music

there were a few very big led zeppelin fans when i was at school. i wasn’t one of them. i have no idea why their blues rock didn’t appeal to me, it just didn’t.
then i was leant a tape of ‘houses of the holy’ and i was toe tapping away.
then someone leant me ‘led zeppelin 3’ and i was bored (when i confessed this to a few of the zep fans at school one of them, karen, told me i didn’t deserve to live) then i heard a bootleg of led zep live it was a poor recording and had a very very long and dull piano concerto in the middle of ‘no quarter’ which just confirmed that john paul jones might have been a good bassist and could tickle the ivories but he should leave the overblown keyboarding to the likes of emerson and wakeman.
skip forward a couple of years: it was a bank holiday, along with my pal, adam; i had just spent the weekend dishing up doughnuts to fair goers. very tired but £50 better off we were in the west end to spend, spend, spend. in ‘our price’ records we heard them playing some tracks from the new led zep lp ‘in through the outdoor’. we both liked it. we both bought it. mine is still in the brown paper bag it came in.
from there on in i was a fan of page, plant, bonham and jones.
never got to see them live, instead i have amassed a very large quantity of live bootlegs, which are the next best thing.
robert plant has gone off and had a successful solo career.
jimmy page has done some bits and pieces but seems to spend most of his time revisiting the led zeppelin legacy by remastering, repackaging and re-releasing led zep. seems to be a great waste of a great talent, if you ask me.
from the video you can see a love of satin, a lot of timotei hair type shaking going on, that robert plant has a rebekah brooks thing going on.
oh and i still can’t stand led zep 3

music

music is a funny old thing you never know when you are going to discover something wonderful.
a friend's brother interviewed circulus, told friend that they were a bit odd and that he had to go see them. just so happened they were playing a local squat warehouse gig the next week. we made our way there, no idea what to expect. the ticket was cheap, so no big risk and better than a night in with the tv.
the warehouse was packed with a very mixed crowd: over there you had the skateboarders showing their moves off, on the other side of the space you had the crustys, there was the intelligensia all dressed in blazers and tweeds with a bit of chin stroking thrown in for good measure. let's not forget the emo and goth kiddies.
various things were going on: homemade movies were being shown, poetry being read, breakdancing taking place, a dj playing odds and sods. in the middle of all of this a band would come on and play.
that is exactly what cirulus did.
they came out and played.
they played and they conquered.
since that night i have been a fan of their breezey madcap medieval prog psychedelic folk fusion. with michael tyack (guitars and vocals) and will summer (pipes) as the two stalwarts of the band - giving it a musical and personal identity; the other memebers come and play in the world of michael and will.

open you mind and let them take you to a place of pixies and sunshine.

i am not overly keen on this line up of circulus, i am not a big fan of the female vocalist they currently have.



musically this is not a great recording but i choose it for serveral reasons: i was there; i know the guy who filmed it; i like the female vocalist, lo polidoro, and it is jolly good fun.

music

in the end music is just noise.
music is good.
noise is music.
merzbow is noise.
merbow is good.
it is that simple.





music to relax to....

music

i was never a fan of lou reed or the velvet underground they just sounded dull to me. then my boss leant me lou reed’s ‘new york’ album and i enjoyed it. i still wasn’t a fan. then i was chatting to one of my regular retailers. as ever we were chatting shit about shit. we got to talking about music. he told me how he had bought lou reed’s metal machine music and how he hated it. he described it as three sides of static and feedback.
to me that sounded like three sides of wonderment.
i tracked down a cheap cd version of it.
played it.
loved it.
it was the prototypical industrial noise album.
wonderful stuff.


what you hear in the video isn't really the same as what appears on the album, not that it makes any difference as it is still noisey and it is still ear spilittingly fantabulous.

feel free to join the the chorus it goes like this "wooooaaaarghughghghgaaaaaaaaaascrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeech".

music

diamanda galas is scary and talented in equal measures. i once played a tape of one of her early albums at work: it cleared the warehouse. in some small measure it made up for all the shitty acid house and garage that i had been forced to listen to.
i saw her perform at the royal festival hall. it was a sedate affair. she was elegant in her evening gown, she tinkled the ivories and sang torch songs utilising the full range of her several octave voice. i had paid a lot to see her, it was a short set, and i was amazed to see goths walking in and out of it to go get an overpriced pint of beer in the bar. me i preferred to sit still and drink up the cacophonous, yet beautiful sounds she produced.
her themes are serious. her music confrontational. listening is part endurance, part experience.
along with john paul jones, of led zep, fame, she made a very poppy, for her, album ‘this sporting life’, it is one of my favourites.
diamanda galas is unique and everyone should try her once.

diamanda confronts:


and here she is with john paul jones, who is probably wondering if he can get her to do a version of 'stairway to heaven'.

anger

before you loot. before you riot. before you tell us all it is because you are disenfranchised or because you are not listened to or because you have nothing to do or because there is no hope or no future or whatever. before you get angry. before you blame the establishment. before you do anything.
stop. think. take a look at yourself.

the death (or murder) of anyone is not to be welcomed.
the death (or murder) of a person at the hands of an agent of the state is something that should not happen lightly. when it does it needs to be investigated and justified. if not justified then justice has to be done.
essentially the same for any murder.

so the next time there is a gang related murder of a teenager in london why don't you rock up outside the houses of the gang leaders? why don't you riot on their patch? why don't you loot their premises?
or doesn't that get you angry?
isn't that an aspect of being disenfranchised?

guess not.

music

as far as i can remember the only person who liked emerson lake and palmer at school was a bit of an arse, though it wasn’t his love of prog that made him a prize tit it was everything else about him. more than likely i decided to give elp a go for two simple reasons: firstly greg lake had been in king crimson and back in the days of buying long playing vinyl you read the covers and would follow musicians to other projects. greg lake had been in king crimson, and i loved king crimson. secondly elp had released ‘welcome back my friends to the show that never ends’ a triple (triple!) live album. how could they lose?
they were the prototypical supergroup with keith emerson coming from the nice, greg lake from king crimson and carl palmer leaving atomic rooster. together their mix of classical and rock saw them expand the boundaries and frontiers of progressive rock music. they were proggier than the rest.
yet for all the pomp and splendour there are some sounds that keith emerson gets out of his array of keyboards that would not be out of place on some modern industrial albums.
for a band who have been around for so long and have such a great reputation they have not recorded that many studio albums – and a few of those have been turkeys. the several classic albums they did have provided them with enough material to do many over the top stage shows.
i missed out on seeing them at their recent london outing. not too fussed though as i still have plenty of live bootlegs of them to listen to and enjoy. it is always a pleasure to listen to them again – as it reminds me of those far off days of school when we had those dreams of being something special.
i miss those dreams, but with emerson lake and palmer for awhile i can have them again.

this is one of their earliest gigs. check out how intimate it is, not much room left on that stage with all the keyboards and drums - poor old greg is off to the side almost on his own. what is it that keith emerson is wearing (odd clothes seem to be a staple of prog keyboard players as demonstrated by rick wakeman). another clue to this being proggy is the size of the drum kit, the extra chimes and gongs are a prequisite. what is noticeable is that all three look as happy as larry as they go through their paces. later on they wouldn't be quite so happy with each other as they broke up, got back together and then broke up. here though you can hear that they have a special chemistry that burnt brightly.





this is a wonderful song, even with the chitchat of the people who have recorded the video. it is a recent performance of, part of elp. the main reason for including it here is to counterpoint it against the first video. look at the space between keith and greg - there are two people who are not that keen on each other anymore. then contrast the size of the greg now to the greg then. that is what over 40 years of rock and roll can do to you.
he still has a fine set of pipes though.

music

i can’t remember why i wanted to listen to the tubes. i may have read about them in ‘sounds’ or ‘the melody maker’, i may have even heard them on nicky horne’s ‘your mother wouldn’t like it’.
i am pretty certain that the first tubes album i bought was the double live album ‘what do you want from live’ (and i have always had a soft spot for double live albums). i even went to see them on the tour that promoted the live album. if memory serves it was one of my first ‘big’ gigs and i thought i was badly dressed for the occasion (a safari jacket that would not have looked out of place in the wardrobe of the campier roger moore james bond movies, and the previously mentioned manhattan transfer tie. i didn’t look out of place. much).
the tubes provided me a great night of entertainment. the music and visuals combining into the musical theatre that became the hallmark of the tubes stage show. though they were known for the humour in their music, they were also excellent musicians who composed catchy and tuneful songs.
in terms of creativity they had a good innings, now most tubes releases are either live albums or yet another collection. i was lucky enough to have seen them at their peak and to have listened to them when they were growing as performers and creators.
if you have never heard them – then you are in for a treat.

perhaps the song that is most linked to the tubes is the epic 'white punks on dope', this excerpt if from the bbc's much lamented (well by me) 'old grey whistle test'. it is faded out before the end, which is a shame as bill spooner is about to go into his solo.
things to note: fee waybill in his guise of quay lewd topples from his platform boots, a few years later fee would fall from the stage and break his leg. this was annoying for me as it meant the gig i was supposed to attend later in the tour had to be cancelled. check out the monitors on stage - later the tubes will have their biggest commercial hit with the 'remote control' album which was all about the all-emcompassing effect of television (and it was a good lp to boot).



the second track is from the last great lp of the tubes career, outside inside, and is a homage to cheesey exploitation movies. it starts off with a certain lack of professionalism but it does rock.

planning

i would be the last to claim that i am an organisational genius. far from it. mostly i work by the seat of my pants and skin of my teeth.
this probably explains why i am not in charge of a ftse 100 company or leading the country.

i accept that in today's wired world it is harder to stay out of contact than it is to stay in touch.
however one of the consequences of this is that perception is king because we are also bombarded with images and soundbites all the time.

an area of resentment in the workplace is the over holidays - too often there are a few people who cherry-pick the best times to have off, or you get a situation where sufficient cover is not provided so those who are still working have to carry the extra load.
all that is needed to avoid this is planning. simple really.

imagine the conversation in the coalition when david cameron, george osborne and nick clegg all decided to take the same time off.
ignoring the flash-the-cash aspect of their holidays (remember we are all in it together) their let's all bugger off at the same time does hint at a lack of planning. it may even hint at a lack of awareness of the current global situation. hell what could go wrong when your number 1, your number 2 and your number 3 guys are away on family jollies?

perhaps, more accurately, it points to a shared attitude of the three men: they don't give a fuck about us.
just a thought.

irked

a day of being irked.
i blame the hot sticky weather, as it can't be anything to do with me being a miserable son of a gun.

irked at the weather - well that goes without saying. i hate the hot weather.
irked at my boss - who often forgets that we are short staffed and have more work than we can really cope with, but hey can still find time to get a dig in based on a comment from someone who hates doing filing but is happy to blame others for it not being done.
irked by the 25 bus - they seem to have gotten rid of the bendy buses and replaced them with double deckers, only problem is i keep forgetting this and just see the double decker coming and think it is a 205.
irked by bookshops - looking for a number of titles, tried a number of bookshops. no luck. what irked me was that some shops just don't put prices on books. why? how hard can it be to sticker the sodding book so the punter knows what price the darned thing might be. it isn't like supermarkets where there are going to drop the price of beans in response to a competitor. so waterstones if you are wondering why so many of your art books don't move it is because no one knows how much they are going to have to pay.
irked by 15 bus - there is no need to have the heater on in this weather. no seriously. no need at all.

music

i blame my dad for liking the manhattan transfer. firstly he was keen on what he considered good singing (essentially being able to hold a tune while clearly singing the words). he was easy listening man, or a lounge lizard. so the ground was prepared for enjoying the close vocal harmonies of the manhattan transfer. secondly my dad gave me the copy of playboy magazine that featured a review of the manhattan transfer, while it mentioned their singing skills it was mostly about how they appealed to new york’s underground avant-garde fetish scene (like i knew what they were talking about), so now i was interested.
fast forward a bit and i finally got to hear them. loved them. was hooked.
then somehow my dad got me tickets to see them live. not only that he also managed to get me a kipper tie with their logo printed on it. i was as pleased as punch.
i was wearing the tie the second time i went to see them. i was down the front at the hammy odeon and excited. one of the stage crew was doing a final check and he turned to one of his colleagues and was talking about the band he mentioned how the ‘little girl went out to the stage door and lifted her skirt to fan some air onto her fanny.’ i can’t lie; i was hoping to get a flash before the night ended. i didn’t. still the singing was divine.
even the move from standard harmonies to complex avant-garde jazz stylings have not dented their vocal gold. sit back, click your fingers, tap your toes and be a hep cat daddio.

the first clip features laurel massey (the red head); a serious accident caused her to leave the band. it is also one of several clips from the ‘old grey whistle test’ which i really enjoyed and it was a sad day when whispering bob stopped gracing out screens. i was also in the balcony at this recording and it is probably the closest i will ever come to fame.




back then i had a thing for janis siegel (the other one and famed fanny fanner), i still do. just a shame she doesn't feature that much in the next clip. instead welcome
cheryl bentyne, who is giving a full on demonstration of jazz hands. the other members of the band are just letting her get on with it. the clip ends rather suddenly so we can only imagine how she might have concluded the song: it would have been explosive.



and a bonus track - first time i had heard this one.

music

my first introduction to yes was probably listening to them at andy’s place. like the majority of my school chums he wanted to be a musician. he had a very nice black acoustic guitar on which he would chung cha chung cha chung chung cha. while he concentrated on learning scales i was busy air guitaring.
most saturdays a group of us would head into south harrow and go directly to the fondly remembered selanby record store. andy was quite chuffed that he had managed to get hold of 12-inch single of the current yes single: ‘going for the one’ (it may have even been on blue vinyl). from then on each time we went into selanby we were confronted with numerous copies of the 12-inch single, it got so that it seemed the only person in the world who had kept his copy of the single was andy.
as with most long running bands yes have gone through many changes. personnel have come and gone, and some have returned to go again. sometimes it was the sound that changed sometimes becoming very twee other times become much harder. while steve howe and jon anderson were associated with the band you could always point to the ‘yesness’ of the sound.
the two tracks on show here capture yes at the height of their progginess with ‘soon’ from the relayer album. steve howe kicks it all off with a nice bit of slide guitar and then jon anderson comes in cha cha chunging on his guitar. you’ll notice that he was a bit elfin back then, and judging by most of his lyrics he was often away with the fairies. the rest of the band were chris squire on bass, alan white on drums and patrick moraz on keyboards.

the second track in some twenty years later. they are playing one of their more rockier tracks. jon has put on some weight and in order to hide that he is wearing a sheet. steve is still playing slide and still gurning as he plays. chris squire looks like he is wearing waders. alan white just looks older, while the crown prince of prog keyboarders is back where he belongs – that said rick wakeman is looking very sedate (well for him).

yes were proggier than most prog bands – their ability to do twee allowed them to go to places most other prog bands just didn’t approach. over the years they have released concept albums, double concept albums, live albums, double live albums, triple live albums, gatefold cover albums. if that wasn’t enough then the album ‘going for the one’ was a double gatefold album with art from hipgnosis (famous for their work on pink floyd album covers) (the cover features a naked male bum – this echoes the naked male bum on rush albums – prog promoting sexual tolerance! how punk is that!)

sit back and let the prog caress you.
trust me – you’ll love it.

vintage yes -



yes - getting long in the tooth, but still rocking the free world.

music

if memory serves me right i bought my first king crimson record on a bit of a whim.
it was a double album and it was cheap. 'a young person's guide to king crimson' was a compilation, a best of if you will, of king crimson. i don't think i had ever heard them, or of them. as i say it was cheap, it was a double and i was building my record collection, taking chances.
with this one i scored a big fat bull’s-eye.
as four sides of vinyl demonstrated there were many phases in the career of king crimson – the two constants were great music and robert fripp.
fripp’s guitar was very precise almost mathematical, it seared through the music. it was lovely. fripp was able to surround himself with quality musicians and together they created the unique sounds that were the various incarnations of king crimson.
i have never seen king crimson live. i have seen robert fripp live once when he toured with one of his, many, side projects: the league of gentlemen. it was at the famous marquee club. i was down the front. fripp was, as ever, perched on a stool, he was playing up a storm, his leg kicking out in time with the beat. several time he nearly caught me in the head. the other time i saw fripp was at a ‘strangegirls’ gig, featuring his wife, toyah. i wanted to go up to him and thank him for all the years of musical pleasure he had given me but i decided that he was out to see his missus strut her stuff so it was probably not the right thing to do. so i didn’t.
there was a time when i had to sit while the ex’s kid had to practice violin. she wanted him to be able to play an instrument. like all kids who are forced into something he wasn’t as excited about it as she was. strangely i was the one who had to sit through his practice (her argument being she took him to the violin teacher always beat out my argument of ‘it was your idea’). the similarity between ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ and ‘ba ba black sheep’ is terrifying when you are trying to tell the little mite that his performance was wonderful only to realise by the quiver of lips that he had been playing the other one. anyway in order to encourage the kid into playing the violin i used to play some of my albums and tell him ‘listen to that violin playing’ in an attempt to make it as cool as possible. it didn’t work. though he did grow up to play guitar in a nirvana influenced band (him and a million other emo kids) so perhaps it wasn't a total waste.
fripp and crimson still produce some fine fine music, yet there is something very special about those first few king crimson albums.
so let me just take this moment to thank robert fripp for all the musical pleasure he has given me and then you can enjoy the thrill of king crimson live performing ‘easy money’.

music

it was a fateful day when i stumbled across my first frank zappa album.
it would have been a saturday. it would have happened in south harrow in a record store called selanby – a place that had a mix of new and second-hand records and tapes. i would have been flicking through the used records, there was no order to them just line upon line of used records. i can’t remember which album it was that took my fancy – it might have been ‘chunga’s revenge’ or it might have been ‘one size fits all’ or possibly ‘over nite sensation’. whichever one it was it was most likely that i was drawn to it by the cal schenkel cover. i may have been aware of zappa because of something i had read in sounds or melody maker. it may have just been a whim.
it was love at first play.
if i had to pick just one musician to be my all time favourite then i think it would be frank zappa.
he is a greater guitarist with songs ranging from the amusing little ditty through to the complex orchestral pieces. he was happy to shock; no target out of reach. he would utilise brute force humour or scathing satire. he surrounded himself with top class musicians able to play some of his more outlandish compositions.
i was lucky enough to see zappa in concert a couple of times.
i missed out on his last tour of england thanks to an argument with my ex, i lost it and she ensured that i would feel bad if i went. i didn’t. he never came back.
so sit back and enjoy these two tracks but don’t worry as i am sure we will come back to zappa before the end of the month.




and

music

inspired by my recent journey around youtube i have decided to theme this month by having a selection of videos from some of my favourite musicians.

i came to music relatively late. while my contemporaries were indulging themselves in punk (some of them even gobbed on by sex pistols) others were extolling the virtues of led zeppelin. it just didn't seem that important to me.
ah how that changed.
around the end of the fifth form i became a music fan. i suspect it had more to do with the people i hung around with at the time than anyone band or musician. fortunately music fell into my lap and i was hooked. i still am. back then i was interested in who played what on what and that would lead me to new bands and sounds. it was a period of raw exciting discovery.
over the years i would say my tastes have expanded, rather than changed.
unlike some of my pals i don’t have a deep knowledge of music history. i couldn’t tell you where most of what i listen to sits in the ‘history’ of music, i couldn’t tell you who influenced who. mostly i don’t care. i am very much of the mind that if i like it then that is good enough.
there was a time when i wanted to know about the people who entertained me and then i discovered that some of my heroes were total tossers, so now i just listen, watch and read – all that matters is that i like it.
i have very few favourite songs as music relies so much on mood so what gets me going one day may leave me cold another. also i am a child of the long player, so when i listened to music it was always an album experience, even in the days of the ipod i am still mostly listening to full albums rather than a selection of favourite tracks.
enough preamble, on with the show. if i had to choose one favourite song i think it would be meat loaf’s ‘bat out of hell’. i think i caught the video on ‘the old grey whistle test’ and i knew i had to have the album. when i saw the rich corben cover i was sold. who could resist the epic bombast and over the top pomp(osity) that was jim steinman and meat loaf.
this is why the punk wars were fought.
this is why the punk wars were lost.
i give you ‘bat out of hell’.



as an added bonus here is a video of jim steinman doing 'rock and roll dreams come through', it is from the album 'bad for good'. this was supposed to be the follow up to 'bat out of hell' but meat loaf had problems with his throat (as i remember one of his 'cures' was to gargle his own piss)so jim did the follow up himself, with some help from his friends.
and you want to know something? i loved it. still do.
however i had never seen the following video until the other night and what a camp classic it is.
quite what was going through jim steinman's head as he mimed in front of two modern dancers will never be known. jim, looking like gene wilder, has donned a pair of gauntlets in order to sing while a man and a woman dance (and i am being generous here) with a silver guitar. camp is not the word. the somewhat less the macho posturing is aided by the reluctance of the man to let the woman play with his guitar (and we all know what that is supposed to be... don't we).
someone should have butched the whole thing up.

camp as tents it maybe - i still like it

probably

say what you will about the conservative party, but they do seem to be able to pick a hottie or two to represent them.
now i don't (honestly) go around checking out each of the tory mps in order to rate them as hot or not (but if you want to go here).

step forward louise mensch (or bagshawe, depeding on the reporters). she is new to my tripe t list (top tory totty)and i only really found out about her because she has admitted to 'probably' taking some drugs when she used to hang out with nigel kennedy.
probably is a funny word to use - as you either did or you didn't.
probably is one of those words you expect people in important positions to use. on the one hand it might make you sound cool because you did have a rebelious side when you were a teen, but it wasn't that important to you as you have forgotten about it now. it is a word that allows you to appear to be contrite but not actually admitting to anything.
personally i would be more concerned with her hanging out with nigel kennedy than her doing a line or two.

i am not a fan of drugs. i don't like them. i don't take them.
for a long time i had a zero tolerance approach to them. now i have changed my mind - they are not going to go away, as the law stands now it makes the users of drugs into criminals when in many ways they are no more a burden on society than are heavy drinkers or smokers - but they are legal drugs. so make drugs legal. make them available over the counter, tax them, police the quality of them and watch the crime levels drop/

yet the situation that ms mensch/bagshawe finds herself in is symptomatic of debate in this climate. she is being hounded by journalists who have pictures of her with nigel doing drugs.
big deal.
(i wonder if her her questions in parliament about hacking has had anything to do with the photos appearing?)
the 'shock horror' someone did something naughty when they were in their youth, let's bring it up and try to smear them with it type tactics just means that legitimate debate gets sidelined all too easily because people are forced to defend themselves for no reason, rather than just state the facts.

louise - just don't hang out with the fiddle player anymore - it is just not cool and does your image no good.

time-wasting

you have to hand it to the taxpayers' alliance they are relentless in their search for truth.
by using the freedom of information act they have discovered that civil servants use the internet while they are at work.
no shit!
they do that?
they use the internet while they are at work - who would have thought it.
because as we know in the private sector no one ever shirks, no one ever gives less than 100%. their noses to the grindstone, their backs to the wheel.
the public sector full of lazy feckless waistrels.
the private sector is full of thrusting, striving achieving individuals who give there all and never (ever) slack.
well that is the world according the the taxpayers' alliance

"While many staff work very hard, there have been enough anecdotal reports of time-wasters within the civil service that it is vital taxpayers are able to scrutinise how time they are paying for is spent."

an important word here is annecdotal.
we all have stories to tell and some of them might even be true - but if you are going to cast judgements on people and organisations you had better have something a little more substantial than 'my mate said he saw that civil servant doing nothing'.
then there is the phease 'able to scrutisnise' and bless them the taxpayer's alliance have provided us with the raw data to do it, because the taxpayer's alliance are far to busy being..well busy to actually break down the figures into anything that might be useful, nor do they provide any context to the useage of the sites.
while they concede that some might be using the web while they are not working (lunch or before or after shits) it is done grudingly and with the caveats such as: "It looks like many officials at the Department for Transport are spending a lot of time surfing websites that clearly have nothing to do with their jobs." no proof is given, no analysis made just a broad sweeping assumption based on anecdotal evidence.
or how about "but online activity shows there are some not fully dedicated while at work" except that the figures provided do not prove this - the data we are asked to scrutinise is just a ranked list of websites based on the hits of the sites - there is nothing on there to say what time the hits were made or even how long they were there for.

if this is the level of work that the tpa provide then i am at a loss to explain why anyone gives them the time of the day.

if anyone is time-wasting then it seems it is the highly motiviated thrusting thinking bods at the taxpayer's alliance - it is just a shame they are wasting everyone else's time while they do it.

attack

as the libyan war/crisis/situation/cock-up (you decide)drags on (and changes rules of engagement, aims and outcomes: nothing like having a plan afterall)it appears that nato forces have decided to bomb the state tv satellite transmitters. however transmission continues.
oh well better luck next time.
imagine all that money, all that expertise and all that hardware and they can't stop libyan tv from telling the locals how wonderful the colonel is.

that got me thinking - i am sure there are quite a few tories and daily mail readers (not always the same thing as some readers of the mail won't be happy until oswald is leading the country) would love to have a tornado or two do a bombing run on the bbc.
and it perhaps gives a clue as to the potential solution to the hacking debacle: have the sas storm wapping and take out news international.

crying

for all my bluff and bluster i am a softee.
quite often i well up when watching, reading or listening to something.

there are two things that are guaranteed to reduce me to a blubbing wreck.

i 'discovered' regina spektor through a song of hers that was being used by sky to sell one of their packages. the song 'us' was just an upbeat ditty sung by someone with a strong but quirky voice. i found out who the singer was, got one of her lps and the rest is pretty much history.
pretty much from the first time i heard 'samson' i had a lump in my throat. it gets me everytime i listen to the song.
so here it is for your enjoyment:



i have probably spoken of 'field of dreams' before. it is one of my favourite films. when we went to see it was just a movie. by the end it was more than just a film - it was something that would have the power to reduce me to tears each and every time i watched it. oddly as the years (and viewings) have mounted up i cry earlier,and for different reasons, in the movie. it won't be long before just looking at the cover makes me blub outrageously.
as i sat in the cinema watching the screen there was nothing to warn me of what was to happen. i was enjoying it an entertaining feel good movie. then just at the end came the scene that made me sniffle. my waterworks observed by my pal paul. who to his credit has never let me forget it.
and for your pleasure;here is the scene:



it still makes me weep.

elongated

just back from seeing the, somewhat bloated, last part of the harry potter movie series. i am not overly keen on the films - they are ok, they have some nice visuals in them. they are long.
i have never read the books. i am not likely to. it is not that i have anything against children's books. it is just that the books get increasingly larger and longer.
there was a time when i was excited when i got hold of a large paperback - the thrill of reading dune, lord of the rings or the stand. stories that went on for 4 or 5 hundred pages. epic.
same with movies - it it was two hours plus then you knew it was an event movie. something special.

now every paperback seems to weigh in at 300 or 400 pages and in the large format. no more the classic paperback format (pocket sized) and 200 pages.
now ever movie seems to be two hours plus.
and now it is no longer special.
now it becomes a chore, an endurance test.
some movies become numb bum evenings where fidgeting is the order of the day.
some books are so obviously padded that they are more filler than they are filling. authors talk about editors who want a three books series or only want a book if the author puts in another 100 pages or so.
i have no idea why they want to do that. smaller books seem to be the way to go. why? think of it this way if they can knock out a 500 page novel each year, they could do two 250 pages novels a year. twice the sales. already i have made it a winner. smaller books means more on the shelves, means less restocking, means more sales (just go into a sainsbury's that sells books and there will always be at least one of them that does not have a book or two on the shelves). or how about: if it takes me a month to read a 500 page book i am only going to read 12 books a year. make them shorter and i will read and buy more. (ok in my case that is a pointless assumption as i buy books in the full knowledge that i will probably never read them, but i just have to have them).

movies are the same. filled with padding and fluff. a 90-minute movie (the almost perfet length) gets turned into a two-hour plus itchy bum fidget fest. the longer the movies the fewer times they can be shown in the cinema. the fewer times they are shown the less sweets that can be sold. comedies that have two jokes in them stretched to over 120-minutes; acton films that have a smidgen of action but two hours of story; art house movies that redefine what it means to watch paint dry.

smaller is often better.
it is also more profitable.

and i wonder why they don't have me running a publishing company...
(well it might be that a line of books involving girls in skimpy costumes running around the world blowing things up might not be times bestseller material - but it darned well should be....)

amy

can't say i was ever a fan of amy winehouse. aside from 'rehab' i am not sure i could pick out any of her songs if they were played for me. doubt anyone was shocked that she died so young.
oddly this isn't about ms winehouse.
what has caused me to write is to do with the need of people to be in the media and to appear to be in the 'know'.
just the other day i was chatting about how there are some stories you just don't tell, some tales you just keep schtum on. others you just don't elaborate on. we all have them. there are some people who seem to be able to go that extra step and tell you the full story regardless of the light it paints them in.
this is even more the case in the new 24-hour always on news cycle and television shows of the likes of jerry springer and jeremy kyle: everyone wants to be a celebrity and everyone thinks they have something interesting to say.
when a celebrity dies there appears to be no shortage of people who can come forward to saying something about the situation. so it is with amy winehouse where we can read that a neighbour thought he heard screams from her house 'like some weird sex game'. nice to be wise after the event. i wonder if he thought to phone the police, or even the sun newspaper.
or perhaps the person who reckoned she must have been dead awhile because her cat was behaving oddly in the morning. i am sure he will get his own cat talk show in the near future.

now i am prepared to admit that i might be being harsh but frankly if all you had done was listen to some screams and just turned up the sound on your tv then you really shouldn't telling the press anything as you just come across as a tit. and not a particulary nice one.
all i have learnt from this is that ms. winehouse didn't have very nice neighbours.

if ever a time to follow 'silence is golden' then this would have been the time.

balance

there was a report in the evening standard awhile ago about how the shares in dixons, the retailer, had crashed, that there profits has declined and there was doubt over their long-term future.
still not all doom and gloom in the world of dixons as their cheif executive received a cash bonus of £120,000 (bringing his total salary to over £1m).
you would wonder quite how much mr. browett would trouser if dixons had been in profit, shares were on the up and up and the future was bright.
apparently he gets to pocket the bonus because he met some personal targets (these are not detailed) so i am guessing they must have been things such as turning up to work, wearing matching socks, writing nice reports (i used to work with someone who wrote very nice reports, he didn't type them up his secretary did and he didn't do the work in compiling the report others did that - he just wrote it up nicely) and being nice to the rest of the board.
i am sure the boys at the confederation of british industry could work out a way to explain how a business that is doing badly can pay out bonuses (the reason is probably something like: without him it would have been even worse). this is why most of the time we don't trust all the guff about how much better the private sector is.

still the report did mention that the shoppers who go into dixons have reported that their shopping experience is much nicer these days.

meanwhile over in my neck of the woods the newly elected mayor, lutfer rahman, (i didn't want a mayor and i didn't vote for him) has been pilloried for his daily use of a hire car. he isn't going to give it up. his reasons for needing a chauffeur driven car was the number of meetings he had to attend and the need to do work while on the move. so approximately £10,000 is to be used to get the mayor from here to there.
i have a solution to the problem: have more meetings in your office mr. mayor. let them come to you. it would save lots of money and make you seem even more important.
true it does mean you won't feel quite so grand as you do swanning around in an expensive car.
even better if you stay in the office - you will get more work done.
i am a genius.
with the money saved mr. rahman you can employ me.

the willingness of politicians to squander public money is one of the reasons why we distrust them.
the only difference between mr. rahman and mr. browett is that so far the people of tower hamlets haven't been able to say our living experience has improved - maybe that is why mr. rahman insists on the car; he doesn't want to see what it is like for the local population.

banksy

i quite like banksy. his work is clever, funny and sometimes has a wry political point to make.

his work was ephemeral glorying in the here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of graffiti. that was until graffiti became art and something to invest in. so lots of guff spoken about how this banksy and that banksy was worth tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds even though they were painted on the side of a building.

not that it mattered much to banksy – he was coining it with his gallery work as dealers and collectors fought to buy his works. though it could be argued that the people who made the most out of banksy were all the people who did books, prints, canvases etc of his work.

to his credit banksy didn’t court publicity; he just went on about his art.

now i like graffiti. i have taken lots and lots of photos of it. i have mixed feelings about the worth of it. as it has become more mainstream and street/urban art has entered the galleries i find myself less inclined to listen to the posturing of street artists who claim that graffiti is not vandalism.

in some cases they are right. some of the works of graffiti artists such as roa, bortusk leer, kid acne, elmo, eska et al are wonders to behold. yet for each of these there are a bunch of kids who just tag their names in bright colours. you can tell when a graffiti artist has some sway in the graffiti community because their work stays untouched by others. perhaps that is why there was such an outcry recently when the new owner of a building painted over the banksy that was on it (since then it has been partially restored). me i couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about – it was not like it couldn’t have been replaced, it isn’t like the image hasn’t been reproduced elsewhere or saved for posterity.

in the end i guess it comes down to (as with most of the world) not all graffiti and graffiti artists are created equal. until such time as i can walk into a gallery like ‘stolen space’ or ‘pure evil’ and tag the works of the artist on display without them saying i defaced their work then the argument about it being vandalism is one that local councils have won.

meanwhile a much greater loss than a covered up banksy was the sad death of lucien freud. shan’t be long before the large scale retrospective opens in a gallery near me, it will be good.

complaining

the fallout from the defence review contnues. the new wheeze is less of a standing army and more of a reservist maintained organisation. i am sure there are lots of bosses around the country who will be happy to see some of their employees bugger off for a several months in order to quell a rogue state, while they have to keep their jobs open for them. what is the betting that it works out to be more expensive? not to mention impractical.

over in scotland there is the likelihood that two airforce bases might be closed down.
back in westminster the scotish national party's leader in the house of commons, angus robertson, raises concerns at such a move.
"how can a cut of up to 74% in scotland be justified?"

hold on dear chap - i thought you lot wanted shot of us?
what better way to start the process by waving goodbye the military might of the british state? oh that's right with the defence industry moving south that is a big chunk of change gone from the scotish economy and that won't sit too well with some voters.

there has been several other groups and influential people complaining about where liam fox and go are taking the british armed forces (to hellmand in a hand basket - mmm another one of those quips that seemed so much funnier before i typed it out..)

so here is my suggestion. convert defence spending into aid spending nd turn the armed forces into a version of international rescue - the jet off when there is a natural disaster - help save the day.
but what about protecting oursevlves from invasion?
go the north korea route - have a few nuclear missles pointed at various places around the globe and just calmly tell people 'fuck with us and glow in the dark'.
there you go: peace.
sorted.
next job.

speech

words are important.
language is important.

it allows us to explain the world around us, it allows us to share ideas, and it allows us to communicate.
because they are social constructs words and language are not simple things, they can be wielded precisely or loosely. meanings twisted out of all shape to their original intention. they are not impartial. they are used to persuade.
most of us want freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of thought. most of us don't like censorship. most of us accept that there are limits on these freedoms, the limits change - what was acceptable 50, 30 or 10 years ago is not acceptable now.
we redefine censorship as tolerance (some might say political correctness).

the web is an interesting place one site leads to another and before you know it you have discovered something interesting (and for a change not pornographic). through a circuitous route of which i will spare you the details i came across a quote from one of the champions of free speech.
as with most of those who fight for free speech – he has his usual targets (i will leave you to guess them).
and he says this “i don't care what people believe as long as i don't have to keep hearing about it.” which sort of defeats the purpose of having freedom of speech.
it is a variant of the i-don’t-agree-but-i-defend school of thought.
so the speaker would defend the ability of various groups to say what they will but just not so it can be heard anywhere he might be. so censorship by another name.

the irony is off course is that as the world becomes more wired we are becoming more narrowcasted at: we choose where we get our news from and we generally choose something that agrees with us.
according to the view that is what free speech is all about: just agreeing with us. everything else is wrong or pandering to a minority group.
perhaps the problem is that there is too much speech, there is too much to be heard and we can’t hear the important words through the white noise.

the internet has become our very own tower of babble and confusion and misinterpretation is the new world disorder.

rain

it rained a lot today.
it looked fantastic.
it sounded fantastic.
it cooled the air.
i like the rain.
but i didn't go out in it.

lovely moon out tonight.

(i am sure in some circles the above counts as wonderful poetry. if i were to stand at a lectern and shout it and whisper it and repeat it in a shouty whisper then it would also be performance poerty. if while i was shouty whispering my repeated verse and it was videoed i have no doubt that it would become a youtube sensation and next thing you know i would be whisperyshouting on the late review show and pontificating on question time.
from there it is only a short step for me to be shouty whisperer on twitter (how? you ask - easy just mix up the cases on each word adn you have shouty whispering on twitter) with a large following all ready to be individuals and unique but also happy to do what i request.
then more shouty shouting type performances - just to show i am not a one trick pony. they will be followed by the difficult third performances which will have the inovation of whisper talking.
all of this will lead to a successful film career as i genre span shouting in romcoms and whispering (huskily) in action movies. for horror movies i will unleash as new screechy scream, which will also feature in the new live performances of angst ridden limericks about trying to choose the right tins of peas.

all this would have come from my shouty whispering performance of:
it rained a lot today.
it looked fantastic.
it sounded fantastic.
it cooled the air.
i like the rain.
but i didn't go out in it.

lovely moon out tonight.

if i had ever done it live and if it were ever recorded.
i didn't.
it wasn't.
the world wasn't ready.

yet.

odds

need to cut down on the long hours in work - it is so easy to be there late as it is just around the corner and there is sooooo much that needs to be done.
but i have to stop it because:
i am tired all the time.
i am getting fatter.
getting fatter? what has that to do with working late? you ask.
doughnuts! i reply. cakes! i mumble. chocolate! i whisper.
so it is time for less work and less calories.

seems like rebekah has gone. what will she do next? will she be able to reinvent herself as a smarmy television celebrity ala piers morgan? i hope not. it isn't because i have a particular dislike for ms brooks (though i do) it is more that the world has suffered enough with the smugness that is mr. morgan without another smug ex-journo cluttering up the screens. bad enough that andrew neil is gets screen time.
so what next for ms. brooks?
the inevitable book. no doubt there will be two drafts. this is the nice one that just details my life in journalism up to when things were still nice and calm in the gardens of news international. the second draft will contain all the bodies and still yet to be exploded bombs - but only to be published if the advance for the first draft is too low.
perhaps there is a chance she will team-up with ex hubbie. together they could go to the most dangerous places in the world, dealing with the most vicious gangs of the world. where in the past ross would just film their stories, now with rebekah in tow they would just beat them into submission and change the world into a nicer place.
mexican drug lords vs rebekah? my money is on ms. brooks.

murdoch + hacking + 9/11 - fbi = downfall.
sweet dreamy arithmatic.
i can only hope.

it wasn't me (again). i didn't win the millions and millions on the euro lottery. blast.
though it does mean that all that money i was going to give to my friends and good causes stay as imaginery as all the good things i would have done with the money.

i have a mutant toe nail.
i thought i would share that with everyone.

i love sport on the radio. even sports i have no interest in (mostly games that involves balls being hit by something: cricket, golf and tennis for instance) but put them on the radio and i an listen to hours of them. this is even more noticeable when the sport in question plays late into the night because it is taking place in some far off land (which was one of the reasons i was never keen on the olympics in london).
so i will be spending some of the weekened listening to the golf on the radio.
i have never played golf, i will probably never play golf but as a radio sport it is fascinating - not because of the golfers but because of the commentators.

back to the olympics: i have worked out the london organising committee of the olympic games (locog) publicity and marketing strategy. it seems to be: highlight the bad news - oh the ticketing was a disaster (even though it probably went as expected - more people wanted the good tickets than there were seats available and no one wanted the shit events), yet most of the tickets have been sold. you can probably guarantee that the empty seats will be those held by sponsors or friends of the olympic family.
now the olympic super highway is being called into question. the draconian laws being used to push it through, the loss of life it might cause, the disruption it might cause blah blah blah (not to belittle the seriousness of the claims).
the story that the international olympic committee were impressed by how far advanced everything was in the olympic village seems to have been buried.
bad news sells i guess - papers and tickets to big events.

and

it may come as a surprise to those who know me but i have been put in charge of a team of 10 staff. i am a manager. who would have thought it! as befits a manager i have my own office. true it is a pokey sweat box at the moment, but it is mine!
however i am not the sort of person who just sits there and lords it over people.
recently we have been very busy so i have decided to get out there among them all, also makes it easier for the students to get to me (not always a good thing). so at the moment i am in one of the big offices. laugh? oh yes we do. (apparently one of the things i need to learn is some professional distane - seems i am too pally with the staff).
there is one drawback being in one of the communal offices: i have to listen to their choice of radio station: captial or kiss. it is like sophie's choice but you get to choose between shit and puke.
i have quickly discovered that there is little variety as to the songs that are played: the 'hits' seemingly get played every show. so often in fact that against my will i am beginning to know the songs and able to sing along, at this rate i will even know who is singing them. as yet i have no idea if it is lady gaga, adele, jessie j or any other currently popular singer. at the moment the tune (if i can call it that) that annoys the most is some odd mash-up of a rap song and some urban soul ballad. it sounds like some badly cut-and-paste punk fanzine - there seems to be no connection between the two songs and they just clash against each other.
i am a good boss. i would be a better boss if i made them listen to diamanda gallas.
they are not ready for it....yet.

i may have written about my annoyance at trailers in the cinema. sometimes they entice you in only to disappoint (say transformers 3 - the trailer starts off promising something interesting and then delivers...oh), or sometimes you can see how trailers have changed as the vibe of a film has changed (super 8 springs to mind - first trailer is all about kids and their adventure that might be a little bigger than they (and we) think compared to the all out disaster moster movie second trailer that just shouts out 'ooops we pitched this film wrong and it hasn't done well in the states let's see if we can save it elsewhere...'). then there is the trailer that is released so many months before the film that by the time the movie opens you resent the fact that you have seen the trailer 20 or 40 times.
so imagine my surprise when i saw the trailer for the latest 'final destination' movie. not giving much away but: people will survive a disaster at the start of the movie only for them to be killed off in painful and interesting ways throughout the movie as death comes to reclaim them. fun premise that has worked well for four movies.
the reason i go to see the final destination movies isn't because of the complex storyline with its engaging cheacter sketches. nor am i going to enjoy the shakespeare rivaling script, nor am i going for the quality acting that shares emotions with the audience.
nope i am going for the interesting, funny and complicated deaths that are arranged for each character.
so traler makers here is a tip for you: don't give away all the interesting bits in the trailer or there is no point in going. thanks to the final destinaton trailer i know how most of them are going to die.
oh well i am sure it will raise a smile or two.

currently going through a 'i hate sportsmen' phase.
why?
most because i have come to realise that they are all moaning minnies who just never stop wanting. look there is wayne rooney talking about how the club's ambition may not match his own (of course he won't put his own money into it but he will demand someone else pay for his ambition). he is not alone most 'top' footballers will at some point come out and demand that their club buy more players. everyone is quick to spend other people's money.
the worst of the bunch has to be formula 1 racing cars. lewis hamilton has been moaning that his car isn't ip to iy. he want a new one and a better one. no offer to contribute to the costs, just wants to get paid.
when he wins it is because he is a great driver, when he loses it is because the car is not up to scratch.
all bases covered.

why is it a mars bar tastes so much better late at nght?
no idea why, but i can tell you it was yummy.

sods

why are there no famous male models, where is the male equivalent of kate or naomi. where is the male superstar model who throws a strop and gets hassled for being drunk and drugged up? there must be one, but why isn't he in all the newspapers?

why arn't there superstar women darts or snooker players? seriously why can't they play against and beat the men? just a case of aiming and letting go, it is just hand-eye coordination and as women can multitask they can play the game while having a chinwag with their mate in the third row.

why don't the laces in my plimpsols stay tied up? no matter what the knot i tie, no matter how tight it is at some point in the day the lace will come untied. when i tie it iup again that is a sing for the other one to come untangled. forcing me into a series of stopping, bending, knotting as i walk down the road.

why am i the poster boy for messy? i used to work with a chap who could wear anything and make it look suitable, appropriate, trendy and comfortable. it didn't matter what he wore he looked good in it. he also tended to be obsessively neat and precise, some would say anal (yet he wasn't the worst in the office, just the next in line) everything on his desk had a place and that place was neatly laid out in relation to all the other things that were on his desk. the complex laws of the universe laid bare in the positioning of a few pens and pencils.
his other super-power was that he was very much like 'the man in the white suit': dirt avoided him. he came to work wearing a very white coat, he wore it for a few weeks. never once did the coat look anything less than perfect shimmering white. it was an astonishing feat.
i am the total antithesis of this. not only am i the definition of messy, the concept of mess made flesh. around me are pools of chaos that turn organised desks and workspaces into jumbles and piles that remind one of those old fusty dusty second-hand bookshops where piles would tetter totter and the book you always wanted was in the middle of some impossibly high tower of books and yet somehow the wizend old man could pull that book from the pile - well my place is like that, except the piles wobble and fall when you go near them - forming a new ecosystem of mess that you have to learn to navigate.
when it comes to my white shirts (yes i have a few - hope springs eternal) i just set myself up for disappointmnet.
there i was today looking quite smart (for me) (for once) in a very white shirt. the boss came in with some very gooey doughnuts. i managed one (well it might have been three) without damage to the shirt. later on i was drinking coffee and bish bosh bash two fucking great big drips and i might as well be a hippy in a tye dye. oh well. crack on with work i think.
another cup of coffee (no drips this time) and another doughnut. ooops. out sploshes some strawberry cream and plonk down the other side of the shirt.
cripes i am looking like the mad english teacher who knew all the works of shakespeare but was never sure how to button his shirt or tie his laces.
i am a dirt attactor and a chaos magnet.
i think i am going to stick to t-shirts.

endings

news of the world. closed. finished. ended.
space shuttle. last trip. almost done. ending.
my laptop. last legs. pretty kaput. ending.

coincidence?
or
conspiracy?

you decide.

notw

today was the day the news of the world closed.

now i am no expert, which in the current climate means that i am perfectly capable of chatting about this as if i know what i am talking about (get me on the tv now), but the closing of the news of the world is on the one hand a feeble gesture and on the other hand a sign of hard headed pragmatism.

why is it a feeble gesture? simply because it has all been wrapped up with how sorry they are for stepping over the line. yet many of the people who are being ‘punished’ by the closing of the paper had nothing to do with the hacking of various phones around the country. those people who were, and are, in charge at news international are allowed to carry on as normal.  thus the closing of the news of the world is just a sacrifice to the masses, a diversion to keep them away from the power brokers.

it is a pragmatic move because for all intents and purposes the news of the world, as a brand and as a campaigning newspaper, is dead in the water. the loss of readers and advertisers making the paper no longer economically viable, more importantly the fear that the anger towards the actions of the news of the world would taint the rest of the news international stable. so the news of the world had to go.

no need to worry as there had already been moves within news international to position staff on the sun newspaper so that they can work seven days a week and the only reason for that? to get a sunday sun out. the question now is just how quickly can they do it and not look like they are not penitent about the news of the world situation.

max mosley must be laughing his head off. we had no problems with the revelations that they may have hacked the phones of celebs and politicians. we have been taught that they are fair game, that they are casualties that are necessary in the cause of a free press that seeks out stories in the national interest (which in newspaper terms broadly means profitable for the paper). it was only with the news that the hacking also intruded into the personal grief of ordinary people that the shit hit the fan for news international. apparently there is a lot more to come.

the original hacking claims didn’t cause that much of a stir for the public, mainly because the media tried its very hardest to ignore it.

odd really when you consider just what a powerful story it was, even when it was just celebrities. here was a national newspaper breaking the law, here was a newsroom apparently out of control, as the editors of the time seemed to be saying that they didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. yet somehow the story was never pursued. yet give the papers mp’s expenses and they were like ravening beasts – the most innocuous claim blown out of all proportion. or look how they pursued a few mps because of their sexuality – liked it mattered, forcing a few to confess as if being gay meant they were somehow incapable of the job. remember how quickly they were to shout for a minister to fall on their sword if something went wrong in their department.

contrast that with how quiet they were over the original hacking cases – how lightly andy coulson got off first time around. judging by some of the headlines in the red tops this past week they were keen to let it all slide.

none of them rushing to condemn, very few calls for the head of rebekah brooks or james murdoch perhaps out of misplaced loyalty to fellow journalists or more likely that there are skeletons in all their closets. for a long time they have used the ‘it is in the public’s interest’ when they have broken stories about scandals of the rich and famous. these footballers, musicians, actors and the like are, we are told, role models because they are in the public eye and because they can influence people. so the argument goes they are legitimate targets.

yet they are only role models and influencers because the media has told us so.

somehow the media, with a few notable exceptions, has remained in the background all the while influencing people. it never turns the spotlight on to itself, and it tried very hard not to do it with the latest hacking story preferring to tell cheryl not to go back to ashley.

if we are lucky this will lead to the media having a hard look at itself and changing. doubtful.

if we are lucky it will mean that the two main political parties will move away from worrying what the press has to say and develop policy that has more in common with what the public wants than what a few editors tell us the public want. at the moment the conservatives and david cameron are tarnished by this. labour hasn’t escaped untouched. this is something where they could come together to make sure that there is legislation in place to prevent, and if necessary punish, a media that oversteps the line. some might say that this could be used as a weapon to curtail a free press, but a press that is just interesting in tittle tattle and tawdry stories isn’t worried about the national interest just in the bottom line.

if we are lucky it will mean the end of murdoch’s overbearing influence on british politics and british opinion.

what i think will happen is that this will all blow over and it will be business as normal.

but we can hope.

prices

nice one british gas.
thanks.
just what i need.
i am so glad that privatisation meant better pricing for us (still waiting for that advantage).

wondering if they have released their price rises now hoping that it gets lost in the news about the 'news of the world' and the hacking scandal.
they wouldn't do that, would they?
just wondering.

blocking

there is an odd debate going on at the moment about blocking websites that host the streaming of copyrighted material, such as the premier league football games. the premier league makes most of its money through selling the rights to screen game live on tv. they are keen to protect and protect the brand they have created.
simpe. understandable.
it is all part of the digital economy act.
i am going to ignore the rights and wrongs of the act as i need to set a download running (joke.. it was a joke... a joke).
i can't see how ban a site that infringes copyright can be seen as an attack on free speech, more an attack on theft. the copyfighters all seem to be very keen to give away the work of others but have yet to invited me around to their place so i can just take a dvd or cd from their shelves.
however this isn't what this is about.
during one of the meetings to discuss this whole thing an executive from google said they would fight any attempt at web blocking. i feel safer knowing that. after all they put up such a fight in china, perhaps that sort of bravado is easy to maintain when your search engine is number one in most western countries.
nor does it seem a stance that is compata company who is accused of rigging the result of their searches engine searches in order to make the results of 'friends' appear much closer to the top, i guess that isn't the same as 'censorship', it is just misleading (and tits between pals so who cares.....)
when it comes to sense i have long since given up expecting it from any compant that is making  loads of money, would i do expect from them is their whinging on about the rights of the consumer to make money for the company in question.

over

line.
crossed over.
ooops 'news of the world'.
one thing snooping on self-important celebs who quite like the publicity.
quite another to hack the phone of a murdered girl.

crikey perfect time for clarkson or frankie boyle to tell one of their famous 'funny' jokes.

tired

so tired.
just fallen asleep on the bog.
woke up in some pain from where i had slumped over.
it wasn't the pain that woke me from my elvis like slumber, it was the terrible smell of a large job well done. while i was dreaming of impertinent french maids, my body had done what came naturally and had unleased a very large u-bend buster and a few smaller turds for good measure.
leave a pile like that festering for a while and you have a chemical reaction that can kill a goodly percentage of the people in the local area while also stipping the paint off of rhe nearest airaircraft carrier.
i was lucky: i was jolted back to reality by a smell that caused me to cough and my eyes to water.
i know have to look out for me going off on a 'sleep poo' adventure on other nights as it will be a tough one to explain!

intervention

the new buzz is all about early intervention.
all about investing in the early lives of those who are disadvantaged in oder to prevent massive future social costs.
nothing really radical there - after all the jesuits have been forever going on about show me the child and i will mould you the man.
it is all so obvious really.
the new labour governmen poured a lot of love, attention and resources trying to get over 50% of the population a degree. lot of money spent.
it was one of their biggest mistakes - the time, the effort and the money should have been going into infant and junior schools to make sure kids were in a position to not only be able to learn, but want to.
all this talk of early intervention comes down to that: giving kids a good environment in which to grow and develop.
perhaps this government will pay attention and do the right thing.
i doubt it, but it would be nice.

new

not liking the new look.
oops.
i am sure it will grow on me.

work

i just pulled an 87-hour work week.
madness.

i had to deal with whining staff (all legitimate complaints); moaning students and demanding agents. mostly i enjoyed it. i wouldn’t want to do it again for awhile.

i have to admit there was a sense of achievement walking out of the office at 4 or 5am.

though come saturday i was brain dead.

the thought that came to me was: why do we expect junior doctors to work such long hours? as there were times when i was having trouble entering data into spreadsheets. this was followed by: why do lorry drivers complain that they are not allowed to work as long as they want. if i can’t work a computer well at the end of 80 hours work, i am pretty sure that truckers would have trouble controlling their lorries.

i am up for doing another long week.

but not just yet.

dim

dim


my television is so dim, but it is still cleverer than jeremy clarkson.

boom boom.

my joke is about as funny as jeremy’s.

how ironic then that kia abdullah (a very tasty bangladeshi author) has been caught up in an ‘insensitivity’ row of another shade. ms abdullah made a ‘joke’ about the death of some british students with double-barrelled names while they were on a gap year trip to thailand. she claimed it was an attempt at ‘classist’ humour.

her ‘joke’ appeared on twitter. quite how people in the public eye forget the ‘social’ part of social media is beyond me, but they do. still she apologised and so that is fine and dandy.

on the radio a friend of the author and someone from the libertarian alliance ‘debated’ the situation. the friend basically said that ms abdullah had made a mistake and that was that. the libertarians began by saying that if ms abdullah had been facing prosecution from the police then they would be defending her, but as she wasn’t they were calling for her to be cast out as a social leper (which seems to be having your cake and eating it). he went on to point out that if this had been a white writer making a similar comment about students who had indian or african names there would have been a large outcry. which seemed odd as he had also claimed that ‘people can find racism in a bus queue’ (it is an analogy that doesn’t really work as often you can find racism in a bus queue, but we’ll gloss over that) so it is ironic how quickly he played the race card. ms abdullah’s friend claimed it had nothing to do with race, but was a poor attempt at humour based on class; in doing so proving that perceived racism is colour blind – it rarely comes in paler shades.

clarkson often defends himself by saying that those who are offended by his jokes don’t have a sense of humour. ms abdullah and her friend defends her by saying it was a mistake. neither of them seems to have been blessed by the comedy gods. perhaps both of them need to count to ten before they put their ‘jokes’ out there in the public arena.

j30

today the strikes are going on over the country.
no matter what happens the tories will claim that they show that the ordinary working people do not agree with public sector workers. no matter how many people come out on strike they will claim there was not enough support for it and they will start making noises about changing the rules that unions have to live by in order to call strikes (though they won't be quite so keen to apply the same logic to their roles).

but this isn't a blog about politics.
this is a blog to send a message out to a special person. a radical person. a caring person.

ems: get back to work!

strikes

michael gove has called on a mum's army to keep the schools working when teachers go on strike. mr. gove also goes on about how teachers will lose public support if they go on strike.
i have no idea if the teachers are right to strike or not, but the fact that mr. gove is against it is good enough for me.
go teachers! go teachers!

(meanwhile vince cable is playing down the idea that there might be tougher anti-union laws coming from the coalition. there was a small piece in the news of the world (it was there i read it; i didn't buy it) going on about how there might be an attack on trade union benefits.
amazing how if you go on strike to protect your standard of living you are are cast as enemies of the state and need to be crushed.
if you happen to be a financial institution who fucked the world's economic system sideways you just get a pass and told to continue.
no wonder we don't trust the coalition (nothing to do with the fact the tories are part of it, not at all...)

enough

look just shut up about the olympic tickets.
more people wanted tickets than there were tickets available - it really is that simple.
more people wanted to sit in the olympic stadium and watch the 100 metres final than there were seats available. get over it.
bradley wiggins and some swimmer have moaned that their family couldn't get tickets. boo fucking hoo. olympians get two tickets for each event they are in. some have mentioned that footballers and tennis players get more tickets when they are in cup finals or at wimbledon. perhaps i should point out that there are fewer players at both so the amounts of tickets to be given away is far far fewer. secondly, and perhaps more crucially, wimbledon and the fa cup (say) are both commercial events and the stadiums they take place in built with private money. in case you have forgotten the olympic stadium and park mostly built by state money (our money my friends, our money).
so bradley man up.
it is made even worse by the fact that most of the olympians will have benefitted from state funding in order for them to pursue their dreams (no matter what people say a well trained teacher or nurse will do more good for society than a host of linford christies). so it is doubly irksome when they seemingly have the attitude that the olympics is something for them and the rest of us are just lucky to be able to see it.
get real.

as bad as the atheletes are the moaners who didn't get tickets are even worse.
a popular event selling out - who would have thought it? i must be missing all the media coverage of glastonbury of people constantly complaining that they didn't get their ticket and that they will never listen to music ever again just because they aren't going.
sometimes life isn't fair.
get over it.

then the cynical part of me kicks in and i think that the london organising committee love this sort of thing as it is generating lots of interest in the games, making sure that the duff tickets are getting sold and there will be very few empty seats in any of the olympic venues.
clever stuff.

savings

david cameron has been over to europe for one of those there summits that that have. mr. cameron is always going on about how wasteful and extravagant the european council is - though he always seems happy to go on a jolly to brussels.
he is a bit miffed that there are plans to construct a new building to house the european council for mr. cameron this is just an outrageous waste of money. ignoring the keynesian aspect of it (public money creating wealth because of the spending power of the people employed on the project - oh hold on only the private sector can generate wealth: silly me), ignoring the ecological aspects: being purpose built it will be a sustainable bringing down the cost to the environment. you could even argue that a project that size in brussels might even mean a decrease in the number of johnny-east-europeans that the tories hate so much as they sit and fan their hate with a copy of the daily mail.

nope david cameron says of the building: "tt seems to me to do a perfectly good job of housing the european council. the microphones work, there is plenty of room and the food isn't bad either. what is the problem?"

he also says: ""you do wonder if these institutions actually get what every country and what every member of the public is having to go through, as we cut budgets and try and make our finances add up." a slightly longer version of the 'we are all in it together' formula that they like to spout - it is the sort of thing that had them walking to parliament on their first day (and i am sure they went cheap day eurostar for this trip).

but would this be the david cameron who, with his wife, had a second, brand spanking new kitchen installed in 10 downing street? they had said that they would pay the extra costs themselves, but that was for renovating the old one. mr. cameron also said his government would be more transparent with information about the costs of running the country, but it seems not so much when it comes to building a new kitchen.
i suppose if asked to comment i might say something like: "tt seems to me to do a perfectly good job as a kitchen. the hob works, there is a toaster and the food isn't bad either. what is the problem? you do wonder if these rich tory toffs actually get what every member of the public is having to go throug?"

don't you worry dave. i know you are thinking of me when you dip your toast into boiled egg, becuase like you i know we are all in it together - the only problem is you are standing on our sholders watching us suffer.

hot

someone told me that it was going to be blistering tomorrow.
i am already suffering now. lawks knows what i am going to be like tomorrow then.
sweat monster most probably.

tuckered

i am plum tuckered out. not been this tired for a looooong time.
almost fallen alseep at the computer. time for me to go and sleep before i collapse.

why

there is a lot going on in the world at the moment.
just think of british members of parliament who have a lot on their plate - there is the deficit; there is afghanistan and libya; there is the reforms of the nhs and education to name just a few. for most people that would be enough.
amazingly they are debating whether or not 'wild' animals should be used in the circus.
adding irony to the mix the mp  who has brought this before the house is a tory: the party who wants to overturn the ban on fox hunting. slaughtering foxes is ok, but getting an elephant to stand on its back-legs is a terrible effront to the the animal's dignity.
so remember:
foxes dead - ok.
zebras prancing  - bad.
i can almost follow the logic and that worries me.

over

friend laid to rest.
words spoken.
tears shed.
reminders of the past.
time to move on, time to get back to life, time to remember all the good thngs we have.

black

suit - newly bought (ill fitting).
shirt - newly bought (still in wrapper).
black tie - used a few times (plain).
boots - black (not shined).
train ticket - waiting (still have to pay for it).
time of departure - set (will i get there in time).
book - ready (something short and light).

all ready.
i am off on a summer funeral. fun for all the family.