quote

not quite sure what the story was, i was half asleep and not really paying full attention to the radio.

i am still adjusting to the needs of waking up at a sensible hour. i am not good at it and i don't like it. the 5live breakfast show with nicky campbell and shelagh fogarty is a gentle introduction to the morning, they have a nice chemistry between them and ms fogarty has a gorgeous voice.

there i am half between slumber and awake. on the one hand there is the ongoing wave of revolt in the middle-east on the other hand more about david cameron's own revolt against the public services (he wants to model them on tesco - the man is a total wanker, still i guess we should be thankful he wasn't citing harrods).
somewhere in all of this there was a story about something or another and the guest they had to comment on the story pointed out that it had appeared in the daily mail and it was inaccurate.

nicky campbell jumped in to let the listeners know "that not everything that appears in the daily mail is wrong."
even if it only only happened in my dreams it was a piece of class from mr. campbell.

sad

i have never really done the date thing. mostly because the times i plucked up enough courage to ask a lady out the answer was no. so i haven't much experience of it.

there i was out in hoxton square the other evening to see a rather lame exhibition at the white cube gallery - it was supposed to be something that commented on our celebrity driven brand aware logo awash love of the stars, in reality it was just a bunch of very large very average paintings of people who are famous.
i saw the bloke on my way into the gallery.
young, stocky build, neatly but but conservatively dressed. shoes clean and polished, no doubt fresh undies in cash of accident,  a traditional raincoat, a brown leather satchel over his shoulder. his light brown hair had a touch of boris to it. he had that fresh faced glow of someone who has recently had a long and careful shave. he was the perfect picture of a chap who had past muster of his mum on the way out for a special night. in his gloved hands he carried a small, but perfect, bunch of roses.
he was marching along the pavement outside the gallery, stopping to look down the street trying to spot the object of his affection.

he was still there when i cam out ten or so minutes later.
this time he looked a little more flushed. the colour in his face had turned from ruddy to bright red.
more so than before he looked like a bloke out on his first date, he looked nervous, uncomfortable and out of place. he had the look of someone who had been on the end of a few too many rejections just because he wasn't the right type.
his pacing up and down the street was a little more manic. the stop at the corner a little more wistful and lingering longer. the red roses, still held proudly aloft, more and more a beacon of why he was there.
up and down he walked.
waiting. hoping. waiting. waiting.

there was a part of me that wanted to wait with him. i wanted to see him succeed. i wanted to see the meeting between him and his date. i wanted it to be alright. i wanted to know if they had met at school or at the office. was this a blind date? i felt he needed moral support, someone there in his corner ready to give advice if he needed it. i felt he needed someone there to see him through to the finish. someone there to witness his success. someone there to shield him from all the mocking stares of the oh so trendy shoreditch crowd as they went about beginning their night revelries.
there was also a part of me that didn't want to be there when he realised that he had been stood up, that he would have to go home dejected. i didn't want to see him lose.

i left him still pacing. still hopeful. i headed off to brick lane to leave him to his silent vigil, to his silent prayer. i hope it was answered, or the other person had the decency to call him to tell him they weren't coming.

funny

the conservatives are very keen to say that there should be fewer central diktats.
they give lots of reasons why such central control is bad. what it comes down to is that the conservatives do not like the state. not that it stops them from using the power of the state when it suits them.
with the recent education bill they allowed universities to charge up to £9000 a year for a course. no surprises that a few have already come out and said that their courses will cost the maximum fees possible (that would be oxford, cambridge and imperial college london. others will follow).

now david 'two brains' willets (minister of state for university and science - two brains: two jobs) is saying that there is not need for universities to charge more than 6 or 7 thousand pounds. which begs the question: if this is the case why have you set the upper limit at £9000 pounds?
furthermore, given the philosophy of the conservatives, you would have thought that david willets would have nothing more to say on the matter. he and his pals in government have provided the legislation and have freed the universities to get on about their own business.

except while the conservative state might want to be small it can't help itself but interfere.
you only have to look at eric pickles and his constantly evolving localism bill - as he finds more stuff not to like and more stuff to legislate on and when the local councils decide that they are going to act of their own accord up pops someone from the conservative party to tell them that they should be doing it a completely different way.

look lads i know running the country is hard, but try and make your mind's up: are you freeing us to make decisions locally or are you just a bunch of hypocritical interfering busybodies who have no idea of the consequences of their actions?

(guess which one i think it is.)

work

most people want to work. most people want to earn a decent wage for the work they do.
there are some who don't want to work and live off the state.
of those who live off the state only a minority are living the life of riley, most people on social are not having fun and are living hand to mouth.

david cameron and the coaltion want to make "work pay". cameron says: "never again will work be the wrong financial choice... we are finally going to make work pay for some of the poorest people in our society."

they are talking about a universal credit that would replace, and simplify, the curent mix of benefits. as such a benefit would be paid as a lump sum you would see how much better off you would be in work rather than being in receipt of benefits (which can only be read as that the universal benefit would be somewhat less than the sum of its parts).
they are talking about those on benefit getting to keep more their benefits if they work part-time and/or decide to extend their hours (which can be read as being an admission that for many people the only jobs available are minimum wage).
those are the carrots.
the stick is: refuse a job and you lose your benefits for three years (which if taken to its logical extreme means some are condemned to become homeless beggars).

the carrot and the stick: perfect plan.
sort of.

the only problem is there are not enough jobs.

don't worry the adam smith institute have a sort of solution to that: "The minimum wage prices the most unskilled and inexperienced out of work and it should be abolished if the welfare reforms are to have the impact the government hopes." says sam bowman.
fantastic - no need to worry about people being able to live a decent life, just have them queue outside employer's and offer their services as cheaply as possible. what does it matter that they can't earn enough money to rent a place to live; a few people sharing a bed never hurt anyone. what does it matter if they can't earn enough money to travel to work; find a sweatshop near-by and you can sleep there as well as work there. what does it matter if they can't earn enough money to feed themselves afterall eating takes time and time is money.
it is good to see that people like sam bowman have such a realistic grasp on what it is to live on minimum wage, the princely sum of £5.93 an hour - if you are over the age of 21 (which works out at around £12,400 a year or apprximately £10,500 take home or around £201 a week - expect to lose a chunk of that on rent, some more on travel and learn to eat cheaply and maybe you will have some cash left to actually enjoy the fruits of your labour).
sam bowman doesn't care if you enjoy yourself, he just wants you sort of fit, sort of healthy and buying just enough to keep the economy ticking over.
to sam bowman you are not a real person - you are just someone who if you are on minimum wage should be prepared to tighten that belt a bit tighter, to not want things and just work and work and work until you drop.
sam bowman has probably got a plan for a nice range of flop/doss houses where workers can crash a night for the cost of a few pounds so that they can be in work early the next day.

iain duncan smith might have been moved by some of the stories he heard when he did his tour of 'broken britain' and he might actually want to make a real and proper difference.
i suspect that david cameron and george osborne hew more to the line of sam bowman and they all want to punish the poor and punish the unemployed for simply being unemployed.

create the jobs first and perhaps then would be the time to complain that the unemployed don't want to work.
the simple fact is if there are no jobs then people can't work and not everyone can (or wants to) move to the south east.

time to tug forlocks and doff caps. the new divide starts here.

want

want

want

want

want

want want want want.
you can take the boy out of the comic industry but you can't take the fan out of the boy.

parp

not sure what is - the new routine; the anti-biotics; more coffee; different stress or changed diet but tonight i have parped like mad.
sadly for many of those in sainsbury's that is where i let a lot of them off. it was like i was dropping depth charges as i went and other shoppers were enemy submarines who entered my 'smelly' slipstream.
i am not going to apologise to them i am going to chuckle at how many silent but deadlys i dropped in the supermarket. mind you i shall have to be careful just in case they ban me.

choice

so i have a swelling in the mouth.
so i go to the emergency dental service.
so i tell them i am panicy when it comes to dentists (that is a mild version of my feelings towards dentists who rate around the same fear levels as mimes and clowns).
the nice dentist told me that because of the swelling it would be hard to numb the mouth.
oh dear.
then she told me that i have to choose between a root canal or an extraction.
this is a choice?
that is fucking sophie's choice.
so i ask the question - how long does it take for an extraction - maybe a few seconds, perhaps 45 minutes. well that calmed my nerves.
now i am just waiting to see what the antibiotics do.

pain

i am still in pain. couldn't get to the nhs emergency dental service in time. ooooow.

i am also in pain with reading some of david cameron's defence of his 'big society': "The Big Society is about changing the way our country is run. That's why the Big Society is here to stay."
of course it isn't about top down statist views - even though the only people who seem to be keen on the idea happen to be the inner circle of camerloons.
it is another strand of the 'we are all in it together' but this part of it is that 'come and give a hand if you have the time and inclination'. so that is pretty much going to limit who can get involved. what the conservative's want is a move back to the deserving poor who will receive acts of kindness from those who are better off, the state will give up its role as a safety net and hope that the private individual steps up and helps out.

i am already looking forward to the group4 workhouses.

meanwhile i am still in pain.

balance

i have had a good week. unusual for me, but nice all the same.
the universe has to balance.
you might have seen an advert for a yogurt that implied for someone to have pleasure, someone has to have pain.
yin and yang.
i used to blame one of my friends for my lack of sex simply because she was gettting so much, she was using up my share. (she still is ... the bitch.)
so because i have had a good week i have to have something bad happen.
i have a toothache.
not serious. not yet.
a niggling, gnawing throb in my tooth that just whispers out i am going to get worse. the whisper will turn to a shout and then turn to a scream of agony.
go to the dentist you say.
easy for you to say. i live in fear of dentists. they bring me out in utter panic attacks, just the mention of them has me in cold sweats. fear. fear.
but i don't like pain.
dilemna.

week

my first week back as being a wage slave went really quickly.
i am knackered from getting up early, although mostly it is because i have not learnt to go to sleep at a sensible time.
so far i am enjoying it.
nice group of people.
lots to learn.
as yet no one has noticed that i am so far out of my depth i can't see land.

already looking forward to monday - but only after seeing some art and drinking some coffee.

hypocrisy

it is one of those ‘historic’ days: after thirty years hosni murbarak has stepped down as president of egypt. during those years he had been pretty ruthless in suppressing opposition and dissent. his downfall came as a result of peaceful people power.

a winds of change moment.

new era.

sands of time.

democracy marches on.

new dawn, start of a new beginning.

yadda yadda.

you can’t have a historic day without the leaders of the free world popping up and making their comments known to all and sundry (and no doubt right now william hague is in a mad rush to beat joe biden - oh come on! you must remember who joe biden is - to see who gets to egypt first).

so president obama, while pointing out that difficult days lay ahead and questions still needed to be answered (no wonder he got a nobel peace prize), had this to say “ the us will continue to be a friend and partner to egypt."

whatever the president can do, the prime minister can do as well. he talked of a precious moment of opportunity; it is all about building blocks, truly open and free democratic society. most important mr. cameron was at pains to point out the uk was a friend of egypt and stood by to "help in any way that we can".

the egyptian people must be very happy to know that they have such good friends on their side. friends who stayed pretty quiet about the state of emergency that murbarak had imposed; pretty quiet about the long years of no democracy and no freedom. just pretty quiet (as they are on several of the other countries in the area who are of strategic worth to western interests).

if i were an egyptian i wouldn’t be expecting too much support from messrs cameron and obama if in six months the military decided to once again ensure that a candidate who was sympathetic (oh hell i mean controlled) to their needs and wishes was somehow elected to power. you might get some words of outrage that would quickly die down and life would move on and business as normal would resume.

realpolitik is one thing, but i have to hope that both cameron and obama squirmed just a little bit as they delivered their ‘friend of egypt’ spiel to the waiting press.

and while i am hoping for that level of self honesty from them can i have a pony as well?

voting

i am torn over the issue of prisoner's right to vote.
a big part of me (that fluffy liberal/ socialist part) agrees that prisoners should be treated with an element of dignity and prison should all be about rehabilitation rather than retribution. an aspect of that rehabilitation is that prisoners should be allowed to engage with the outside in order to reintegrate and perhaps take onboard the accepted norms of society.
much of this feeling is based on the fact that we bang too many people up in prison in the first place and that there are better, and more suitable, punishments for a number of them.

then there is the lurking stalinist that feels his hackles rise and his ire boil (not feel physically sick like the girlyman cameron) when some prisoners get on their high horse and complain that their human rights have been infringed.
it is hard to take seriously the campaign of john hirst to get voting rights for prisoners as it is a breach of their human rights, when such a campaigner was an axe murderer - the rights of the landlady he killed are apparently not worth the paper mr. hirst used to send his complaint to the european court of human rights.
maybe sir peter bottomley has the right idea - that part of the sentancing of a prisoner is the exclusion of certain 'rights'; depending on the crime committed your 'rights' inside diminish. murder someone and you don't get to vote, don't pay a tv licence and you will be allowed to put your 'x' on a voting form.

there is another part of me that just doesn't like being told what the british governmnet can or can't do by johnny european (i am in danger of turning into clarkson/littlejohn) so i was very pleased to see parliament stick two fingers up at it all by rejecting the call to give prisoners the vote.

along with all their right to vote, maybe it is time to make sure that they have to pay their council tax as well.

private

social media has changed our lives - not always for the better.
it seems most of us are one or other of them: making friends; arranging events; living life -all made easier by social media.
fortunately the benefits outweigh the faults.
for a long time naysayers have been warning people to be careful what they put up on social sites, reminding them that what goes online stays online. warnings of identity theft; potential employers searching you out to see if you are suitable; problems of sexting or just the re-emergence of embarrassing photos of the past to cause your face to turn red.

i don't really like twitter. i have tried it. decided that it isn't for me: brevity is not my forte.
still i did have to smile at the story of the employee who tweeted (because that is what you do on twitter) that she was hungover at work (among other things) only to see her tweets appearing in the newspapers the daily mail and the independent on sunday (a curious meeting of minds there).
she claimed that the papers had invaded her privacy because what she had written was only intended for her 700 followers (i think 'private' loses its meaning when you are sending it to 700 people). she has lost her case as the courts have sided with the papers who say that not only is twitter publicly accessible but her many followers could retweet (another thing you do on twitter) her message to people she didn't know.

so remember be careful what you tweet.

suffering

tunisa trying to recover from a popular revolt.
jordan (country - not the equestrian loving popular author who used to get her tits out and seems to be the sole reason for the existence of the daily star) just over some turmoil.
middle-east is a bit tender at the moment.
i know what we will do: we'll send in william hague; that will help the situation.
stop him now. bring him home. these people have suffered enough already.
it is cruel and unusual punishment. it must be stopped. where is amnesty when you really need them.

woof

i am dog tired.
knackered in a good way.
early to bed tonight (well early for me).
so this is the best you are going to get, still it is better than what you would get over at jay's blog, do him a favour and go read it, he needs all the help he can get.

stress

lots of last minute preparations.
lots of last minute stress.
can't find this. can't find that.
looks like the early night i promised myself is out of the question.
lots of last minute nerves.
lots of last minute trips to the toilet: ring of fire.
panic. panic. panic.
now where did i put that spare alarm clock.
can't stay need to visit the bog again.

lost

listening to nick herbert, the policing minister, all i have gathered from him is that he can't guarantee numbers of the police. he does say that it isn't about the numbers but the efficiency of the police: this is about bobbies on the beat.
the usual we are cutting down the amount of paperwork that the coppers do is rolled out (am i the only one who thinks that if a copper stops someone then they should complete paperwork on that stop so that we know what and why they are doing it - and if we, the public, are to hold them to account then we need to know what they are doing).

poor old nick herbert was hammered in an interview with stephen nolan. herbert was keen to say that while he, and the government, have no control over where the police spend their budgets. but he was confident that any cuts that have to be made would impact on the back room staff only.
when asked how many front line police were necessary mr. herbert couldn't say, nor could he say that he had done an assessment on how many police might be lost. no answer.
howeer mr. herbert did manage to trot out the usual "deficit, have to cut, save money, government can't write blank cheques" mantra. so he while he left the listeners with the distinct impression he has no idea what he is talking about; he did manage to get his propaganda point in - so cameron will love him.

with nick as an example you have to wonder just how bad the rest of the con/dem front bench is?

sainsbury's

i just want to take this opportunity to thank my local sainsbury's for staying open an hour longer. it is very welcome. it also means that they can compete with the tescoinky  express stores that are close by (three of them all within a few minutes walking distance of the large sainsbury's - that's sticking it to the local retailer - take that local entrepreneur: we don't want your stinky money.

can i also thank sainsbury's for closing down pretty much every till line as well as turning off all of the self-service tills.
oh yeah - it is good that you have stayed open that extra hour; because it is taking most of that time to pay and get out.

so thank you again sainsbury's: planning at its finest.

directions

i have admitted that i am useless at providing people with directions.
i either give too little information (over there) or too much information (and when you get past this shop, which by the way sells some really useful stuff if you happen to be looking for reconditioned computers, but it will be closed now).
recently i have done well in directing people to where they need to go - admittedly they were only a couple of streets away from where they wanted to be.
however i did have one recently failure which resulted in me having to run after the poor girl and then lead her to where she wanted to be. i am pretty sure the sight and sound of an an old overweight hairy bloke charging (though that does give the impression of speed) down the road probably is one she is still trying to forget.
but hey i got her to where she wanted to be.

i still must report other failures - but with the caveat of don't be so stupid as to ask for the following directions:
"do you know where the burberry outlet store is?" more clued in members of the youth would have had no trouble with this question. as i am an old bloke who looks like he has just gotten off of his harley hog in order to eat a very large kebab i am so obviously not the person to ask. it is also one of those places that if you know it exists (it does) you check out where it is before you go to it. of course i have since checked where it is - in case the question arises again - and can now proudly point people in the direction of their hackney store.

do not ask where a postcode is. my name is pat, but i am not a postman and i have no fucking idea where the postcodes are. generally if you have the 5 or 6 digits to the postcode you can pretty easily find out where it is by looking on the internet before you come out. let's be honest if someone has given you a postcode but not the road and door number there is a chance they don't want you there.

finally don't ask if i happen to know where the 79 bus stop is.
i don't know, but i will direct you to the aldgate bust station and let them sort it out.

probably best if you just didn't ask me directions at all.
i am a little like david cameron, george osborne and nick clegg - pretty clueless in how to get to where you want to be going.
(see managed to squeeze in a political barb as well. awesome.)

choc

i like chocolate. it is one of the reasons why i am fat (another reason is my love of doughnuts, oh and another would be my love of cream cakes).

the joy of the king-size twix is hard to describe.

like everything the price of choc is going up or maybe not if you believe the manufacturers.

cadbury’s (now owned by kraft) have said that they have had to take action because of a ‘number of economic factors including ingredient costs.’ the action they have taken is to reduce the size of the choc they are offering. toblerone has shed a triangle; the dairy milk bar will be shy of two chunks while a bag of maltesers has had fewer in it.

kraft have said that without such measures they would have had to put the price up, in fact by such size reductions they say they ‘have been able to hold the bar at this price’ and that even at a reduced size their chocolate is still an affordable treat.

hold on there chaps - but surely if we are getting less for the same price, we are actually faced with a price hike by another name.

expect a new confectionary bar from kraft – it will leave a bitter taste in the mouth and it will be called ‘semantics’.

gutter

not sure what it is at the moment - the world is in turmoil and so are my guts.
while the bbc and all other sensible news media are concentrating on the troubles in egypt and jordan, hinting at north korea's undeclared nuclear reactor (why does it matter if you know that it is undeclared? surely you just sit at the negotiating table and sing: 'liar liar pants on fire' while pointing at kim jong-il). meanwhile back home the con/dems have revealed their 'is your street dangerous' website, it is a continuation of an idea from the previous labour government. the site hasn't been working, they have said that it is because so many people have tried to log on to it, i reckon someone has pinched the servers. theresa may, the home secretary, has said that this new website will allow the public to hold the police accountable, which seems odd on two counts (which might make it even) firstly the tories are always keen to get rid of targets - so how do we hold them accountable? do i just say pc plod hasn't arrived within the period i believe he should have done; that wpc plod hasn't solved the crime as fast as my expectations? secondly of all the public services the police are an extension of the state - so we should be looking to hold politicians to account rather than the police.

anyway i am rambling, partly as there is so much that i could have been talking about but really all that is on my mind is my guts as they rock and roll - letting loose with trumpet blasts that would knock down the walls of jericho and leave a lingering fragrance that would not be out of place in a dodgy dossier on weapons of mass destruction.

mmm thinking i might just be about to kiss cotton.
gotta go.
gotta dash. 

thanks

it used to be said that the only things that were certain in life were death and taxes.
in the era of celebrity the internet means that it is certain that the daily mail will have a story about something that makes you fat (and when you take into acount all the reasons the mail has given the answer is: life itself) and that katie price will be in the news and it will be something to do with an ex or a soon to be ex.

of course this new list of certainties wouldn't be complete if you didn't add: microsoft issuing a critical warning over a flaw in its windows software or its internet browser.
so thank you microsoft for once again issuing a warning, creating a patch and claiming to look for a permanent fix.

here is an idea, and it is just a thought, why the fuck don't you test this shit before you release it? just do your jobs right in the first place and you wouldn't have to issue these warnings that make you look like total wankers.
keep this up and soon the daily mail will be telling us that using internet explorer makes us fat, while the windows o/s is the reason why katie price keeps changing men as she is looking to wrap her software around some new hardware. oooh missus.

hope

just been reading that 3g has been hacked.
when i say 3g i am not talking about the phone company, but of course gorgeous george galloway. quite why the news of the world would hack george galloway's phone is anyone's guess - perhaps they were hoping for tommy sheridan like shenanigans; maybe they believed he was involved in some socialist plot to bring down the country; or they suspected that christopher hitchens was leaving hate mail on his phone or they just wanted to hear george purr like a cat one more time. we will never know.
george galloway is one of many who stand to make a pretty penny out of the fact that they have been hacked.
good for them i say. serves the news of the world right.
now is it wrong of me to hope that the eventual pay-outs leads to the news of the world being cancelled, is it wrong to hope for journalism that doesn't see salacious gossip about someone's sex life as being in the national interest?

ah well fingers crossed.

work

there is an old rugby song that has the lines:
"i was out of work and on the dole, the working class can kiss my hole."
like many bawdy rugby songs it sounds better when you are singing it or when you have had a few too many to drink.

i had an interview last week, that in itself is a rarity. one of the things i have discovered about looking for work is that it isn't that easy when you are not in work.
(and let me tell you it is even harder to get sorted out in doing voluntary work.)
i thought the interview went well, but along with my total inability to be able to judge a person, unless that are tory wankbags, my inability to tell if interviews go well is non-existent. in fact it reminded me of a day many years ago when i attended the london toy fair - i had wandered on to the hasbro stand because i wanted to look at their new range of batman toys (i'm a geek - so sue me) and i got escorted around by a charming booth babe. i was really pleased she laughed at all my jokes, i felt there was a connection there, i know that if i was a retailer i would have placed a large order with her. it was only later on the tube home i realised it was her job to laugh at my jokes, it was her job to make me feel at ease. that is how good i am at that sort of thing.

today i was at the royal academy, sort of enjoying their large sculpture exhibition when my phone goes. i am not a lover of mobile phones. it took me an age to get to the phone. i missed the call. oh well. if they want me they can call back. that is how i roll.
when i get out of the exhibition i see i have a voice message. sometimes technology is a wonderful thing.
i needed to return the call by 4pm, and at 3.57pm i returned the call. that is how i roll.

upshot of it all is that the interview did go well.
that i now have a job. quite daunting really, in fact i am shitting myself. still waiting on the written confirmation, but as it stands i will soon be an upstanding member of the tax paying community again. that means no more babestation for me, no more late nights, early to bed, early to rise.

there are some other lines to that rugby song and they go like this
"the working class can kiss my arse, i've got the foreman's job at last"
for the moment i sort of understand the sentiment behind the lines, but never fear i will quickly return to being angry pat, especially if andy murray wins the tennis.

right now i am just waiting for the confirmation letter and hoping i didn't misconstrue the phone call and what they really said was: "we wouldn't hire you if you were the last cockney on earth."

time for one last look at babestation (hah just kidding i will have to record it from now on!) 

wwe

there was a time when i was still a teenager when i had dreams of being a star sportsman. 

various things stopped me from achieving my dreams - mostly my love of confectionary: cursed with a love of twix, aztec, mars, curly wurly, wagon wheels and kitkats. 

i have never been a great one for watching sport on tv and since the inception of the bbc's 5live pretty much most of my sport consumption has been via the radio. 

in recent years only two sports have bucked that trend: basketball and wrestling. 

i became a fan of basketball when it was being shown late at night on the tv hosted by alton byrd, it was also the era of michael jordan - a magical time for sport. that led to me attending the games of the london leopards and a few years of glory at the london arena.

wrestling was something that crept up on me. a couple of the lads at work were big fans of the (then) wwf. they got some stick for their fannish attitude towards the grapplers. 

because of their chit chat i would check out the occasional bout on tv whenever i was away stuck in a hotel because of work. 

then the intervention of another fan (yes shep that would be you) tipped me over the edge (geddit) and i became a wwe junkie. what helped cement my love of the wwe was the fact that for a year i could watch it on freeview, just before i would sit down and watch the sunset beach omnibus edition.

i was hooked. 

i still am. 

i was lucky because my first immersion into the world of sports entertainment was during the wwe's attitude period when stars such as stone cold steve austin (WHAT). kurt angle (WHAT), the rock (WHAT), triple h (WHAT), chris jericho (WHAT) and others were in their full pomp and splendour. high flying action, big storylines, great work on the microphone. for me it was superhero comics meeting theatre, as if stan lee had written macbeth with catch phrases. 

i was hooked then. 

i am hooked now. 

the wwe has moved beyond being a guilty pleasure. 

there are creators who i admire people like orson welles, frank zappa, john zorn, robert fripp, ritchie blackmore, stephen king, philip k dick, edgar rice burroughs, bruce springsteen, john woo, stan lee, chris claremont, jack kirby to name a few. 

among them has to stride the figure of the wwe's ringmaster vincent kennedy mcmahon - he may look like max bygraves on steroids - but vinny mac, the genetic jackhammer, is entertainment writ large. 

the wwe is a work of art. 

no it is more than that- the wwe is genius. 

and i love it. 

boris

it appears that members of the greater london authority have decided to gan up on boris. they have decided to question him about delivering on his promises (such as sorting out labour relations on the tube).
i think they are being rather harsh with the dear boy.
after all he has given us the boris bikes.
more importantly he is bringing back the routemaster bus. well that is not strictly true what he did was have a competition to design a new version of the routemaster and promised to get some of them onto the streets of london 2012. i miss the old routemaster bus - there was something magical about it (and apparently an engineering marvel when it came to maintaining the bus fleet), but as much as i miss them all i really want is a transport system that works. when i am on the 15 or 135 double decker bus i am not thinking to myself - oh if only this was a routemaster, mostly i am thinking about how long i waited for the darn thing to turn up or just how bad the driver is (this escalates when the driver does that thing they do to get back on schedule: wait at a stop for ages for no reason - of course the fact the rest of us have places to get to is neither here nor there to the driver).

so what if boris hasn't done much other than be boris - he has given us bikes and a bus. isn't that enough? 

excuse

george osborne told it like it is. today he gave us the skinny. the real deal, the full sp.
yup the economy is in a bad way because of... well.. snow.
snow, it is the fault of the snow. i reckon so, jimmy.
snow? mr. osborne, more like snow job.


meanwhile over at the bank of england their govenor has said that pay restraint should be the order of the day. if people should think that their wages should increase to combat rising inflation then they are wrong, that would be a bad thing for people to do. to expect more money would damage the fragile recovery.
so remember that while you are struggling to make ends meet as everything around you increases in price that the belt tightening you do is for the good of the economy. as you know we are all in this together.
why i am even expecting the govenor himself to show the way as mervyn king comes out and says: "hey look at me i am feeling your pain, i have taken a pay cut and i have encouraged all my pals in the financial sector to do just the same as well." not likely to happen because we all know that keeping wages down and belt tightening only apply to those who are at the bottom end of the wage scale.

so with the words of messrs osborne and king in my ear i have bent over, grabbed my ankles, applied the lube beccause frankly scarlet we are all about to get right royally fucked.

waaiit

we have entered a new era.
the era of waaiit: 'we are all in it together'. it is perfect for the times. the con/dems are quick to tell us that we are all in it together and that we will have to waaiit until the national deficit is dealt with before we can return to the good times.
it even works when it comes to the differences between the haves and the haves not.
while the deficit is being seen to by cutting public spending left right and centre the poor and the not so well off will have to waaiit until things get better, meanwhile having to cope with less money in their pocket, fewer employment opportunities and harder times ahead. during this period of struggling to make ends meet they will hear the constant refrain of waaiit.
meanwhile the rich don't have to waaiit at all - their salaries will continue to rise, their opportunities will continue to be there (no offshoring or relocating to a developing economy for these people). they are safe from the hardships of waaiit. they don't have to worry about schools, hospitals or public transport.
so at least we all know where we stand when we are told we are all in it together.
the rich will get richer and they won't be waaiiting for the rest of us the catch up, meanwhile we will be told that the good times are coming we just have to waaiit because we are all in it together.
personally i am beginning to think that waaiit is wank.

application

the conservative party are looking for a new media chief. they are looking for someone to replace the recently resigned andy coulson. coulson has had to go because of the phone hacking scandal at the news of the world newspaper. (as a quick digression here i read recently that the law on phone hacking is such that if someone should 'hack' your phone after you have listened to your messages then it doesn't count, it is only illegal if they have listened to your messages before you. so does it mean it doesn't count as stealing if people take something after you have used it? 'm'lud - it can't be stealing, they have been watching that tv for months now...') anyway coulson said that even though he was the editor of the paper he had no knowledge of the hacking.
and we believe him, don't we?

by all accounts he has done a good job as communications director for the conservative party and, more recently, the government. sadly though once he became the story he had to go.

bye bye andy.

anyway i want to throw my hat into the ring as the government's media director.
why?
firstly it is not like i have much else to do right now and having some money coming in would be nice.
secondly it would show that the government is serious about helping people get back to work - though surely given the way they are asking councils around the country to save cash the role of communications director should be abolished.
thirdly i can spin that little conundrum for them with simple words of advice that will appeal to many parents out there: "do as i say, not do as i do".
fourthly i can distill the government message down to its very essence and because of thise save them money - no need to run fancy campaigns when everyone knows what you stand for and what you mean. even better such a bold statement frees them up to do what they all came into politics to do: suck up to the richer and powerful.

so without further preamble i give you the government's message (true this is coming mainly from the conservative side of the coalition, but we have seen that many of the liberal democrats are happy to sign up to it).
"we hate the poor. everything that is wrong in the country is because of the poor. we love the rich. everything that is good in the country is becase of the rich. the poor will have to pay more."

see short and sweet. all bases are covered. no lies are told.
i thank you.

now give me the job.

trailers

i love the cinema.

i am a movie fan. i am not an expert. i am not a buff. i just love watching movies.

there are few things better than sitting in a cinema and being caught up in the world of the silver screen. (true that these days it is harder to have those magical moments thanks to mobile phones and people who have no idea what ’a whisper' is, but on those occasions when the audience is rapt there is a sense of utter joy.)
not all things are wonderful in the world of visiting cinemas.

the advent of 3d is an annoyance. i have yet to see a movie that benefits from it, the glasses are too small and i get a headache from them. still if the movie is good then i can 'forget' the glasses.

then there are the adverts. having to see the same adverts time and time again. inexplicable car adverts that leave you baffled by their 'message', mobile phone ads that promise you a whole world of excitement with just the press of a few buttons. or something to do with perfumes, holidays or household improvements. then there are the odd ‘universal’ ads that have been voiced over by english actors and just look wrong.

some ads are very funny at for the first couple of viewings. then slowly but surely they just become annoying. though not as annoying as the iggy pop insurance ads – not sure anything can be more annoying than they are.

it is the trailers that fill me with a mix of thrills and dread.

when i was a kid summer was the best time to go to the cinema. i would go several times a week, many happy days at cinemas such as the northfields odeon; rayner’s lane odeon; the abc at ealing broadway or the harrow granada cinema (where i saw my first x movie). no matter how good the movie was there was always something special about the trailers. they would hint at movies that would be coming in the next few months. as the summer passed i could tick off all the movies from the trailers that i had seen and just dream of the ones i couldn’t see.
now trailers begin being shown months in advance. so while i have been wowed by the trailers for ‘thor’ and ‘green lantern’ i know i am going to be bored of them before the movies are released. i am already bored with the ‘pirates of the caribbean’ trailer and the movie isn’t released until may. ugh.

what i can’t forgive is the trailer that offers hope, the trailer that makes you go ‘oh wow that looks interesting’ and then delivers the killer blow of telling you what the movie is. there i was sitting back enjoying the start of a trailer. it has space in it; look there is an apollo landing craft hurtling through the sky. good so far. it’s apollo 11 and it is the first moon landing. interesting. armstrong doing his ‘small step’ bit. history. back to mission control and the hint that all is not as it seems. conspiracy. ok i am hooked. secret mission on the moon, only a short time to carry it out. yes, yes, yes i am sold. let me see it now. astronauts bounce over the surface of the moon towards a crashed spacecraft. wow and wowsa. this just keeps getting better. secret mission and crashed visitors from space. astronaut is all awed and agog and utters the words “you will not believe what we are seeing.”

and he is right.

i don’t believe what i am seeing as up on the screen floats the legend: “from director michael bay.” nooooooooooo. don’t do that to me. no, it can’t be, it isn’t right. the sf alien conspiracy movie i was dreaming of has just become a transformers movie.

a fucking transformers movie.

a fucking shit transformers movie that will be loud and make no sense.

my silver screen dream lies shattered on the rocks of bad film-making.

i can’t believe it another fucking transformers movie.

what did we do to deserve this?

gutted

it seems that 'the world' is sinking.
'the world' being an ambitious development of islands in the vague shape of the countries of the world off the coast of dubai.
these islands were intended to be luxury homes for the rich, famous and tasteless, similar to the palm tree shaped developments that are homes to stars and footballers such as michael owen (who? oh i am so cruel.)

i am not gutted that i can't afford to have a luxury mansion built on my own private island off of dubai. actually that is not true - i wish i could afford it, i just wouldn't choose to live in dubai.

i am gutted that the 'islands' are sinking and that none of the rich, famous and tasteless have bought and built property there.
just imagine the charity single that could have come out for that!

obsession

i have a current new obsession.

no it is not the new late night adult channels that have popped up on freeview - i only know about them because i needed to for the purposes of 'research'.
neither is it the contemplation of the significance of part-works in the developement of western civilisation. do they ever finish? has anyone ever completed one? are there societies of part-workers?
nor is it a contextualised reading of the works of liz jones to see just how out of touch she is with reality (very) and just how bad a writer she is (very).

no my current obsession is with diaries.
naturally this will not last long, if only because of the very nature of diaries.
i am not even sure why i am so interested in them - i have never been able to use them. i have had various diaries over the years: pocket ones, desk ones, filofax ones, ones that have a page a day, a week over two pages, a week on a page. some have been hardcover, some have been softcover. all of them have ceased to be useful after about two months by which time i have misplaced them (ok ok: lost them) or i have forgotten to put important dates into them.

yet i find myself in a situation where i desire a diary.
what makes it even more bizarre is that at the moment it is not like i have a lot of things to put into a diary, it is not like i have to make sure i keep all my lunch engagements straight.

all the same - diaries call out to me. their siren call is strong. they lure me. they tempt me.
so far i have been strong and resisted.

time to go looking for a new obsession, perhaps now is the time to read the fiction of katie price.

shocked

there is a report on the bbc news site (which has really declined in quality recently – almost as it is dumbing down so as not to upset various commercial concerns) which points out that the metropolitan police force may have been economical with the truth over their use of undercover agents at the g20 protests of 2009.


i am not shocked that they may have fudged their response.

i am shocked that members of parliament didn’t ask them why they didn’t have covert officers mingling with the crowd. call me paranoid but i have always assumed that at such demonstrations that there would be a handful of covert operatives in the crowd trying to pick up titbits of useful information (this may also be because i have watched too many spy films).

true their eco copper hasn’t worked out quite the way they intended, but there is always the worry of someone going native (see learnt that from crime movies).

not only did the eco copper mess up the operation he was on by offering to speak in defence of those he was watching, but it has also meant that the met has had to come clean about the g20 protests. leading to them saying:

"having made thorough checks on the back of recent media reporting we have now established that covert officers were deployed during the g20 protests. therefore the information that was given … was not accurate."

ooops.

i guess because i expect them to have covert officers there i don’t mind them lying about it. after all it makes sense; they want to protect their operational value. hold on (you are probably thinking) what about the rights of the protesters? well as i have said i would be expecting people to be among the crowd ‘observing’ and while you are protesting and demonstrating within the confines of the law there isn’t anything to worry about.

what does shock me is the lame ‘oh how did we miss that’ style of the apology.

whoever wrote that has made them look like muppets, frankly if you can only discover that you have your own men working undercover on an operation a year or so later, what chance do you have in solving a real crime.

someone really needs to work on their spin.

gloomy

today is supposed to be the most miserable, depressing, gloomy day of the year. it has been proven to be so. (here comes the science bit)

where weather=w, debt=d, time since christmas=t, time since failing our new year’s resolutions=q, low motivational levels=m and the feeling of a need to take action=na.

the date is calculated using many factors, including weather conditions, debt level (the difference between debt accumulated and our ability to pay), time since christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action.

pretty rock solid i would say. hey it has even been reported and discussed on 5live’s breakfast show. how much more proof do you need?

it makes no difference that it has been widely reported that the original formula and explanation was nothing more than a puffed up press release for sky travel. nor does it matter that the formula doesn’t actually work. the simple fact is the idea of this being the most depressing day of the year has entered the popular zeitgeist.

so if you are feeling blue, if you are feeling down, if you are feeling depressed because today is not just monday, but today is blue monday what are you going to do? who you gonna call?

well it seems you really don’t have to do much to help get you out of the funk of knowing that somehow both vanessa feltz and piers morgan keep getting lucrative work. the solution? it is the simple things in life that help get us through blue monday. according to the bod they had on the radio today it is all about making a list of the good things you have (what my mum would have called ‘counting your blessings’), and we know that this works because paul mckenna has recommended it as a technique - what more science do you need? another technique is not to worry about the future but concentrate on the here and now. other things that help are hearing/paying a compliment, having a laugh, helping someone and, my favourite, eating your favourite food: so that will be an extra large pizza followed by some doughnuts washed down by a lot of coffee.

see i can do happy.

(don't worry i will be back to my grumpy old self later in the day...)

searched

for a while there i was being searched on sensible things. it must have been the christmas and new year. people turning over new leaves and all.

but now my fans are back as i have been found by the search "having an enema".
i have found my level.

again

so there i was in the saatchi gallery enjoying the art in the current exhibition: newspeak - british art now (jolly fine it is too). the gallery is fantastic, spacious, well laid out and plenty of art to see.
i wander through the first gallery. i chin stroke as i look at the art. what did the artist mean in this painting? i wander through the second gallery. i ponder the work and contemplate quie what the intentions of the artist were. into the third gallery and considerations of form and context battle with style and content as i gaze at the art.
a voice.
"excuse me sir." the large, well dressed, security guard says as he walks towards me.
i think: what have i done wrong. can't be the camera as unlike many of the bigger galleries saatchi is happy for people to take photos. can't be the bag i am carrying (although some of the well turned out security guards there do sometimes get a bit sniffy about bags), have i knocked something over? is my zip undone? have i leched too obviously at some of the ladies?
"excuse me sir, but where did you get the t-shirt from?" now i can't blame him for asking. i was wearing a graphitti designs superman t-shirt, featuring the man of steel by wayne boring. a classic.
at least he only asked where i got it from rather than could he have it.

we got chatting. turns out he is a dc fan and he had the very large and lovely '75 years of dc comics' by taschen books (i am not jealous, not at all, not one little bit. honest). he also has an idea for his own superman t-shirt (and i have to agree with him it would be a cracker, but then i am a sucker for neal adams artwork).

all i could do was point him in the right direction to try to find the shirt.
turns out it is still available.
now i just have to remember to mention it to him - if i go back there anytime soon.

glasses, t-shirts i am becoming a style icon.

move over gok wan there is a new fashion guru in town.

requests

i am beginning to get used to odd requests or offers as i walk down the street.
it almost seems normal now.

there i was walking home minding my own business and getting wet in the persistent drizzle. a voice. "boss" (it is the generic term that seems to have replaced 'mate' when talking to anyone) "boss can i ask you something?" i stop. turn to the voice. it is a late 20s, early 30s chunky asian guy. normally the 'can i ask you something?' gambit is a prelude to: can you give me money. a question that never bothers me these days as i have none, so don't feel guilty when i say: no.
so i say sure you can.
"boss i really like your glasses. can i have them?"
well this left me a little gobsmacked on several fronts. my glasses are pretty bog standard - in fact they seem to be one of the endless variation of the common bland oblong style that has ruled the roost for so long (how i wish i could get a pair of the old nhs specs); secondly they are old and are pretty much falling apart and thirdly they are prescription glasses and not much use to anyone but me.
the answer was simple.
no. nope.
"sorry you can't have them - i need them." i said to him.
"i was going to swap them for these." he shows me a pair of dodgy john lennon style sunglasses that appear to be held together by hope and wishes.
while i compliement the wreckage he has in his hand i tell him that they would be no use to me - as without the glasses i am wearing i can't see a thing.
"oh - but i really like them. it is not that there is anything wrong, just my eyes."
at which point i become all sensible (even though the survival part of my brain is cranking up the flight option).
my body has responded and i am walking a little faster.
he keeps pace.
i tell him if he has a problem with his eyes he doesn't want my glasses that will just lead to more problems for him. he isn't listening. he is just telling me that there isn't anything wrong, just his eyes and how he likes my glasses. i persist. you need to go to an opticians, if there is somethign wrong with your eyes you need to get them checked. seriously, don't fuck about with your eyes (i used fuck to show just how important i felt my statement was - didn't work).
"boss just asking because i like your glasses."
"that's ok, not to worry, just that i can't let you have them because i need them to see." i make a joke about not being able to see much at the moment because of the rain and needing window wipers. it fell on deaf ears.
walking just that bit faster now.
he still keeps pace.
shit he is goign to follow me home at this rate.
he goes through his spiel about liking my glasses and wanting them. i repeat that he needs to go to the opticians. even point out that the local hospital has a walkin centre where he might get the test free (see even in the face of growing panic - i am helpful). he doesn't care. he seems crestfallen that he can't have my glasses.
he asks again.
i tell him they won't do him any good and that i need them.
then as we come to the street before mine he turns off and wishes me goodnight and adds a forlorn "just wanted them because they looked good."

now i can't help wondering if i have the da vinci frames or something.
this time next year dan brown will be writing a bestselling novel about the secret of the universe as found in a pair of specsavers frames: just better not be mine - i still need them.

wet

i had to go to a meeting today. not far. just up the road. ten minutes by shank's pony.

simple.
really simple.
except that as i closed my front door the rain started.
as i walked down the road the rain kept going.
as i turned on to the main road the rain got heavier.
as i went up the main road it kept falling.
as i reached the zebra crossing the hail came down.
as i crossed the road the hail got harder.
as i turned the final corner there was thunder.
as i approached the building there was lightning.
as i opened the door the rain stopped.
thank you. thank you so fucking much for that.
i got to my meeting looking like a drowned wookie and smelling like one as well as slowly i steamed dry in the ‘we don’t know how to turn down the thermostat’ central heating of the office.

still look in the brightside – don’t need to wash my hair tonight.

pardon

gotta love boris. there are times when he is priceless.
he has asked his twitter followers to bombard the aslef union's website in a bid to persuade 'sensible' tube drivers not to strike on the day of the royal wedding.
ken livingstone might be right that the use of twitter by boris is 'crazy' and that boris should stop tapping at his blackberry and start talking directly to the union and the drivers to sort it out.
yet it maybe that boris has an idea. perhaps boris thinks that if his 130,000 twitter fans (and those that read about his idea) agree with him and take the action he suggests then a message will be sent to the union: that they have little support in their proposed strike.
for most of us on the outside the dispute seems to be over a difference of opinion. london underground say that the union is tearing up a long standing agreement over pay and working conditions, in this case it is about the part of the 1996 agreement where the unions accepted a wage increase for working some bank holidays. the union say that they are now working all bank holidays.
what the union want is triple time (approximately £360) and a day of in lieu.
some might call it greedy, others miht call it sticking it to the man.
given that bob crow (on a basic of around £90,000 in 2009 - different sources have differing amounts) has already made a point of saying that if there are redundancies announced (and he wasn't just talking about on the london transport system) near the royal wedding then the rmt union would seriously consider coming out on strike in solidarity with those workers.

the royal wedding is a precursor to what will happen during the london olympics in 2012.
there is a part of me that wants to see a strong union defending the pay and conditions of its workers i am just not crazy about unions that will strike at the drop of a hat.

though if i am honest it might be that there are enough staff who work on london transport tubes and buses who are less than helpful and so annoy me or it might just be that bob crow and his cronies get right up my nose.

maybe ken is right: boris needs to get involved. he needs to get involved not because he is the man to solve the problem, he needs to get involved because he is the mayor of london and frankly this is part of his job.

turnabout

funny how when the boot is on the other foot the purity of freedom of information isn't quite so shiny.

before continuing i have to confess that i think that the existence of wikileaks is, on balance, a good thing. i would be much more in favour of it if there were releases from governments that were not democratic and if the people who were responsible for it could reign in their holier than thou attitudes. 

for the moment neither seems possible so we are where we are. 

a united states grand jury has issued subpoenas to various social networks such as twitter, facebook and google for information concerning the links between wikileaks and bradley manning, the us serviceman accused of stealing and leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive government cables.
some of those named in the subpoenas have said that they will fight the disclosures.

wikileaks describes the subpoena as harassment.
julian assange has this to say: "If the iranian government was to attempt to coercively obtain this information from journalists and activists of foreign nations, human rights groups around the world would speak out."
let's just look at that statement shall we? 
strikes me as a little disingenuous to compare the legitimate use of the law of the american state to subpoena to that of iranian coercion with its implications of secret police, physical coercion and show trials. still i guess we should be thankful that he didn't play the nazi card, though i am sure it won't be long before it does. 
nor does it seem worth the effort to concern ourselves with the assertion that somehow because it is wikileaks, assange and the american government that somehow it is being brushed under the carpet and no one is protesting the actions of the grand jury and no one is trying to defend twitter et al. given that assange et al are speaking out about it, given that several are fighting the subpoenas and that the story is being reported everywhere it is hardly a case where human rights organisations have to step up to the plate to make the rest of us aware of the situation. 


brigitta jonsdottir, an icelandic mp, described thus "i think i am being given a message, almost like someone breathing in a phone." again it sounds nice, fitting nicely with the whole secret police state thing, except it is a pretty explicit message with no doubt who it is coming from. 


it seems a little ironic that wikileaks et al who are champions of freedom of information and who are happy to publish documents that were never intended for public consumption are somehow trying to protect their own information. surely what is good for the goose is good for the gander? 


of course it could be argued that the united states government is going about this in the wrong way. they are using legitimate means, they are using the long arm of the law. what they should be doing is either stealing the information or they should just be offering a large amount of cash for someone to leak the information to them, after all both are just variations on the way wikileaks obtains their information. 


the argument of assange is that wikileaks provides a useful service (i agree) but if you are going to be such a champion of freedom of information, if you are going to claim that disclosure is in the public's interest it is a little hard to then argue that your information, your data is sacrosanct. 
unless of course you believe that certain individuals are above the law or that certain individuals have to be trusted without question because their motives are noble and honourable. 
except that we would find that hard to swallow if it were the argument that governments made, so we have to take it with a pinch of salt when individuals make it. 

floaters

i am not sure what i have done to my diet but recently my poo has taken on miraculous properties: it floats.
only after several flushes will it disappear.
there must be a use for such a talent.
it didn't take me long to work out what i could do with my unsinkable turds.
i have david cameron and the conservatives to thank for my idea - the combination of austerity drive and the big society has provided me with the inspiration. under the tories the austerity drive means that a number of lifeboat installations are going to be shut down. given that this vital service might be left short or resources i am volunteering my floatation dumps as a solution. whenever there is a disaster at sea they can fly me out to there location and i can do a giant dump and there you go 'big jobby' done and people are holding on for dear life and safety.
with a bit of work i can expand it out to all sorts of other disaster relief techniques.
sure it might smell but in times of great need sacrifices have to be made.

the big worry is keeping it out of the hands of the military - where it could have potential devastating effects becoming a whole new strain of biological warfare.

so look at dragon's den me and my amazing poo is coming your way.

disappointed

i wanted to get a copy of the times today. i had seen an advert saying that the saturday edition of the times was going to have a gilbert and george poster in it. 

i like gilbert and george. 

my cold meant that i barely moved from my shit pit and so missed out on the times. 

disappointment. 

still that the times were carrying something by gilbert and george meant only one thing: they have a new show coming up. 

excitement. 

there is a piece about them on the evening standard's website that confirms the forthcoming show, but also reminds me why i should never know anything about my heroes. i bow to no man in my bromance of bruce willis, but i know nothing about him for me bruce is what is up on the screen. the same can be said of all those i like in books, comics, music and movies. it seems that whenever i learn anything of my heroes they turn out to be a bit rubbish. 

so imagine my shock when i read that gilbert and george like david cameron.

disappointment. 

i could understand tracey emin saying she was a tory, but g&g? 

i can only hope that billy bragg was right when he sang: "gilbert and george are taking the piss aren't they?"

another hero bites the dust. 

(don't worry gilbert and george i'll still go to the exhibition at the white cube, even if i don't get an invite to the opening night private view and even if you are tories.) 

cold

have man-flu, with added headache. feeling poorly.
so poorly, in fact, that i can't work up any vitriol on anything.
that is how poorly i am!
hope you are feeling sorry for me now...

quote

"It's not the same old Tories - these are worse." so says labour mp andy slaughter. 
hard to argue with him. couldn't have said it any better. 

doors

i like doors.

doors are good.

they keep the outside out. the inside in.

you can open them. you can close them.

doors let you go from here to there.

doors also have the magical power of congregation.

if the door is a busy door then people who are not going in and not coming out will congregate in the door space making the door less than useful.

why the fuck do people do that, why? why? why? 

oscar

i have a theory.
have you noticed how being the leader of the governent prematurely ages you? look at how blair and brown looked haggarded when they were in power. look at how obama has lost some of his youthful swagger. crikey knows what it woud have done to michael foot if he had ever been elected prime minister.

i think david cameron has played a blinder in this department.
it is not only that he has someone else to shoulder the blam... sorry the responsibility with. his partner in the endeavour, nick clegg, is for all intents and purposes a cameron clone. they look alike, they have the same sorts of backgrounds, they like each other.
it is a political marriage made in heaven.

again this isn't where cameron has played his trump card.

he has taken a leaf out of mr. fry's book and consulted oscar wilde. let's just say that nick clegg is the canvas, and it all becomes plain. clegg is the one who is suffering stresses and strains, clegg is the one that has become a hate figure.
meanwhile cameron sails on looking hale and hearty (albeit it a little too airbrushed).

have to hand it to him, cameron has hit on the perfect method of making sure the shit doesn't stick to him.

cds

i have just catalogued my cds and dvds. it is a very nerdy thing to have done. 

there have been a few surprises in what i own and what i don't own.

i have them all listed on a nice spreadsheet. one day i might even consider racking them all in some sort of order, at the moment my cds and dvds are just placed on shelves where there are space for them. only in certain circumstances are their pockets of order: all my bruce willis dvds are together, while all my frank zappa cds are together (only steven seagal, king crimson and tzadik/john zorn are treated similarly). 

before i get around to that i might have to list all my books - or maybe i would be better off reading them? 

(talking of books - i would just like to register my disappointed at the moleskine company. after my recent 'aren't they wonderful' piece i still haven't received a care package from the company. i tell you product placement just doesn't work. 

and while on the subject of books - there is another of those write a novel in a month type competitions. i am going to give it a go. fifty thousand words of mindless drivel from me - well it is one way to spend january.) 

blame

you may have noticed that i don't like the conservatives. 

you wouldn't be far wrong if you thought that i despise the current crop of smug over privileged tories who are currently in power. they wear their entitlement like smartly cut suits from savile row, at least they are honest about it, and i can admire them for that.

george osborne has been on a plush skiing holiday to the swiss alps, the bad news is he has returned safely home this week.

for some odd reason mr. orsborne’s decision to take a new year’s family break has come under attack.

i can’t understand why anyone can complain.

i can see why the daily mirror would say something unkind about mr. osborne. they describe him as being ‘callous’ ‘glib’ that he is acting like a modern day marie antoinette ‘sneering down at people’. i am sure that the boys at the ‘socialist worker’ and the ‘morning star’ are even more vitriolic in their attacks on poor little rich boy george.

i can’t understand why the ‘daily mail’ or ‘the sun’ would have a have any problems with mr. osborne jetting off with his family. given that both newspapers have been generally supportive of the con/dem cuts and their austerity drive i can only imagine that the highly paid editors of both papers (and their proprietors) had given up their christmas and new year celebrations and were either working down the local homeless shelter or were sat at home watching tv (the bbc of course) while enjoying a supermarket six pack. i doubt it very much, unless the supermarket was harrods and the six-pack was bollinger.

still whenever a quote is needed – you can always rely on the taxpayer’s alliance to provide one. one of their officials had this to say: “with hikes in vat and fuel duty, it won’t be a very happy new year for many taxpayers, so some will see this as highly insensitive given their own circumstances.

‘the new taxes that politicians are putting in place will make it that bit harder for ordinary families to enjoy little luxuries and holidays.”

quite why anyone gives a flying fuck what the taxpayer’s alliance has to say about anything is still a mystery to me – they are a self-appointed mouthpiece for big business. while they might be quick to condemn mr. osborne for going on holiday they are slow to attack those in the business community who use tax avoidance policies or who offshore their profits (after all if they are paying less tax, then the rest of us have to pay more). nor do they have anything bad to say about those who make large parts of their workforce redundant – again if you put more people on the social then the tax spend increases. nor are they saying that the forthcoming financial sector bonuses are also wrong in the circumstances (let’s be fair what the taxpayer’s alliance believe is that as long as the rich are ok the rest of us can struggle.)

what also makes all the outrage being directed at mr. osborne even more bizarre is that he is a very wealthy individual, he is rolling in cash and he can afford to go to the alps. while i am not quite as comfortable with the ‘filthy rich’ as perter mandelson i can’t see what the point is of criticising those who have money when they spend it on what they see fit.

it is not like george osborne has done anything wrong, given the chance most people would do the same (indeed all over the snow affected holiday period we had to listen to people going on about how their winter break had been ruined).

it is not like it is a surprise that a very rich tory is showing us that ‘we are all in it together’ means as much as a liberal democrat promise. while mr. osborne went on holiday, mr. cameron decided to cancel his family holiday in thailand. no doubt everyone in the cameron household donned sackcloth.

at least mr. osborne is honest.

mr. cameron has shown that he is all patronizing spin.

now that ‘the sun’ and ‘daily mail’ have raised issues with mr. osborne’s holiday arrangements perhaps they might want to take another look at the policies of the tories and be somewhat more critical of those arrangements.

guess it is easier to be angry holidays than it is policies.

the price we pay for celebrity obsessed newspapers.

reversal

there was a time when universities were hallowed halls of learning. when (and if) you were granted access to them you felt very special. you felt like you had achieved something. there was something noble about going on to further education. it was a rite of passage, a life changing event. future earnings were not uppermost in the decision making process.

it was easier to take such an idyllic vision of education because if you got a place you got a grant from the state to study.

fast forward a bunch of years and many more people plan, and succeed, to attend university. the increase in places being offered, and accepted, being encouraged by the government, they want to have 50% of school leavers getting degrees. that may students meant that grants had to go and fees had to come in.

zip to the present and you have the situation where the con/dems have agreed to let universities increase their fees, some being allowed to charge as much as £9 thousand a year.

this isn’t about the inequity of the fees.

in today’s sunday times there was a short article about how some universities are blacklisting some a-levels. get a pass in those a-levels and it will not count as far as those universities are concerned (unless you have the offending a-level as a fourth subject). while it is the russell group who get quoted in the article (they represent the top 20 universities in the uk), others are also following suit.

now it is a case of getting the right grades and in the accepted subjects. in principle there is nothing wrong with that – assuming that the university has made it perfectly clear what a-levels are acceptable, and more importantly which ones are not.

acceptable a-level s include: biology, chemistry, french, geography, history, latin, maths, music, philosophy and physics.

ones that are not acceptable include accounting, citizenship, communications studies, dance, environmental studies, health and social care, information technology, sports studies, travel and tourism and world development.

neither list is exhaustive.

now call me an old fat trot (“you are an old fat trot” – thanks shep) but the acceptable list has just the whiff of grammar or independent school about it, while the unacceptable list is one that smacks of inner city comprehensives.

i happen to believe that no learning is wasted. if you are taught well then the lessons of learning can be applied through all aspects of your life.

the acceptable list could be seen as being rigorous and analytical giving you the tools to think clearly, skills that would be lacking from the airy fairy unacceptable a-levels. another distinction that could be made between the two lists is that one is academic and the other is practical. if you do the more practical a-levels you are, of course, not going to be clever enough to do a degree at a top university, you should be off to a technical college or a polytechnic not a university.

but hold on. in the new modern we have to care about the wealth generators of the big society let’s think who might be more useful: the philosopher or the accountant? the latin speaker or the information technologist? just what is the difference between a musician and a dancer. while it might be nice to be a classicist i am sure it is always better to do it when you come from a wealthy and connected background so that the school tie does the work so that the degree doesn’t have too.

yet this isn’t about class. oh no.

this is about the market.

when universities were hallowed halls they could be elitist. it was part of their very fabric; it was part of their reason to be.

now that universities are sitting at the table of mammon it is a bit rich (oh that is just gold, and see i did it again) they have moved from being guardians of knowledge to being service providers. universities now are educational ticketmaster: each year they offer a bunch of academic gigs and the students just apply to get their seats. there shouldn’t be a blacklist in a-levels (unless in each prospectus the university lists the acceptable a-levels allowing students to make an informed choice) once you have the required grades all that matters is: can you pay? (oh ok technically it should be: can you pay back the fees. where are the jobs? maybe in finance, maybe in sports, maybe in media just the sort of subjects that the russell group seem to be sneering at).

can’t help but think that the blacklist is there for one reason – to ensure that the right people get into the right universities.

after all we wouldn’t want them to sully the tie, would we?

bored

you would have thought that working for nasa (the national aeronautics and space administration) would have been exciting and busy trying to get a man on the moon and all that sort of thing.

yet it seems that the boys (and girls) of nasa have nothing to do: they are fed up with planning that trip to mars and beyond; the search for extra terrestrial life has lost its appeal and playing tetris or solitaire is so last year.

don’t worry the brainiacs of nasa have come up with away to defeat the ennui: they have had a special meeting to discuss the best and the worst science fiction films to show which of them demonstrated good or bad science.

nasa and the science community are happy to provide hollywood with scientific and technical information and, in the case of nasa, product placement in order to aid the entertainment industry. sometimes they are not pleased with the results because the science portrayed on the screen is not accurate – who would have thought it?

movies such as 2012, the core, 6th day and armageddon are criticised because of the silly science employed in the movies. those pesky scientist who go to see movies at their local cinema and end up thinking that they are sitting in a classroom rather than are there to be entertained by mindless entertainment. they may as well go around with big kiljoy t-shirts on. there can’t be many people who saw the day the earth changed who thought – yeah that was realistic, or who were thrilled by armageddon and came out thinking that would be the plan i would go with.

perhaps the scientists at nasa are just working out their own wish fulfillment – they want their lives to be as exciting as their screen counterparts.

one of the good people of the science and entertainment exchange (yes it really does exist) has even suggested that science fiction films should carry the following advisory “no scientific idea were seriously hurt during the making of this film.” this proves that they either have a sense of humour or they are very po faced, hard to tell.

frankly if they think movies such as armageddon and the core are bad, while gattica is good just shows that they have no taste at all. the fact that the latest films they list as being good are gattica and contact – just means they have to get out more.

maybe if the bods at nasa stopped watching science fiction movies and started getting on with doing the science fact stuff we would all have our bloody jet packs and silver suits.

c’mon nasa pull your finger out and stop watching movies.

nudge

with david cameron's big society it isn't about being told what to do it is about being encouraged what to do.
so it is good to give to charity - so why not have cash point ask if you want to donate some money to a good cause? why not have the local till jockey at your supermarket of choice ask if you want you change to go to something worthwhile? (given that those who are in a position to be able to give are soon going to be working longer hours in order to give, they are not going to be able to give time to the big society so a few pennies and pounds here and there will make them feel better).
or why not do as sir stephen bubb (a name that will make fans of marvel comics' character smile - oh alright it made me smile): tax bankers' bonuses and use the proceeds for charity works. nice, simple and elegant - those that can afford more, paying towards all those good deeds that will be so important for the big society.
of course it will never happen because, heaven forfend, we do not want to upset the bankers and those high fliers in the financial markets - hell it isn't like they got us into this mess... oh sorry they did.

so how about a compromise? why not publish the names and addresses of all those who receive very large bonuses so the charities can approach them directly, so that they can 'nudge' them and get them to stump up some of their easily gained cash?
i am sure the masters of the universe woun't mind a call or 10 from their local charities asking for a donation.

just a thought.