debate2.1

got to the debate late (again) (no shock there).
will be interesting to see whether or not gordon and david agree with nick tonight. i doubt it.
interestingly sky have not let the bbc air the debate on 5live like itv did. who knew murdoch and co. could be so petty.

europe first question up.
looks like david is on his own. no surprises there. will europe be the chink in the tory armour.

have just noticed clegg's chin. crikey that is a big thing.

brown makes the economic point: europe means job.
cameron says there is a real difference between the parties because he will in europe and but not ruled by europe.
crikey clegg has gone about nutters and homophobes, and brown gets a laugh - and then goes on about jobs.

cameron is all about standing up for britain in europe.

lost

i know you will find this hard to believe but there are many things i can’t do. i can’t translate latin into greek, quadratic equations leave me scratching my head, juggling while riding a unicycle is beyond me and as for splitting the atom let’s not go there. among the other things i can’t do is read a map.
yup i can’t read a map. i am the benjamin netanyahu of road maps.
normally it isn’t that much of an issue; i can muddle along and get to where i need to get to. that is occasionally my downfall.
the election is coming up fast. been looking at my local candidates, weighing up the choices. made my decision. oh hold on a minute i don’t think i registered to vote. blinking heck better check on that. ooops nope haven’t done it. no worries have a couple of days to sort it out.
first stop the local idea store to get a voter registration form. don’t have enough time to post it, so i will have to drop it off, not a worry. time to do that. form filled in. easy peasy. will drop it off in the morning. checked the map and it looks like a bit of a trek, but a good way to start the day.
form in bag. sleep.
wake up. check map again. shitaboogey but i got that wrong. it is much further away than i thought. ok check buses. the 15 gets me close, the 115 gets me a little closer, the 135 is no good. make notes as to where i need to get off and then walk to. all going to plan, but plan is going to have to change because i have to be somewhere else, will go in the afternoon.
afternoon now and time to get a move on. will pass on the first bus, too many people. get the next one. blimey timed this wrong, too many school kids going home. why do they let them out so early? why do they let them out at all?
not been this far down the commercial road for months.
check my notes as to where i need to get off. be on the lookout for cotton street. curse myself for not bringing my a-z with me.
there goes all saints dlr station.
getting there.
hold on this is canning town. too far for sure.
get off. look there is a community centre – they should be able to give me directions. they can, but they are as good as mine: “catch the 115”. hold on there is a library next door. find an a-z there. make notes. how stupid have i been? overshot by a fair bit. still just a straight walk back. back along the barking road onto the east india dock road and just try to find nutmeg lane.
what is the time? cripes getting close to 5.30 and they will be closed. pick up the pace. mmm this is an ugly part of town. oh just what i hate a road that doesn’t have a name on it. is it the one i want? no idea. look there is a security guard. he confirms it is nutmeg lane – can get to clover crescent from here. (could also go to saffron avenue, coriander avenue and oregano drive – if i wanted to. who know jamie also did town planning).
get to the town hall. hand in the voter registration just before 5.30pm. receptionist says she will mark it as if it came in at 5pm. i thanked her (didn’t bother pointing out that i have until midnight to get it in – that would have been churlish of me).
job done. relief.
let's go to canary wharf. not been there in a long while. walk? nope. catch the dlr. not been on the dlr for an age, i still love it. mmm lots of nice looking ladies. gotta love office hours. grab a coffee at canary wharf, watch the world go by. go into tesco – fancy some of their very nice pasta. look at the queue. will pass on that. jump onto the dlr that is at the platform. oh piss it is for stratford. get off at west india and wait for a bank train. there it is. homeward bound.
plan carried out. aims achieved. labour vote sorted.
if gordon brown gets in it is down to me.
i am labour and labour 2010 is my idea.

ash

bloody typical.
won't pay us back what they owe.
will send us all their ash.
sodding icelanders. bastards.

debate1.11

the public are talking about the debate.
one of the more annoying criticisms is that they didn't mention the concern that the particular member of the public was most interested in.
someone has complained that clegg had his hands in his pockets.
no one seems to have changed their minds about who they are going to vote for.

someone has mentioned that it was well rehearsed - i suspect that they would have preferred it to be more on the lines of a 'it's a generation game knockout on ice factor' game show, the leaders would have no idea of what game or task they had to do, but while they were doing it (in a large cartoon comedy suit) they would also have to tell us their policy on health and education.

some bod from ukip has described the event as boring. i guess that really does sum up just how important ukip is: not very.
though it does point to brand extension of the debates - the second stringers- ukip, the greens, respect, bnp and the pirate party (yes there is one) can all have their say about the important questions of the day.

bring on the second debate.

debate1.10

clegg has been announced as the 'winner' of the debate by the first yougov poll.
how come they never ask me?

debate1.9

closing statements.
clegg - oh thank you for sticking with us. patronising or what? cleverly he is mentioning all the people who have raised questions. nice touch. reminds us all that he is there and that you don't have a choice between two there is a third way (to quote blair).
give real change a chance - is what clegg said.

brown - picks on one question. highlighting how to get through the crisis. money in the economy. secure the recovery. fair to nhs and schools.

cameron - hope over fear, well that cuts you lot out then doesn't cameron as we all know what you are going to do. values is what he is about. crikey he has moved on from thatcher, he has gone straight to major.

oh mr stewart has given us all his heartfelt thanks for the questions sent in but not used.

it is all over.
i think it was a draw.

tony livesey on 5live said 'did you recognise that? it was history.'

debate1.8

last question - about looking after the elderly.
one thing that has come from the debate is that we all want things and they all cost money, we are less keen to pay for these things.

cameron has provided his idea - put £8k aside at 65 and there will be help for you to ensure that there is no need to sell your house.
clegg - says why don't the politicians all come together, drop their differences and come up with a solution. hell clegg why not do that for all problems and issues.
brown - less airy fairy than the others and more details. perhaps that is his problem, he gives too many details. maybe a few jokes would have helped him. surely there are some oap jokes out there?

clegg banging on about his week off for carers. says none of them have a perfect solution.
cameron also on about a consensus.
there is a danger of a group hug here.

debate1.7

growing old and getting ill.
brown - more home helps. personal guarantees.

cameron - i am never going to believe him and his 'love' of the nhs.

clegg - goes on about wasting money. look at what has been spunked away on the computer system. very true it isn't working, but that is more a sign that private companies can be very shit at doing what they say they will do, but are quite happy to take the cash for their inability to do their job.

clegg and cameron - go on about managers and administrators. like somehow it works itself.

cameron again bangs on about the national insurance - don't increase and then all of a sudden there will be lots of money for cancer drugs.

clegg reminds cameron that he can't do everything with that extra money. cameron tells him that the nhs is an exception.

if i am honest clegg is coming out on top, with cameron coming second.
but brown was never going to do well, as he isn't a natural orator.

debate1.6

armed forces.
not paid enough. not well equipped enough.
none of the leaders will give the sensible answer: we need to look at how we commit the forces and quite what we expect them to do.

pull them out of afghanistan. no longer follow america's lead. we shouldn't try to punch above our weight anymore.
there needs to be a serious re-evaluation as to what we want the armed forces to do and then cut our cloth accordingly.

all three of the leaders have managed to call the forces brave.

debate1.5

protecting economic growth.
cameron - economy moving and growing. save £6bn. stops the tax on jobs (national insurance increase). he has quoted the business leaders who support him, if they had their way they would drop the national minimum wage. funny thing is cameron would agree with them.

clegg - he can save £15bn. he wants to scrap trident replacement. he is right.

brown reminds everyone that it is a global crisis. something that cameron seems to not know (or just lies about, guess which one i think it is).

when it comes to the economy and the recovery i am with brown, with a smidgen of clegg. cameron is a tory and so he is a lying tosspot. simple analysis.

crikey clegg is talking about a unified government to deal with crisis.

cameron says we are all going to have to come together on this to share the pain - that means the poor suffer, while the rich sit back and go 'oh we are the wealth creators love us..'

brown is right the private sector isn't going to make the difference on their own.

cameron asks why do bosses say the national insurance hike is wrong? simple they don't like paying more - which is why your idea of referundums on council tax is stupid. we don't like it when these businesses put their prices up.

clegg also made the point about getting rid of id cards. again simple and sensible idea.

debate1.4

education up next.
oh a student doesn't want to be examined - he just wants to learn for learnings sake.
strangely cameron agrees with him. oh no he mentioned red tape. again. his bugbear. schools to be set free to do what they want. nice.

clegg. sweden has a national ciriculum of 16 pages. not very detailed then is it. he repeated the 4000 pages that cameron has just mentioned. no more micromanaging from a liberal democratic government.

they all talk about higher and improving standards.

cameron - it starts with discipline in the schools. i would agree with him, but really it starts with the parents. schools shouldn't be made to be the parents. find a way to make sure that parents are responsible.

clegg - smaller classes. again simple idea. clever idea. means more money, but money well spent.

cameron wants those who administer schools in whitehall to work in sackcloth and to sit on milk crates.

alastair stewart cuts in every now and then to try to make it look like he is keeping control. he should be allowed to administer electric shocks, especially when cameron does his saving £1 in every £100.

come on gordon you don't have a kid in a state school - the others are telling everyone how their kiddies are in the state sector. they are beating you on that.

debate1.3

cameron - cut the size of parliamnet? what the fuck. no. how can you talk about people power and then go on about cutting down the number of people who represent us. more members of parliament not fewer.

oh gordon has come in with house of lords as to be cut down. much better than cutting than members of parliament.

cameron has done his - which company hasn't had to cut to get more for less? well not virgin trains, not british gas - all they do is put up their prices.
a stupid analogy cameron.

debate1.2

i think they are going to scratch each other's eyes out.
handbags at dawn.

it is speed debating.

(what does it matter what people do when it comes to asking questions?)
(groan mp's expenses have been raised.)

debate1.1

debate between the leaders is on.
i missed the start. immigration. done in a few minutes. perhaps the debates are not going to be all they have been cracked up to be.

law and order now.
cameron - more police on the streets and less paperwork. have to say i have never had any problems with them doing paperwork. i want to know that they are accountable.
all three of them talk about more police on the street.
no shit sherlock.

cameron - is close to saying that drug addicts might as well be chained up and go cold turkey.
clegg - stop youngsters from becoming future criminals. he makes the point that prison is an academy for criminal training. change their behaviour.
brown - oh dear what his dad did!
seems to come down to kids being bored. maybe it is that kids don't have respect for authority or adults anymore. perhaps the answer is less in 'young people' and 'youth mayors' and more in discipline. just a thought.

power

thanks to the new marxist leninist version of the conservatives with their wolfie smith cry of ‘power to the people’ the country knows that we are all in this together.
well when they say we are all in it together and we are all going to share the pain – they really mean that the public sector is going to feel the pain, because private companies are the wealth creators and innovators (these would be the same wealth creators and innovators who have been responsible for some of the very large overspends in government information technology programmes – capitalism at its very best: taking the money and laughing all the way to the bank as you provide a shit service).
it is ok though. just as the conservatives kick the public services they are offering ordinary people the chance to take over their local services and run them the way they want to (the money will, of course, still be coming from the state). see more people power.
even better they are promising to remove bureaucracy and red tape. true they are offering us the chance to have endless referendums about pretty much anything as long as enough people sign a petition. in the era of facebook that is hardly a challenge. expect the first of every month to be referendum day. and look they are going to let us vote on council tax raises – oh well i can tell you how that will play out – no, no, no and no again. (see mr. cameron i have bought into your scheme – and my contribution has saved local councils wodges of cash – no need to have that vote on the council tax i have told you the results for the next 10 years in every council in the land).
(don’t hold your breath for a vote on whether or not the national minimum wage should increase.)
there is something wonderful about the ‘big society’ idea. there is also something impractical about it. in the hands of the conservatives it is just another way to make sure that the state does as little as possible to protect the weak while helping the rich line their pockets.
the cordial invitation that david cameron has issued for us all to join the government is akin to a carnival game – you know it is fixed and rigged but you can’t help yourself you want to give it a go. it sounds a noble project – government of the people, by the people, for the people – can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t sign up for that sort of thing. it is just that under the conservatives you just know what the invitation amounts to is a long letter that basically abdicates responsibility on the part of the conservative leadership.
my rsvp won’t be in the post.

helicopters

i love helicopters. i know nothing about them. i couldn’t tell a chinook from a lynx if your life depended on it. my love of them has nothing to do with knowledge or recognition – it might be the noise they make, it might just be that they have big whirly things on them or it might just be that they look oh so cool.
there isn’t an action movie that hasn’t been improved by the appearance of a helicopter or three. i am pretty sure that even citizen kane would have benefitted from at least one scene with a chopper in it. hell even stockhausen got in on the act with his helicopter string quartet.
helicopters were in the news again today.
during the last prime minister’s questions of the current parliament david cameron used some of his questions to talk about helicopters. or more accurately the lack of helicopters for the british armed forces in iraq and afghanistan. it was a clever ploy that continues cameron’s strategy of sowing doubt over gordon brown’s competency as prime minister and (as an added bonus) as chancellor. fortunately for cameron such attacks are aided by brown’s hubristic weakness of never being able to admit to a previous error. all too often brown has lost ground by not admitting there had been mistakes in the past, but like all governments errors will occur and labour under brown will provide the right solution. do that a couple of times and cameron would have been so wrong footed he would now be chasing the liberal democrats rather than looking like the next prime minister.
another outcome of never saying mea culpa is that you can’t go on the attack and ask: “well what would you do?” so in the case of the helicopters brown couldn’t very easily ask cameron where he planned on magicing up new helicopters from, especially as the prospective tory government is all about cutting spending. (unless the conservatives favourite helicopter maker, westland, still owe them a favour or two? i doubt it very much).
ask that of cameron and i think you have him in a corner. brown couldn’t and didn’t.
yet david cameron has given gordon brown the perfect election present – if he would but take it.
it is a winning strategy; it is a dyed in the wool, solid gold vote winner. much better than giving each soldier their own helicopter and the electorate their own pony.
oh i can hear you cry – what is it pat, just tell us.
it is simple. all gordon brown has to do is announce that he is radically cutting the british presence in afghanistan and he is going to do it on an accelerated schedule. eat your heart out mandelson, pure fucking political genius on my part. just a shame it is not going to happen.
there was a time when the ‘war on terror’ sort of made sense. not sure that holds true anymore. britain entered the war standing shoulder to shoulder with the usa, a show of faith, a show of trust, a show of common beliefs in what was right. it was the ‘special relationship’ writ large. all the relationship seemed to get us was a lot of dead squaddies and a severe financial crisis. in short: we got shafted.
with a change of prime minister and a change of president it was obvious some things would change. it seems that president obama doesn’t like gb – the country or the prime minister. the special relationship isn’t special any more. president obama is off courting other allies. let’s not look at this as a set back, instead let’s look at it as an opportunity. time to get out from under. time to reassess our place in the world and time to stop trying to punch above our weight on the international stage.
start with pulling the troops out from afghanistan. let the new american allies take up the slack, that is what allies do.
the benefit to gordon brown and new labour is that it shows that that can be daring, that they can make the difficult choices. if you are not fighting an unwinnable ‘war’ you are not spending lots of cash – all of which goes towards cutting that deficit. if you are not fighting the war your troops are not getting killed. while putting clear distance between us and the americans brown shows he is different from blair by not shadowing the americans while showing the rest of the world that we are not going to blindly follow the american lead on everything.
it is a vote winner.
best of all: if you don’t get elected as prime minister you have really put a spanner in the works for david cameron. come on gordon that alone has got to be worth it.

(coming soon: pat reforms the united nations and publishes his new diet book: ‘you are fat and it is his fault’.)

50p

did you hear it?
the sound of fury that swept over the city and echoed through the countryside.
did you hear the billowing cry?
the siren song of misery and self pity that shook the nation.
did you hear it?
were you woken by the thunderclap of anger?
yes today was the day when the highest rate of tax was raised to 50p for those earning more than £150,000 a year. crikey how the experts moaned and whined.
hear them cry, hear them sob, hear them whinge. such a commotion you would think that they were being asked to work for minimum wage.
why us they asked? we are the wealth creators they told us. you can’t treat us like this they opine, we are special, we are the wealth creators. love us. if you tax us too much we will leave, we will take our money and wealth creation and go somewhere else.
do you know what my reply is? fuck off then and don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out.
funny thing about most of these globally mobile wealth creators they all seem to be in the financial industry and are ready to up sticks to geneva at the first sign of a tax hike (poor switzerland we give it phil collins, lewis hamilton and now some jumped up greedy accountants – does little to spruce up their already dull image). now correct me if i am wrong but isn’t the reason why the tax has been increased is because there were some shifty dealings going on in the financial industry to start with?
oh it was.
can’t expect them to bear any of the pain. that is for the little chap, the poor chap and the chap who is just doing ok.
seems that if you can claim to be a wealth creator it entitles you to take a big steaming pooh on the heads of everyone (that was just for cliff: politics and shit).
so how many people are affected by the new tax rate of 50p? well not me for a start. i would be doing naked cartwheels down the street if i were in a position to have to pay that much tax (and i promise now that if i am ever in a position where i have to pay the top rate of tax then i will indeed do naked cartwheels in the street for charity – you can take that to the bank). according to the bbc it is 300,000 people who will pay the top rate of tax out of the 29 million tax payers in britain.
oh my heart bleeds for them.
now i may have said this before, and i am sure i will say it again, these so called wealth makers can fuck off if they so wish. they may like to think that they are as rare as unicorns but we all know that really they are not.
in each of the offices that these people are in there is some young studly dudley who thinks that they can do the job cheaper and better. in any other set of jobs these roles would have been outsourced to india or china by now. it is a fallacy to believe that these people are irreplaceable: they are not.
for the time being they will squeal like stuck piggies, claim that their wealth trickles down to the rest of us and argue that raising their tax is disastrous for the rest of us.
still i have a solution.
they are rich, they like to spend their money (after all that is the only way it can trickle down to rest of us), so let’s raise vat on very luxury items. you want a pair of jimmy choo’s? then have a dose of 20% vat dear girl. you want to deck yourself out in something or another from stella mccartney, well pay that 20% vat. you want a tag heuer watch that may are may not have been made with left over parachute material from suez crisis and a bit of chocolate some bloke nibbled on while in colditz, then it is time for you to pay 20% vat. if you are going to sit down in one of gordon ramsey’s fucking restaurants to eat some of his fucking expensive food then you can fucking well pay the 20% vat.
meanwhile the rest of us who are buying our clothes from primark and our food from tesco don’t have to worry about vat being imposed on food or clothes.
not only have i made vat progressive but i have also allowed the rich to shop till they drop knowing that they are helping the rest of us to come out of recession.
they get to stay here (ok that is a downside to it).
they get to spend their money on pointless luxury goods.
they get to tell us all how their wealth trickles down. .
they get to remind us how they are wealth creators.
money comes into the treasury.
we are all happy.

just another simple reason why i should be in charge.

squits

it started with a moment of near disaster.
a small fart that hinted at a follow through, and stopped short of kissing cotton. the smell just shy of hell's sewage, enough to singe eyebrows and choke cows.
it should have set alarm bells ringing.
it didn't.
a good night of sleep. waking up the sun in the sky, and all is well with the world.
oh spoke too soon.
a rumble in the tum.
a small parp.
another rumble.
a clench of cheeks and a 'oh no!'
dash! dash! dash! rush! rush! get to the toilet, don't stop, get to the toilet.
nooooooo - the seat is down. don't panic.
quick. quick.
sit down.
shit down.
gushing out. who knew you could evacuate that much stuff in so little time.
oh wow get a whiff of that, gag me with a spoon as frank zappa once said (well actually it was moon who said it, but frank wrote it).
have to say feel much better now. time to get on with the rest of the day.
oh no.
hold on.
bombs away.
more coming out.
and out.
and out.
and out.
crikey who knew that shitting out half your body weight could be so tiring? after all super-models do it all the time (see i can even make this social commentary).
nose hairs have been burnt away by the stench.

phew glad that is all over.

hold on, there is another rumble.
another trip to the toilet.
splash down.

by the fourth trip there i have developed a ring of fire. mmm that might be what it feels like to have deep heat rubbed into your arse (not that anyone would want that - though it used to be a jolly jape to smear it onto a rugby player's jock strap, another of those things i never really understood about rugby humour).

those of you have gotten this far will be pleased to know that i am back to just defecating at a regular rate and a regular consistency. let me tell you: it is bliss.

quote

there i was leafing through an old issue of wired magazine (i would like to say i had read it when i first bought it, but hey we are all friends here so why should i lie) when i noticed an article about digital comics.
back in the day when i was in gainful employment, before post employment kicked in, one of the ongoing debates i had with a prominent retailer was about the move to digital publication of comics by the main publishers. he said it was inevitable, i didn’t think so. naturally the article piqued my interest (especially now that i have nothing whatsoever to do with comics).
in the end the article was short and didn’t really say much.
buried in it was this lovely quote
“...when content companies don’t give fans what they want in the format they want it, fans make it available themselves.”
“most piracy doesn’t spring from the desire to get free content. it comes from a desire to get it in a specific way.” (mark mcclusky – wired may 2006)
do you know i almost believed him there.
skip forward several pages in the same issue of wired and you find that matthew honan is praising the success of itunes which had just sold its billionth tune in just around three years of business. itunes it could be argued being a perfect example of the content companies giving the fans just what they want, in a form that they want it in. you don’t want to buy the whole album? just a track? well here you go. you want to play it on your mp3 player and home computer – well now you can.
fine and dandy.
except hohan goes on to point out that the billion or so tracks that itunes have sold pales into insignificance against the billion or so tracks that are shared each month via peer to peer sites (or p2p to be hip).
somewhat of an editorial own goal there.
ironically i saw this about the time there is a lot of activity over the digital economy bill. as i understand it part of the digital economy bill is aimed at preventing persistent and heavy downloaders of copyrighted material. one of the potential punishments for being caught is to be disconnected from the internet.
to some activists such a move is an infringement of the individual’s human rights and will impact heavily on their quality of life.
some of the copyfighters have even argued that without the free movement of materials via the internet culture might grind to a halt (hell yeah – how else would i have found out about shakespeare, dickens, van gough, mahler, pynchon, zappa, beefheart, hendrix, lichenstein and many others). (true without the internet i would never have known about ‘he came on my face’ ‘anal debauchery’ ‘lesbian mentors’ (which i think is a workplace human resources movie), ‘monster meat’ (i suspect it is a pro-veggie movie) or ‘ginormous juggs’.)
no one denies that the internet has become an essential and integral tool to the way we live our lives both in terms of leisure and work. it is a phenomenal tool for change and for creativity. at the same time that doesn’t mean that it gets a pass when it comes to illegal practices. dress it up anyway you like but sharing copyrighted material is pretty much theft. i am not getting on a moral high horse here as i have been known to download a track or two. i just don’t dress it up as something it is not.
the open rights group say “the minimum value for a repeat infringer’s activity is thus the value of 50 copyright items. music tracks on emusic now retail at 35p. the retail value of the offences of a repeat infringer could therefore be as little as £18” (of course it could also be £500 if you were to download 50 new dvds – using play.com’s average price for a new dvd. let’s not dwell on that too much though as it makes it look a little more serious).
even sticking with the £18 figure, i am pretty sure that sainsbury’s, tescos or my local newsagent are not going to be too keen on me going in and taking £18 in goods. in fact i would even hazard a guess that if i were to take £18 off the various members of the open rights group they might be a little pissed at me.
where the open rights group is right is that the digital economy bill is something that needs debate and not only from politicians but from the content providers and the internet service providers. as fergal sharkey (yes that fergal ) has pointed out when an isp is advertising their service by the claim that you can download 900 lps a month you know that the they are fully aware of what is going on, but they do not want to be seen as the bad guys in this. the same is true of the content providers who may whinge and moan about sharing (or piracy) but still manage to overprice their goods considerably.
a debate is needed – but like many things that need to be debated it can’t be done when the various sides of the debate are just engaged in hyperbole.
now excuse me i need to look for a copy of ‘milf encounters of a close kind 69’, it is both educational and cultural – honest.

ban

just a quick note to david cameron: it is time you ditched the use of dithering.
you have beaten it to death. no one cares. it just makes you sound like the dull schoolyard bully who doesn't have any clever or funny friends to give you new material.

if it is the best you can come up with after a few years then you really are not fit to lead the country.

oh and forty days and forty nights? get over yourself man.

new conservatives? same old arseholes.

nhs

suddenly there is a lot of surprise that there is a high level of sickness among nhs staff. you don't get such levels in the private sector. oh no in the private sector people are dedicated and only take sick leave when their legs are dropping off and they have sneezed their right lung out.
of course office workers have it really hard dealing with spreadsheets, filing, those constant emails to answer. those poor nhs workers just wiling away their time doing as little possible in-between bouts illnesses.
of course it has nothing to do with the fact that nhs workers are dealing with sick people and come into contact with diseases that are contagious.
just a thought.

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.