it is pretty easy to see this in simple black and white (and brown) terms, but racism isn’t one way: there are indians out there who do not like pakistanis while they are not keen on the west indians

‘question time’ wasn’t perfect, an opportunity to demolish the policies of the bnp was missed. it did highlight, if we needed it, that at its core the british national party and nick griffin are fundamentally nasty pieces of work. it also served as a reminder to the main political parties that they have to engage, debate with and win the arguments that provide the bnp with its support. this isn’t beyond the main parties, in fact it is the bread and butter of what labour, conservative and liberal democrats are about. they can’t hide, ignore or ban parties such as the bnp they have to show the potential supports of the british national party that a vote for the bnp is wrong on several levels that it is ineffective because it will not bring about meaningful change and that is wrong because it is divisive because a vote for the bnp can lead to pointless hate and fear.
for that stark reminder of what democracy is all about and the responsibility that is in the hands of the leaders of the three main political parties the decision of the bbc was vindicated.

admission

confession is good for the soul, or so they say. there are times though that the thing you want to admit to is so heinous that you can’t find the words. the fear of how your revelation will be received chokes the words in your throat, the confession dying before it passes your lips. you pull back, you retreat, you back out. you go all yellow. returning to the secret world of your own personal shame.
now it is too late, now i just have to do it. time to nut up, gird my loins and spill the beans.
before i go on i have to prepare the ground a little. the reason for my revelation isn’t that i am scared that my manlove will be outed. after all i have worn certain bromances on my sleeve. everyone knows that i am bruce willis’ bitch, that he could walk me up a dirty alley and do the nasty with me and i would still respect him in the morning. that thanks to ‘field of dreams’ kevin costner could get to first base on a date.
so it is not the manlove bromance that scares me.
what i am going to confess is a little more serious than that. like my staunch defence of the comic work of rob liefeld i expect what i am about to say is will shock, startle and dismay. it will leave some questioning my sanity. it may even have some questioning their relationship with me.
but the time has come. i can’t deny it any longer. i can’t hold it back. i have to tell everyone. there is no easy way to say it, so i will just blurt it out (not quite singing it from the highest hill, nor it soaring like the hawk or be as deep as a well - bonus points for the reference).
i like danny dyer.
there done.
said it.
off my chest.
i like danny dyer.
it doesn’t matter that he isn’t a great actor, or even a very good actor. it doesn’t matter that his choice of films is generally pants. it doesn’t matter that he has the emotional range of demi moore. it doesn’t matter that he seems to have two characters (cheeky chappy or down at heel).
it doesn’t matter that he gets the documentary gigs that ross kemp turns down. it doesn’t matter that when he is presenting the latest series of the ‘world’s most dangerous transvestites strictly dance in maximum security prisons’ his eyes are screaming “i am better than this, let me make a movie with vinnie jones, i am that good…”
i just can’t help it . danny dyer has won me over.
so ladies and gentlemen stand tall, raise a glass to danny dyer: my new hero.

news

the whitehouse was quick to deny rumours that president obama was to join boyzone. obama is reported to be both surprised and humbled to have been offered the boyzone position.
fox news is investigating the allegation that the reason why obama has refused the offer is becuase he is expecting to be announced as the new co-lead singer in u2.
the jackson family are not commenting on the rumour that they were in process of approaching barack obama with an offer for him to tour the complete michael jackson back catalogue.

nobama

now i like barack obama as much as the next man (while some of the thoughts i have about michelle obama are the things of restraining orders, but she is yummy). yet i can’t help but think that the reason for awarding him the nobel peace prize so early in his presidential career is because he is not george w. bush.
i am sure that president obama will achieve much in office, in many ways the fate of the future is in his hands, as yet though we are living in hope of progress rather than praising actual progress.
it is not like the nobel awarders had to give a prize out, there have been several years when they have not. i suppose i should be thankful: at least it wasn’t bono.

breaking news:
obama has been awarded the 2010 slam-dunk prize in the nba all-star game.
barack obama sweeps the boards in the 2010 oscar awards; his only failures were in the foreign language sections (well no one cares about those) and ‘best song in a film’.
the turner prize committee have announced that they will cease the prize as they feel that president obama should hold the prize in perpetuity for all the artworks he might create.
the recently awarded man-booker prize has been recalled and will now be given to obama. hilary mantel was not available for comment.
simon cowell has spoken with the president about a new tv show “obama has got talent”, meanwhile obama has become the first person to win both ‘strictly come dancing’ and ‘dancing with the stars’ in the same year - and all for the dances he performed on inauguration night. heather mills was said to be miffed that no one asked for her comments.
the international olympic committee have decided that the 2020 olympics will be given to obama, it is believed all the events can be done in his back garden.

meanwhile pat has begun his campaign for the 2010 nobel peace prize by thinking nice thoughts, writing letters to people asking them to smile more and promising ponies to everyone.


(oh ok the pony bit was a lie, but it will be part of the forthcoming conservative party election manifesto as part of the ponies for policies initiative.)

hope

it is amazing what a few good speeches and a few belligerent performances will do.
first there was the clarion call from john prescott that the party should stop complaining and start campaigning. it seems very obvious to most of us that the moaning minnies of charles clarke (a man who would cut his nose of to spite gordon brown) et al are providing valuable ammunition to the conservative party while wasting time and energy that could be used for campaigning. (perhaps if clarke had said he would stand as a potential leadership candidate rather than his ‘oh gordon pretend you are sick’ speech. next he will be telling alistair darling to tell everyone the dog ate his budget).
prescott is right: clarke is wrong. enough said.
then jack straw said he was up for debating with the bnp. about time someone said they would do it. too often politicians have hidden behind the ‘do not want to give them credence’ argument. it isn’t an argument that really holds much water. all it does if give the bnp plenty of publicity and allows them free reign to air their ideas without direct challenge. what most politicians are not saying is that they do not want to be seen to lose an argument with a member of the bnp. so credit to jack, it also shows the start of a bit of belligerence and fight on behalf of the labour party.
a good speech by peter mandelson that entertained the crowd.
then a decent speech from gordon brown that set out reasons why we should be thankful that we have had a labour government, reminded us what a conservative government offers (not much) and gave a glimpse of what the future will hold if labour are re-elected.
when his speech had finished there was the brief glimmer of hope, a feeling of belief that actually labour could do it. some how some way they were going to pull the election out of the hat and we would be dancing in the streets celebrating victory.
i liked that feeling, much better than the creeping acceptance that the tories were going to win and that what the future offered was going to be a pretty grim time.

i know i am being foolish. i know that i am not thinking rationally and that really a belief that labour can win is a little like expecting the cleaning pixies to tidy my flat. yet it is better to grasp that sliver of joy than it is to contemplate cameron and co in charge.

bankers

i think it is significant that banker rhymes with wanker.
that says a lot.

i am fed up with them saying that they will leave if they are taxed more - let them fuck off.
i am fed up with them being so in your face about how important they are but oh so coy when it comes to admitting to the size of their bonus they get all coy and shy about it. poor little lambs.
frankly given the amount of money the state has had to put into the financial system to keep it afloat all those bonused up financiers should be touring the country and kissing our arses and thanking us.

(oh someone on the radio has just compared the political 'attacks' on the bankers are similar to the attacks on jews in the 30s. you just have to admire people.)

(oh and while on the subject of wankers: a cbi mouthpiece was on the radio going on about the 'back office of public services'. he was going on about just how private industry should work with government in order to facilitate the downsizing of public services by cutting, but because of the skills of the private sector this could be done without affecting the frontline services because they would use their talents on the 'back office'. excuse me while i hold my breath on that because the private sector has covered itself with glory after all lets look at the financial services. ooops.
i am guessing that the cbi are not talking about asking the government to stop hiring overpriced private consultants. or perhaps the cbi will insist that private companies who bid for very lucrative public contracts actually deliver what they promise.
no didn't think so.)

averted

the four horsemen were stopped in their stables.
the line in the sand was not crossed.
the world did not end.

the jolly japers at my local cinema did actually show the new bruce willis movie.
i saw it.
i was happy.
the world goes on.

(and if i remember rightly ems you sobbed at the end of armageddon...)

disaster

i know the world is not fair.
there is evil in the world: there is corruption, war, famine, destruction. looked at in that way the world is not a nice place.

in my own corner of this great land life good be better, but we play the cards we are dealt (gotta know when to hold them, gotta know when to fold 'em, shit i am even thinking like kenny rogers now).

well it was until i checked the cinema listing for next week. there were the usual holdovers from the previous week. a new listing for 'fame' (and yes i will admit i was a fan of the tv series, and i will admit that i am looking forward to the new movie - because fame costs and here is where i start watching.
but hold on. hold on. something is missing. can't be. it is not there. no listing for the new bruce willis movie! what is going on? where is it. where is 'surrogates'. it is an sf action movie. so that makes it a high priority to see. it is a bruce movie and that makes it unmissable. but no listing. this is wrong.
this is the end of the world.
some of us are born to win, some us are born to lose, some of us are born to sing the blues (oh hell now i am channeling journey...)

and to cap it all chas and dave have ceased to be a double act.
rabbit and sideboards.

the world is an evil place my friend.
an evil place.

hooked

i am not a fan of reality tv. in all the years that such shows have been clogging up the airways i have probably watched about 10 minutes of it. i am not being intellectually snobby here, they just never appealed.

earlier on in the year antony gormley made public his 'fourth plinth' proposal. i nearly applied. i didn't and the world breathed a sigh of relief.
the plinthers (as they are known) started their period in trafalgar square. a few times i have been in the area and it was all so dull.
what on paper seemed to be a great idea turns out not to really work in practice.
or so i thought.
now i have discovered it on the web and it is engrossing fascinating viewing.
it is not always very good - for some reason they always choose terrible camera angles, which makes me think it is done automatically and so often misses out on the sign that the plinther is holding up.
that said i am hooked on it.

right now it is an unemployed bloke looking for a job having to cope with the 3am piling out of clubs youth heckling him.

one day all tv will be like this. you have been warned.

go see the future of entertainment here http://www.oneandother.co.uk/

b16

pope benedict gets a lot of bad press, a lot of it his own doing. still having survived some time in the hitler youth i doubt very much that a bit of media moaning is going to worry him too much.
he has irked many by his hard line approach to christian doctrine. it might be that he has alienated many who share his faith but not his fundamentalism. and he hasn’t made many friends with the other faiths.
i can forgive him all that. no i can, after all he is infallible and he is the vicar of god.

but fucking hell there comes a time when all good christians have to stand up and say no more. no more. and this is it. the time is now. the time has come.
for some inexplicable reason pope benedict has invited bono to the sistine chapel. true bono is only one of 500 other performers attending the little get together but we all know that we will be inundated with pictures of the oik gurning as he shakes the pope’s hand while declaring peace has broken out.

now i know what you are thinking. no i do. don’t have to be a derren or a uri to know. you are wondering just what it is i have against bono. bono who is a saint among men. for a start there is his smug attitude, then there is his sanctimonious attitude, do i have to mention the sunglasses? i’ll skip over the tax avoidance schemes of the band (but hey we all care about poverty, though we want to make sure we pay as little tax as is possible).
if push came to shove then i would have to say that my dislike of bono stems from his apparent lack of a sense of humour as evidenced by the negativland incident. sadly my ire has recently been popped on this as i have read that u2 and bono were not the instigators of the legal action against negativland.
but it is so hard to let that dislike go.
i am like a junkie and i can’t quite kick the bono annoyance.

so i am fallible.
it is why i will never be pope.
and why i will never meet bono.

thus proving there is a god.

want

this is the sort of thing that brings out the total geek in me.




i shall have to start saving my pennies.

(available from all good comic shops)

obama

listening to the obama health care speech.
as usual he is giving a good speech.
the odd thing is he is listened to and cheered throughout the speech, even though a number of people there are not keen on the proposal. when i say not keen i mean vehemently opposed to it. yet he still gets cheered and clapped.
the respect that is invested in the office of the president is immense.

i bet gordon brown and previous prime ministers would give their pinkies for that sort of respect.

stationery

i am still engaged in the continuing battle to clear my flat (where is hercules when you need him, though i think xena would be more fun)doesn't seem to matter just how much i get rid of there is still a lot left.
one thing i keep finding is stationery. note books, exercise books, reporters books, loose leaf pads; lined, squared, plain; hardcover, softcover, spiral bound, stapled the list goes on.
some have writing in. notes from meetings, notes about exhibitions, snippets of stories, lines of poetry (oh yeah dear reader i have been known to knock out a verse or two. just be thankful i have never made you suffer them), lists of things to buy, things to do, ideas for blogs yadda yadds.
but worse still are the pages and pages of blank virgin paper. in fact enough blank space for more notes, snippets, lines, lists and ideas.

such a treat.

bonus

the g20 have decided that there should be action on bonuses in the financial sector.
you can hear the cheers around the world. there is little sympathy for the fallen masters of the universe.
a financial service guy is wheeled out on to the news, he is there to tut tut the news. much wringing of hands, much doom and gloom for him.
his major argument is: if you want the best staff you have to pay the best.

well given that a large chunk of the financial sector has had to go cap in hand to governments around the world that pretty much tells me that for all the money they have been shelling out to 'top performers' all in all they have managed to get some pretty shitty staff in.
they all seem to be on a par with me when it comes to assessing risk and benefit and ability to maximise gain.
mmmm perhaps it is time for me to become a banker.

(oi you in the back: i said banker....)

changes

had a haircut.
now look more kenny rogers than bad santa - not sure that is an improvement.
it is the start of me making changes.

meanwhile in the real world disney bought marvel. bit of a shock. fanboys and geeks around the world are having kittens at what it could mean. me too.

zits

i am of an age where zits should no longer be an issue.
mostly this is the case.
currently i have two zits. very irritating they are too. each one is located in the centre of my bum cheeks. all of which makes sitting a bit of a pain. quite looking forward to squeezing them.

just thought i would share.