supping

the conservative party has given into pressure to release the names of the people who have had 'kitchen suppers' with david and samantha cameron. the 'cam dine with me' scandal (as some wags have called it) is still causing some tremors about the place. i am still not sure why, as most of us have always believed that the conservative party is hand in hand with the rich and wealthy. and we have always known that the rich and wealthy want to influence government in order to make sure that they stay rich and wealthy, so that they can become richer and wealthier. let's be honest it's a no brainer of a relationship. the list of people who have rocked up to dine with dave and to sup with sam seems to be dominated by people who are involved with finance or property. just the industries that will get the country back on its feet again. of course a few commentators have pointed out that the labour party isn't in a better position as it is beholden to the trade unions, who not only contribute a large chunk of change to the party but also have block votes at events such as the labour conference. shall i tell you what the difference is? shall i? we know the trade unions have a measure of influence on the labour party. it is all above board and it is there for all to see. the right wing press may not like it - but they haven't had to do a sting operation to find out about it. not that this matters to some as they see the current conservative scandal as a way to hobble the labour party while not really damaging the conservative party. how? by arguing for a cap on individual contributions to the political parties. this will weaken the labour party more than it will the conservative party by the simple fact that there are more rich people who want to curry favour and influence decisions than there are unions. given that these are also the same people who hire people to make sure they pay the least amount possible in tax it isn't going to be hard for them to work out schemes to allow them to contribute as much money as they want through various proxy donors. the important aspect of unions that is overlooked in this is that they are an amalgamation of their members and capping them as 'individuals' goes against the principle of them being a union. you have to credit the right wing commentators of taking a shitty situation and turn it into a serious and potential devastating attack on the finances of the labour party. a bit like the dining arrangements at 10 downing street - i am not surprised.

caught

"this is not the way we raise money in the conservative party. it shouldn't have happened. "it's quite right that peter cruddas has resigned. i will make sure there is a proper party inquiry to make sure this can't happen again." so said david cameron. of course what he meant was: he shouldn't have been caught on tape offering access to senior politicians and it is only right that someone that stupid should resign. our internal investigation will make sure we can't make this mistake again. and let's be serious it costs a lot more than £200-250k to get to chat to georgie and me. with this revelation the sunday times has done a number of things. it has made the case for a free press. it has restored a certain amount of credibility to journalism, it may have even gone some way to demonstrating that news international isn't evil incarnate and in bed with the conservatives. now either the investigators got very very lucky or mr. cruddas and the party have had previous form at this. i don't doubt that labour and the liberal demoncrats both have their own funding skeletons. as money is fast becoming as important to political parties in the uk as it is in the usa perhaps it is now time to fully address the situation. there was a time when i would have argued that all that needed to be done was to pass a few laws that mandated that broadcasters and such like had to 'donate' time and space to the political parties in equal measure during an election campaign. i think that time has come and gone. so now i would say let them get their money from wherever they want to and let them offet anything in return for the cash - however the political parties would have to be 'open book organisations' so that the electorate (and more importantly the press) could go over their books to see where the money had come from and what was being offered in the return. sure the conservative party would raise much more money than labour or the liberal democrats, but knowing where the money has come from (and what it potentially means to voters) would have a negative effect on voters and make then think long and hard before they put their crosses next to a conservative name on the ballot paper. i could be wrong - but as this is the tactic used by the right-wing press and the conservative party whenever they cite labour's reliance on funds from the trade unions then i am sure it would work if it were applied to the wealthy giving to the tories. meanwhile the current con/dem government sees yet another 'scandal' at least sleaze under the major and brown governments was at the end of a long period in power. the current lot have just decided to make it an ongoing permanent feature of government.

copper

one of the things i am not too keen on about being poor is having to carry around a pocket full of change. so when i am out shopping i can use as many pieces of copper as i can. thank fuck for self-service tills, though i am sure the people waiting for me to finish are not that keen on watching me pump 15 two pence pieces into the slots. truly i am looking after the pennies, because i have no pounds to look after themselves. there is a great sense of relief when i have been able to use up a large chunk of copper shrapnel to buy some milk or such like. a weight has gone from my pocket and i feel as if i have used money that would just be gathering dust in a jar somewhere. recently my local tesco metro has been playing dirty tricks with me. it has been getting it's own back. i much prefer the sainsbury's self-service - put the money in the slot and it is subtracted from your total. quick, simple and easy. tesco have been clever they give you a dish-like space in which to drop the entire amount into. except it seems to take awhile for it to work. this does not inspire confidence in me so i put in the coins individually. that way i feel in control of the situation. today i was shy a few pennies of the exact change. so i needed to use a pound coin (oh how my heart bleeds when i have to give one of those precious coins up), the total bill was 84p. imagine my annoyance when the change came back in the form of 1 one pence piece, 1 5 pence piece and 5 two pence pieces. somehow the machine knows it is me as this is the fourth time it has done it to me. curse you self-service till. curse you tesco.

budget

i don't pretend to understand the budget. i am not even sure the economists know what they are talking about. you only have to look at the forecasts and predictions made by people like the treasury, office of budget responsibility or the, ever-changing, ratings agencies, i was struck by a couple of things. firstly there was the tacit admission that in order for much of the 'britain will work it's way out of recession' depended on the inward flow of investment from sovereign states. there is a certain amount of irony that a capitalist democracy is going to be saved by cash from countries that are neither. still part of this influx of chinese and saudi money is that more companies will no longer be british. secondly there were the assumptions behind the dropping of the top rate of tax from 50p to 45p. this isn't going to happen for a year because they don't want to break their promise that the top rate of tax will stay in place while the public sector deals with a pay freeze. which on the surface of it is fair enough. except that when that pay freeze comes to an end the con/dems have already said that they are seeking to move to local pay deals rather than national settlements - expect many regions not to get a pay rise, or a minimal one when the time comes - meanwhile the rich will be getting their tax cut. seems fair to me. (a digression here - the reasoning behind the move to regional pay deals is that the 'high' wages in the public sector distorts the local job markets when it comes to the private sector. the idea is that with pay freezes and lower pay deals private sector wages can catch up with local public sector pay. because that is what will happen - not a case of there is no need to pay more because there is little choice for employees - they just have to accept the lower amount. one of the reasons for lowering tax on the rich was to have them spend more, in the case of the poor or just well off it is a case of clawing some money back from them as their spending in local shops hardly matters. quite why the tories are always keen on a race to the bottom is something that eludes me). secondly there is the odd message that accompanies the cut in the top rate of tax. there have been a flurry of business people talking about how this top rate affects their ability to invest in their companies, the commentators ask sage questions of them - but never once ask how the top rate of personal tax affects the profits of the company, as corporate tax is at a much lower rate instead. if you want to keep more of your money be honest about it and say so - the top rate of personal tax doesn't stop you investing your company's profit back into the company. the rationale for the 5p cut is to make britain more competitive - to get the best people here and to keep them here. now i personally think that the majority of these people are not irreplaceable and that you could easily find several people to fill each of the jobs at less money, but that is another argument altogether. the economy, because it suits many of the leading players in it, has bought into the idea that some of them are indispensable and that they need to be paid an awful lot. for the sake of argument we'll agree that is the case. they continue the argument by saying that the 50p rate was raising 'next to nothing' (though it is an odd world where next to nothing is £1bn). so how is the new rate going to be better, because if it is lower then it will raise even less money, won't it? not so my dear reader. according to george osborne this new lower rate of tax will raise five times the amount of tax from the rich as the 50p rate did. how? indeed you may well ask. simple (sort of) because their tax is now below the psychological 50p the rich will cease and desist from tax avoidance and tax evasion. they will be happy to pay their new top rate of tax. of course they will and i will shit roses. mr. osborne has pretty much admitted himself that there will be an element of having to fight for this money by saying that he has increased the number of staff at hmrc in order to crack down on avoidance and evasion. my prediction is that they will do a lot of work against benefit fraud and not be quite so harsh on those dodgy deals a well placed tax accountant will wrangle. so no changes there. remember the businessmen i mentioned who were complaining about having to pay the 50p tax, i think i would be livid right now with the prospect that i am going to be paying five times more in tax than i had been. yet everyone seems to say that they will go for this psychological drop and be happy with it. frankly i don't think that businessmen who are conned that easily into giving up five times what they were previously paying are the sort of people we really want to be running our businesses. i reckon the reason they are going to be happy is that they are getting a reduction in their tax and they know they will be able to find the loopholes they need to pay even less tax than they were in the past. because the rich, even when they are telling other people how to spend money (eh bob!) are happy to make sure as little as possible of their money is actually spent. in an odd way you have to admire mr. osborne for his faith in the wealthy to suddenly play by the rules and start paying the full whack now that it has been reduced. it is just a shame the rest of us are so cynical.

station

the king's cross station facelift has almost been completed. they have opened up the new entrance to the mainline station and all i can say is 'ooooooh' and 'aaaaaaaah' and 'wow'. job nicely done. boris will take credit for it. hate to admit it but i did get confused in the maze of new connecting corridors - that will teach me to read the signs rather than blundering on. even that doesn't take away from the fact it looks pretty darned good.

voices

there is something wonderful about a good voice. of course what makes a good voice for me, may not be the same for some one else. i have not been blessed with a good speaking voice, which is annoying as there are times when i just won't shut up. my enjoyment of people's voices is probably one reason why i am more of a fan of radio than i am of tv. almost as important as the voice is the sound of laughter. i love a good laugh. a good voice can calm, assure and inform. a good laugh is infectious and just brings joy and happiness. i was in a pub, sitting quietly waiting for the burlesque show to start (by the end of the evening i would wonder why i bothered but that is another story), i had gotten there early (which is very unusual for me) and i had plonked myself down at an empty table away from where most of the punters were - they were busy watching the footie on the tv. for a while i read a book and enjoyed the soundtrack of sleaze rock that accompanied the evening. a young lady sat at the table near me. nice legs. she was joined by a couple. they chitted and chatted. i wasn't paying much attention, but as they drank their voice got louder. well when i say their voices i mean his voice. the bloke, who was with two lovely ladies, dominated the conversation, his voice a loud annoying nasal whine, that in itself was bad enough. the ladies couldn't be heard, he could. so there were moments of quiet as he listened to them and then a burst of static white noise as he contributed. another drink and then the laughing started. he had sharp short constipated pig grunt of a laugh. its brevity its saving grace. or it would have been but for the fact he used it at any opportunity. so at every utterance from the women there was an exhalation of laughter. whenever he finished he blurted out a laugh. it became a machine report of grunting, each one devoid of humour or warmth expected from laughter. how i wished the three of them had been more interested in their smartphones than in conversation with each other. guess i am getting less tolerant as i get older. to make matters worse the burlesque was shit.

jones

i believe i have confessed my love of the daily mail's liz jones. i just want to reiterate it here. i love liz jones. pretty much each sunday she is guaranteed to entertain. the real trick of her column is you are never quite sure if she is serious or if she is just one big wind-up. in this particular case it might be her sub-editor who is playing about with the concept of irony, or it may just be a very stephen fry like sophisticated play on words that goes above my head. she begins her piece about why people should not be complaining that there was no warning before the showing of graphic images in the witchcraft torture trial. liz, you see, lives in the real world and not disneyland. liz is an adult who can cope with all that the adult world throws at her - whether it be graphic violence or men who do not match her standards. from the horrors of torture on the tv she some how manages to say how something similar happened to her. (not the torture, but spineless busybodies complaining about adult things happening in the adult world). there she was in a nice restaurant telling a friend all about her hi-jinks at the recent paris fashion week (a girl and her clothes). i am sure the prestigious hotel/ restaurant she was in appreciated the name check as well as the mention that it was empty at breakfast aside from liz and her friend. liz's language was dotted with profanity. oh there was a family there. the father had the temerity to approach liz and ask that she did not swear while there were young children present. liz had to ask her friend if she had sworn. friend said she had. liz isn't concerned that she doesn't realise she is swearing, or that she is swearing in a loud voice. no she is just concerned for the man's wife - how can she be married to such a lickspittle who quails at hearing a few cuss words. men in liz's world should not only be conversant in industrial strength language, not only should they use it at every available opportunity they should also be ensuring that their children learn it at an early age. to punish the wife liz continues her, very interesting, conversation in hushed tones. here is where stephen fry learns about irony and the exquisite use of language to convey subtle layers of multiple meanings beyond what appears on the surface. this is a lesson in more than just semiotics. this is a lesson that barthes and saussure would have paid good money to have sat in on, listened to, mulled over and bowed down before. remember we live in the real world, not disneyland. the adult world where we have no need to be warned that harsh nasty things might appear on our tv screens. in the piece the offending word appears several times. this is what shocked the man, that shallow worm of a man, was upset by liz's use of 'p*** off'. i shit you not dear reader. while liz rails at how this man should not be offended by her use of earthy language she is making sure than none of the mail on sunday's readers have to suffer the pangs of torment as they have to decide do they get up in arms at her use of swear words only fit for the feral youth and the plasma tv watching benefit scroungers or do they stand up against the ever present nanny statism with its pc gone mad affects on daily life. what a sweet dilemma she has constructed for her readers - move over the gordian knot and zeno's paradoxes, liz has brought moral and ethical philosophy into the 21st century. that my friends is the genius of liz jones. that my friends is why i am in love with liz jones.

dosh

it is a truism that money talks. it is equally true that politicians love money, doesn’t seem to matter what the colour of their politics they do love the colour green. in what is a busy year for london we also have the mayoral elections. effectively this is a competition between ken livingstone and boris johnson. if i am honest neither really inspires. in today’s evening standard there is a bit about how a millionaire businessman will double his gift to boris’ re-election fund if he likes what mr. johnson puts in his election manifesto. two of mr. johnson’s rich backers say that boris is good for business and that business is the foundation on which our economy is built. one of them is a hedge fund manager the other is a property tycoon, both businesses have proved how stable a foundation they are in recent years. the piece also points out that mr. livingstone is getting some of his funding from the unions, sorry i should say ‘union barons’, as they are called in the report, they may as well have called them ‘union robber barons’ just to make sure the readers got their point. not just satisfied with that they make the claim that because he has accepted union money he might be held to ransom by the unions. they don’t explain how that actually works – it is just enough to throw that thought in there. it is just a shame that they had started the whole thing off with sir john beckworth (property tycoon) saying he would double his £25,000 to mr. johnson if he liked the cut of boris’ jib. stanley fink is giving £33,000 to boris. the two unions cited are the transport salaried staff’s association (tssa) has given mr. livingstone £25,000 and aslef (associated society of locomotive engineers and firemen) has given £20,000, between them the two unions, representing thousands of london workers, are giving less than two businessmen. not that the evening standard makes that point, nor do they make the point that perhaps the idea that one or two rich businessmen could influence policy for london is inherently unfair and damaging to democracy. that isn’t a problem. a union doing the same to mr. livingstone is very bad as far as the evening standard is concerned. maybe the evening standard would be better off if it campaigned for elections that don’t involve large financial war chests. or a change of rules to ensure that no one can serve for more than two terms. but then if i were the editor of the evening standard the flavour of the coverage would be ‘anyone but boris.’

peculiar

the bbc’s 5live featured vince cable quite heavily the other day – there was the nissan announcement, there was the mansion tax and there was the letter. mr. cable had sent a letter to david cameron and nick clegg basically saying that the government had failed to lay out a ‘compelling’ view of how britain was going to emerge from austerity. nothing new there and nothing that could be argued that is really contentious (at least to those of us who haven’t signed up to the con/dem project. this was being portrayed as vince cable taking leadership of the awkward squad. i don’t agree with that particular vision of what mr. cable was doing, i don’t have a problem with members of the government disagreeing with each. i think it shows a certain amount of strength and maturity that a government can contain within it dissenting voices (a skill that labour lost in its final years). for all organisations there should be someone, or some mechanism, that points out weaknesses or issues with policies. if you can’t dissent while in government then what good is democracy? some in the liberal democrats agree with me as they say all that mr. cable was doing was showing creative thoughts and sharing ideas. others might argue that if he really isn’t a position to moan as he is n the best place to affect the change he wants. the crucial thing was the letter was private and was never intended for public consumption (have to like a coalition that is happy to leak against itself). it is only because the letter had become public that people were discussing it. a tory bod was asked to speak about it; i believe it was tim montgomerie of conservative home fame. he made the point that the letter had previously appeared in the financial times and he couldn’t quite see what all the fuss was about. his implications being that not only were the bbc behind the curve on this, but that they were trying to cause trouble. the retort was that the full text of the letter hadn’t been published. this cut no ice with tim. the headline in the times? “cable lashes coalition.” the headline in the daily telegraph? “coalition lacks vision, says cable.” looks like tim’s non-story isn’t quite as old as he thought it was.

return

3g is back. gorgeous george galloway is going to be standing for parliament. he is going to be contesting the bradford west seat in the forthcoming by-election. i can't point to much he did when he was my local mp, but it will be good to have him back in politics. i wonder just what 'cause' he is going to use to whip up the necessary local support for him and the respect party this time. not sure a possible war on iran is going to work all that well. he should have run for london mayor - that would have been an intersting story, and interesting contest.

ciggies

i don't smoke. i am glad of that. i tried to smoke, i was barely in my teens, parents were at work and so i thought i would spark up. i drew the curtains in the front room. i picked up one of mum's (or it could have been dad's) fags. they were probably a pack of senior service. i had it in my mouth - thinking i looked as cool as fuck. i had the lighter in my hand. i clicked the switch. flame on. no matter how i tried i couldn't get that fag to light. no amount of huffing or puffing worked. the fag stayed unlit. i never smoked. i suppose the other thing that prevented me from ever really trying to smoke was that both my parents were heavy smokers and i wanted to be different from them. (oh and maybe all the health warnings that started to crop up while i was in my teens). jump forward to today. story on the bbc about how there is pressure on george osborne to increase the cost of cigarettes. there are several benefits to a price increase. firstly there is more money to the treasury and in these days of austerity that is a good thing. secondly it is thought that by hiking up the price people will wean themselves off cigarettes, the only problem is they are addictive and if it were that easy everyone would be doing it. of course the increase in the price of cigarettes hits the poorest hardest and is the main reason why there won't be quite the uproar as there has been for a minimum unit price on alcohol. but i have an even better solution to the problem of getting people to cut down on smoking. it still involves them buying cigarettes, but it is a practice that is frowned upon by the powers that be and gets those who sell cigarettes in this way into a lot of bother. but to me it seems the perfect solution. let retailers sell singles - at the moment they can't, they can only sell packs. person buys a pack it is quite likely they are going to smoke them all and in a short space of time. they buy a couple of singles then they have to make another trip to the retailer to get their hit. result fewer fags smoked. i have solved the problem. thank me later.

finger

according to a report in the daily telegraph if you won't to be seen to be an expert you need to point. the finger alerts people to your authority. the report says that children learn from an early age that the finger pointing rquates to something important. so if you have to tell someone something you want them to take notice of you need to use the finger. just in case you need some tips on which fingers to use. this one is effective in some situations but is more antagonistic than being an expert.

this classy use of the finger (well fingers) is especially poignant for the french. also known as the reverse churchill.

probably best to avoid this one as well when you are trying to expand on your point. in order to show that you really know your stuff and that you are the knowledgable one then i suggest that you use this one.

and use it liberally and everyone will bow to your wisdom. trust me i read it in the daily telegraph

(see it works)

wanker

(i had written this last night - and about nine tenths of the way through the computer decided to just lose it. this version will not be quite as good as that one). len mccluskey is the general secretary of the unite union, britain's largest union. as such he weilds a lot of power and influence. unions are necessary, in fact they are vital, they should be there not only to protect the employee at work or to improve the employees conditions at work, unions should also play an important role in the social and economic health of the country. the con/dems, sorry i mean the coalition government, have embarked on an austerity drive which is supposed to help us recover from the financial crisis which had been created by the financial services around the world but the con/dems conveniently blame on the labour government. a large plank of the austerity drive is cuts to the public sector. most people are sympathetic to public sector workers. it is a sympathy that can easily be lost. one way of losing it very quickly, i would argue, is to call for strike action and acts of civil disobedience during the olympic games (they probably won't do it against the paralympic games just in case they have to criticise themselves for offending the disabled community). while there is tactical sense in targeting the olympics - it is also one that involves great risks as it will easily be seen as a combination of greed (i refer you to the antics of the rmt union) and blackmail. neither will sit too well with people who are suffering economically themselves. you would like to think that len mccluskey is just sending up a warning shot and this will lead to sensible discussion. but you just can't be sure. mr. mccluskey was elected to the role of general secretary with a large majority of the votes. 15% of those eligible to vote did. mr. mccluskey's salary is somewhat above the average wage his members get and i am sure his pension will be a healthy one. perhaps mr. mccluskey is just upset he didn't get a ticket or two in the olympic ticket ballot?

aaaaargh!

a fantastic. perfectly worded. well reasoned. funny and pithy. it was an amazing piece. some of the best writing you are ever likely to read. no lie. what was it? well you will never see it in that form. no it is lost in the highways and by-ways of the internet. somewhere out there is my excellent, well crafted piece. sadly you will have to settle for a less than perfect facsimilie of the original. you'll be pleased to know i have learnt my lesson and i will no longer be typing straight into blogger. (well except for this one and the next one, but after that...maybe). meantime the the literary world will just have to mourn.

horse

rebakah brooks, ex news international, has 'fostered' a retired police nag. shock. horror. as we all know there are lots of problems with news international. not only has there been the phone hacking scandal but there also seems to be a culture of corruption and collusion between the company and the metropolitan police force. this revelation that ms brooks has availed herself of a service that is readily available to all is further sign of conspiracy. to think that stabling a steed could cause such a ruckus. lots of us hate rupert murdoch and what he stands for and what he has done. yet pretty much all of us benefit in some way or another from his work. when the sunday sun was being released there was a question posed on 5live as to whether or not people would buy it. most said that they wouldn't sully their hands with it but then they had never bought the sun, would never buy it and would never give money to murdoch. a large number of them were supporters of liverpool football club. a club who do very well from the money they get from sky. that is ignored by the fans. i may never buy the sun, but i have bought the times and the sunday times. i have enjoyed many movies that have come from a murdock owned movie company and i have read a fair few books published by companies owned by rupert. (even the coverage of, the now sainted, marie colvin was at terrible pains to ignore that she had worked for 25 years for the sunday times). ms. brooks is not a stupid women. her husband is a former horse trainer. ms. brooks is known to saddle up with people like david cameron. so it is not unreasonable to believe that regardless of the dealings that she had with the police because of her news international role that she would have known about the scheme to 'foster' some of inspector knackers knackered nags. to hear a couple of the labour members of parliament on the radio today - you would have thought that this was the smoking gun they had all been waiting for. it wasn't. one of them said that there were many children in birmingham who would like to have the loan of a police horse (yes and i would also like parliamentaty privelege - but neither me or the children of birmingham are in a position for our desires to come to pass). he continued that it was interesting that this story had come out now as it was obscuring a more important story - such as deputy assistant commissioner sue akers allegations of a 'corrupt network' of public officials. what did the mp focus on? the 'real' story? or the soft fluffy one. yup you guessed it. a fellow mp appearing the same show - made a series of bad puns, huffed and puffed about how murdoch was bad but failed to prove or explain how looking after the nag was inherently bad. it seems that in their zeal to land a killer blow at ms. brooks, mr. murdoch and news international they are throwing everything that they can at them in the hope that some of it will stick. sadly they are in danger of (ahem) flogging a dead horse. (all that and for such a poor payout...)

sigh

not all of us can have the perfect job. i would quite like to be putting the tails on bunny girls, or being the wardrobe manager for babestation. or maybe even a shock jock (to be honest i couldn't be anything other than that as i have an inability to talk for very long without swearing). most of us just have to get on with jobs that we don't always find interesting or fulfilling. there has even been a lot about that in the media recently - but you will have to wait for my critique of workfare and i know you can't wait. as the job market is flat and the opportunities for 50-year olds are even flatter i have had to succumb and sign on. for those of you lucky enough not to have had to go through this process let me tell you it is not the most uplifting experience. firstly there is the telephone interview - this is how you start your claim. lots of questions. many of them repeated several times. the person at the other end is just going through the questions as they appear - even they must be bored with asking me, but in ever so slightly different ways, if i am single or do i have children. this inquisitor cannot provide advice, which isn't much of a help when you get to areas where you have no idea what is going on. my mortgage isn't covered by housing benefit (well maybe the interest is, maybe)but you should have mortgage protection, except the last time i told them i had this my claim for jobseeker's allowance was invalidated because i had an income. trying to explain that anomaly got me nowhere. given they are potentially not going to give me benefits for my mortgage they still want to see paperwork for things such as leasehold, ground rent and maintenance. why? no idea. just nosey i guess. they then give you a time to arrive at your local job centre to have a formal interview, hand over paperwork and confirm the statement you have given. my local job centre is not a welcoming place. i was running a bit late so i slightly amended the time i was told i was supposed to be there. ooops a little lie from me. hell it didn’t matter because they told me i was supposed to be there 10 minutes before the time i had been given. mutual distrust established. the advisor i got to see had been there the last time i started signing on. they were not much help or that interested then. they hadn’t changed. i got a little bit about how being late had upset their careful schedule because now they only had 15 minutes to interview me. i feign contrition and say i’ll be quick. they make noises about how they won’t be able to provide me with all the details i need. i am handed a copy of my statement to check. i hand over various bits of paper that they have asked me for. i go over the statement. i explain that i haven’t got some of the paperwork they have asked for, but i point out that as i am not trying to claim for ground rent i am not sure why they want the details. the advisor looks at me as i am an idiot. they ask why i have a bank statement with me. i tell them it is because i have been asked to bring it with me. again the look. i mention the situation about the mortgage. i get a different look. it is a look you use on people who are dribbling and raving. i get no help. no advice. advisor goes off to photocopy some of my documents. again if you have never been to a job centre you won’t know that they have a weekly print out of choice jobs. a job code; a job title; some description and the salary, all on a simple piece of paper. oh look there is a job event listed, that’ll be good to go to. no date. that is not helpful. advisor comes back. i ask: ‘can you tell me the date of this?’ sigh. i get a fucking sigh. the advisor turns to the computer and finds the information. i ask if there is a website for it? no. i ask if i can take the sheet with me – at least that way i have the job sheet. no. you can’t have that. it has codes on it. what? yes it has codes on it. from the attitude of the advisor these codes can be used to locate the sunken city of atlantis. to the untrained eye, mine, they just look like job codes. with that interview is over and i am out of there like a shot. i have to come back every two weeks. of course because i was late there was a large queue waiting to see my happy helpful advisor. oh that’s right there was no one there. i love helpful people. so i go back to my opening statement. i know we can’t all have the perfect job. i know we sometimes take a job and discover it isn’t quite what we expected it to be. i understand that sometimes that we just have to grin and get on with it. what i can’t understand is sticking in a job for several years that you plainly don’t like, having to deal with people that you plainly don’t like and are not interested in helping. coming to work day after day knowing that you will have to talk to people you don’t want to. where you have no desire to do the job properly but just get to the end of the day. making no attempt to disguise the fact that each person you have to see just is another problem, yet still want those people to show you the respect you can’t be bothered to show them. the really sad part is the advisor has kept their job for several years. so either no one bothers to complain or they all, like me, realise that it is pointless. that first contact is also the moment where you quickly understand that the aim of the people in the job centre is to do the least amount of work possible while they make your life a misery because they have to do a job they don’t like.

overheard

i was followed out of my local tesco by a trendy student couple. they were talking about their purchases. as you do. he had bought some cigarettes. she wanted to know why. he said just because. her reply was as follows: "but why those ones, they are just full of shit." yes because all other cigarette brands are full of goodness and healthy ingredients that will just improve your wellbeing.

dodgy

i love london. i love the east end. there is a magical charm about tower hamlets: it is a place of paradox and contradiction. we have an elected mayor. not many people wanted such a position to be created. it was helped through by the boys at respect, probably with the hope that gorgeous george galloway would get the nod. he didn't. we got lutfer rahman. i am sure he is a nice bloke. even before he was elected there was just a whiff of controversy about him. although he had been selected to be the official labour candidate he was deselected because of his alleged links to islaminc forum of europe. instead he decided to run as an independent and got the backing of respect. he received 51% of the votes cast. that whiff doesn't want to leave him. we have had the hoo-ha over the amount of money spent on his office. described as a vanity project. we have had the kerfuffle over his chauffeur driven hire car. he needs it because he needs to work while he is on the move - i have always believed that if you are the boss, you have as many people as possible come to you (if only to see your new swanky office). meanwhile the ceremonial mayor of tower hamlets, mizan chaudhury, has run up a very large taxi bill since his official car had been taken away. his reason for need these cabs is that his ceremonial chains are at risk. mr. chaudhury claims that mr. rahman had done this deliberately to make the civic office look bad. we have the on going saga of two female politicians, one a member of the lords the other a councillor, who have both been done for fiddling. the councillors has done it twice and still sits on the council. there are stories that homophobic noises have been tolerated in the public gallery of the council meetings. when there were a load of homophobic hate stickers that went up around the area it wasn't long before the fact that it was muslim led was quickly dropped from the reporting. just recently there has been the story of the 'executive advisor' who is getting £1000 a day, though tony winterbottom has claimed that he will bot be accepting his fee, even though he has also said that he is embararrassed that it is known he is charging so little. mr. winterbottom used to be an advisor to ken livingstone. this has led to questions about the number of high paid members of mr. rahman's inner circle. now we have allegations that there is potential voter fraud ahead of the london mayoral race - the evening standard has reported that some 64 properties across the borough have 550 inhabitants. while there is much to commend tower hamlets for - i never thought i would saying that one thing it does is make local politics interesting. perhaps it is time that i really took a serious interest in how my local council is run. here is where i agree with david cameron and eric pickles - we should all be interested and involved in local politics. so get out there and get involved.

payment

i don't understand the governmnet's student loan scheme. that shouldn't come as a surprise, my maths ability is very poor and my financial acumen is non-existent. i also get the feeling that the government is not that sure of what is going on either. take for instance their shock that many more universities than they thought raised their fees to the maximum when they were allowed to. how they didn't see that coming is beyond me. they didn't. so their initial forecast as to how much they were going to have to pay out in student loans was off the mark. then you hear various spokesmen saying that actually even fewer people will be paying back their loans now than they did previously. the threshold at which the student loan repayment kicks in is higher and the loan is written off after a certain period of time. i remember one statistic as being that almost 50% of students would not be paying back their loan. given the whole point of the loan system is to save the state money as students now pay for their education, i am not sure i see the sense in bringing a system that sees such a high failure rate. based on that sort of failure rate it would be just as sensible to reduce the tuition fees so that student loans drop to a level that they can be repaid. today the con/dem government has announced that they are going to remove the penalty clauses for those students who pay their loans back quickly. quite why there are penalty clauses for paying loans back quickly has always confused me (see aboove), you would have thought that having the loan paid back quickly would mean you had a debt off your books and money to loan out again. the national union of students (nus) and university and college union (ucu) have both had a go at this. liam burns of the nus says early repayment run the risk of making the student loan scheme more regressive (though he does point out that people should be wary of 'chipping away' at the deby as the benefits might bit be that great). while the ucu say it is a "policy designed to make life easier for the wealthiest". i refer you back to my admission of lack of maths and financial acumen but frankly i just don't see how it makes any difference to a poor student if the wealthier ones can pay off their debt quicker. firstly it is pretty likely that the wealthier student will either have a lesser debt to start with or will have been getting financial support while at university. in some cases they will exit university with no debt. the poorer students know what they are getting into when they enter university and hopefully when they come out they will be equipped with a good degree to go on to make their way in the world. what really hurts the poorer students isn't that they may have to pay back their student loans for a longer period of time it is that they can't get into the more prestigious institutions and they probably don't have access to the old boy networks to get them into the best paying jobs, or can't afford to go off and do an unpaid internship. personally i think that there should be a move to try to find ways to provide as many grants as possible for those from poorer backgrounds. it may mean that certain subjects are not going to be available for a grant and may involve means testing. frankly anyone who has come to university through private should pay their way. harsh i know.

tickets

stop. stop right now. no really. just stop. there is probably a lot of things that london organising committee of the olympic games (locog) have done wrong, and no doubt they will do more things wrong before the games start. yet they have done an awful lot right. pretty much all the venues are done and dusted. test events have been taking place. yet every time they release more tickets there is whinging and whining. yes it was a long winded process, but it was a pretty clear process. you knew what was happening. no matter what method they had used to sell and allocate tickets locog were always going to be on a hiding to nothing. why? simple - more people want to attend the olympic games than there are tickets available. even i can work out that math. so if you didn't get a ticket don't worry - you will probably get a better and more comfortable view sitting at home watching it on tv. if you want the experience of being jostled and harried, just start each day with a trip on the jubilee line to stratford and then go home to watch it on tv. right now - let's all forget about the tickets.

wanker

not had a wanker post for awhile. that isn't because there hasn't been wankers. dr. adam marshall, director of policy at the british chamber of commerce, called for the youth and development rates of the national minimum wage to be frozen this year. "the simple fact is that britan cannot afford to price people out of work." "the minimum wage cannot simply be a one-way bet, rising inexorably regardless of wider economic conditions.” let's look at the national minimum wage currently for adults it stands at £6.08 an hour (£5.93 in 2010, £5.80 in 2009) for 19-20 year olds (the development rate) it is £4.98 an hour (£4.92 in 2010, £4.83 in 2009) for 16-17 year olds it is £3.68 an hour (£3.57 in 2010, £3.53 in 2009). three things to note here. firstly these are not exactly princely sums we are talking about - which is why there are campaigns for living wages as opposed to minimum wages. secondly the rate of increase of the minimum wage cannot be said to be steep. thirdly dr. marshall, and the british chamber of commerce, have form when it comes to the minimum wage as petty much each time it has come time to improve it they have complained. dr. marshall and the british chamber of commerce see the minimum wage as a reason for why businesses are not employing youth, and by extension of this it would mean that employers are not employing anyone because of the minimum wage. for dr. marshall the preferred outcome would not only be the freezing of the national minimum wage but the eventual removal of it. after all why pay a decent wage if you don't have to. an unintended consequence (or is it) of dr. marshall's desire is to make the poor poorer. less money for workers - less spending power - less spending power - less purchasing - less purchasing - less profit for business. ooops. not that it matters to dr. marshall because he won't be affected -- he will still get paid, and no doubt will get a raise or a bonus that is above the rate of inflation. the other unintended consequence is that if wages are so low then there is less incentive for the young to look for work and even more reason for them to go onto the dole and stay there. more on the dole - higher social services spend - higher social services spend - less money to go to other areas and the possibility of more tax. but that is fine by dr. marshall and his ilk because he is also campaigning to make sure that tax fall on the poorest. brendan barber of the trades union congress argues that rather than it being a worry over the national minimum that is causing firms to be wary of hiring new staff because they lack the confidence that the economy is on a solid road to recovery. guess who i believe.

jubilee

gary barlow of take that fame is heading up the conert to celebrate the queen's diamond jubilee. he says only 'world class acts' will be invited to appear. apparently jls and jessie j are scheduled to be on the bill. world. class. acts. i feel so old.

lonely

david halpern, a downing street advisor, has suggested that loneliness is a major health problem for the elderly. the solution is for them to keep active, to keep working. this means that they maintain their social activity and ths stave off loneliness. of course the only problem with this is the lack of potential jobs for them to do. not that it will be an issue as this current government is slowly beginning to increase the age at which you can retire on a state pension. it won't be a case of choosing to stay in work in order to stay healthy, it will be a case of not being able to quit work because there is no pension available to you just yet. (this will affect tbe poor much more than it will the rich - a happy by-product of the tory thinkers thinking.) mr. halpern was also the bloke who suggested that the elderly are clogging up the housing market by, the horror, staying in their homes when their families have moved out. grant shapps, housing minister, has suggested that councils should help the elderly downsize so that their houses could be rented out to younger larger families. (i suspect that mr shapps will not be asking those millionaires with their large houses or luxury flats to be giving up their spare bedrooms in order to help those who do not have adequate housing for their needs.) it is not that either idea is particularly ludicrous many o.a.ps want to stay active and want to contribute to society. they would be more than happy to work to earn some extra cash, or volunteer. but we know there are not enough jobs to go around as it is now, without addng in the elderly. yes the voluntary sector can probably use the influx of cheap workers. yet somehow it seems faintly callous to encourage or 'nudge' the elderly to step up and volunteer to keep servies such as libraries going - because the government has decided it can't pay for them to be staffed. the same with housing - i am sure there are a lot of elderly people who would like to move to smaller places - if there was the right accomodation in the right place for them. yet that is the very problem of the housing market: there doesn't seem to be enough housing of any type for the number of people who need it. if only someone could nudge mr. halpern and mr. shapps to actually do something about creating work rather than shuffling the pieces around.

caring

david cameron seems to have several personas. there is the smug git. there is the bullying toff. finally there there the paternalistic patrician. none of these facets of his personality are particularly surprising, after all he is part of the aristocracy. it is natural for him to be a bully and to believe he knows best. recently david cameron has made two forays into the realm of social commentary - outlining his vision of what should be, his version of what it right. in the world of business he has said that there should be more womrn on the boards of businesses. he wants the businesses to do this for themselves, but he hasn't ruled out the use of government power to bring in and impose quotas. the reason for wanting women on boards is more than just social justice and equality, apparently women bring a better balance to decision making. they are a moderating force. even the world of football now has the caring concerned hand of cameron. the recent racism controversies have caused an uproar, in both the world of football and the wider world. these racist incidents were between players. a friend of mine tells me that racism is dealt with harshly on the terraces. neither case has been dealt with particularly well by the footballing authorities. david cameron has waded in. he says "my message is clear. we will not tolerate racism in britain...tt's vital too that more coaches and managers from black and minority ethnic groups make it to the top of the game and i know the premier league among others are working hard to try and make this happen." it is hard to argue with cameron on either of the points. he is right about improving women's oppurtunities in the boardroom. he is right that racism has no place in society and that there is a case to be made for better reprentation of minorities in the top roles of the game. (it has been mooted that the rooney rule of north american sports could be introduced by the premier league and football league.) so cameron is in the right. he is on the side of the angels. as with many paternalistic patricians is that they are very keen on living their lives by the motto: do as i say not do as i do. better positions and conditions for women in business. better positions and conditions for ethnic minorities in football. however don't expect too much to change in the coalition cabinet which is pretty much an all-male all-white grouping. perhaps david cameron could lead by example? didn't think so.

temptation

due to a severe case of poverty i have decided that 2012 is a year without new books. this is a major hardship for me because i love buying books. i really love buying books. i don't need any new books as i have more than enough unread books to carry me through for a couple of years. that is not the point. i want new books. this wanting, this needing is a compulsion. i know it. i neded help. i have an addictive personality (which isn't to say that people can't get enough of me and always crave their hit of pat)unlike my parents it doesn't manifest itself in a love of drink. my downfall is that i am a collector. (my name is pat adn i am a collector - i need help.) collecting is a disease. it can be controlled, it can be managed. but it can get out of hand. as a collector one of the most important things to know is what there is to collect: that way you know what you have and what you are missing. you also have to know if the thing you are collecting has finished or is ongoing. if ongoing you have to know the frequency it comes out so you know when to get the next one. the addiction comes with filling in holes or just getting the latest one to maintain the collection. i don't mind admitting that collecting can spiral out of control. this is especially true when it beomes hoarding. ooops that is where i am. i am no longer a collector. i am a hoarder. the shame. however as i have said at the start of this piece i have a plan for 2012: no new books. six weeks in and i haven't bought a new book. six weeks in and i still want new books. siz weeks in and i am still checking amazon to see what new books there are. six weeks in and i am still looking at the bestsellers in sainsburys. still not bought a new book. six weeks in and i am still clean. six weeks in and i have read 5 old books. still all is not good. today there i was in wh smiths looking at their recent releases (they have more than sainsburys, as befits a sort of bookshop). they used to have a buy one get one 1/2 price type deal, now they have moved to a 3 for 2 deal. so very very tempting. i nearly cracked when i saw one book. that one book nearly had me caving in and buying books. what made it even worse was the type of book it was i was tempted by, i nearly bought a self-help book. i know, i know. shocking. you could have bent me over and tickled my sphincter. i held firm. i stood strong. i walked out. no new books bought. i resisted. it was close though.

ban

i had planned on writing a coruscating and vitriolic piece lamenting the fragmentation of language and meaning. pontificating on how 'oppressed groups' were reclaiming words for their use or how the youth had co-opted certain words for slang and how this double divide of minority and generation made discussing certain topics such a linguistic maze as to be almost impenetrable.

then i thought fuck it that is just going to go wrong.

not that it mattered as another thing popped up that was equally playing on my mind.
boris.
yes boris tbe blonde blusterer.
i can't say i am all that keen on having ken livingstone back, but let's be fair it has to be anyone but boris.
what has begun to annoy me is how everything vaguely new for london is being prefaced by 'boris'. it worked ok with the 'boris bike' (which i believe was put into action by ken and came to fruition under boris), then there was the 'boris bus', the so-called new routemaster which has none of the charm of the original and really is just a slightly sleeker double-decker. regardless the boris prefix worked becase of the 'b'.

we have also had the boris island - the proposed thames estuary floating airport.

we are potentially going to be subjected to the 'boris pod'. quite why these olympic games information kiosks are credited to boris is unclear. surely they should be 'seb sheds'?

so i was going to propose a ban on attaching boris' name to anything other than boris himself. until i saw that yvette cooper, the shadow home secretary, had described the allocation of an additional £90 million to the metropolitan police, ostensibly to cover the cost of the olympics and the diamond jubilee, as a 'boris bung'.

yeah i like that: a boris bung.

cancel the boris ban, and remember to keep dropping the boris bung into conversations.

success

"of course rewards for failure are unacceptable - and those who believe in the free market are the first to say so. but a strong, free market economy must be built on rewards for success."

so say george osborne.

to a large extent he is right - most people do not have a problem with high pay (except the daily newspapers who will go on about those in the public sector who get high pay - at which point all the arguments about paying the right money to get the best people for the job and rewarding success are thrown out the window), nor do most people have problems with bonuses.
it is when the high bonuses go to the high earners regardless of the success of the business. when really the bonus culture has become the expected large pay-out at the end of the year regardless of performance.

mr. osborne goes on to say that what is at stake isn't just the bonuses of the few but the jobs and prosperity of the many. ironic considering that in many of the companies that people get exercised about bonues amounts are the ones where they are cutting jobs (fewer staff, less costs so more profits).

interestingly the head of finance banking at ubs is not going to take his bonus as the company had lost over £1bn.
it isn't a case of congratulating the, already well paid, boss for refusing a bonus - it is a question of asking how someone in charge of a business that list £1bn is in line for a bonus to start with.

that, mr. osborne, is what annoys people. it isn't an anti-business movement, it is an anti-greed movement.

holes

it is the little things that remind you that you are getting old.
today i was double-teamed, topped and tailed.

you go out. you get a coffee. you get a beigel.
the coffee is good. as ever.
an evening stroll down brick lane chewing on a beigel. mmmm that was a bit crusty. only that crunchy crusty bit wasn't an over baked beigel it was the broken shell of a tooth. nice. now my teeth are not the best in the world - they are the american stereotype of english teeth.
i am scared of dentists, well that is not true i am petrified of them. it is that simple. all i can put it down to is a fear of pain - it wasn't like my old dentist, mrs. gutzman, was bad it was just that it always hurt.
i have never gotten over the fear of the pain.
since my late teens i have managed to avoid dentists - until last year, and even then i had a panic attack and decided against getting treatment (the anti-biotics did the trick).
now i have half a tooth, but no pain. so for the moment no trip to the dentist is needed.
the fear is there.
another sign that i am getting old.

at the other end of my body, another hole was playing up. this time i had a bout of constipation.
the walk and the coffee had worked a bit of magic and there was a rumble in my tum. rush to the toilet have to catch the movement. luckily there was a book in the bog ready to read.
i take the throne like elvis in his pomp.
a little parp.
then nothing.
patience.
patience.
another parp.
then the first contraction and the bowling ball of poo pushes up against the much smaller hole of the sphincter muscle.
it shall not pass.
tears in the eyes.
shortness of breath.
pain.
relax.
squeeze.
contract.
that poo has to ccome out.
the anus doesn't want to let it out.
contraction.
squeeze.
little ball of shit plops out.
splash.
red mist in front of eyes.
small success.
squeeze and squeeze again.
it's coming. it's coming.
feck that hurts. it realy does hurt.
now that is has started nature and gravity take hold and out it comes.
a large long log of fecal matter.

felt like i was shitting sandpaper.

looks like my plumbing is going to pot (ahem).

time for me to crack out the shawl and slippers, old age is approaching.

60th

hip hip hooray.
lizzie has been on the throne for 60 years.

my dad once told me a story (which means it was probably a bare faced lie) that when he was wooing my mum he took her for a walk along the mall. a romantic jaunt by one of london's nicest park heading towards buckingham palace. as they reached the queen victoria memorial a large state car drove by them and the queen waved at my mum and dad. what made it special for my dad was that it was just him and my mum on the road. obviously it must have made mum feel special as she went on marry the old man.

like many angst ridden and angry working class teens i had my long moment of being a republican. i have no idea what swung my opinion back to being a closet royalist (i suspect it was middle-aged during which conservatism (with a small 'c') kicks in. it might also have been a belief that certain institutions have a part to play in order to bring social cohesion.
doesn't really matter what it was these days i quite like the royal family.

the cost of the royal family is around £40 million a year (or 20 leaders of royal bank of scotland, or less than tevez), it is less than a £1 a year per person.

yet there is a way of making the royal family self-sufficient and clean up politics at once. no more pressure on politicians to award honours. this function gets given to the windsor firm (keeping ferie away from the cash box)and let them sell peerages.
at a stroke the royal family can be cash rich and no longer dependent on the state and the political class has one less thing to sully its name.

i have solved two problems with one fantastic idea.
it makes sense. you know it. i know it.
vote me for mayor of london.

(yeah it came as a surprise to me too, as i have thrown my hat into the london mayoral race.)

so lizzie, congratulations for making it to 60 years as queen.
a doff of the cap.
and a rousing round of hip hip hooray!hip hip hooray!

slush

on the other hand i am not too keen on slush.
not even as slush puppies.
maybe as a slush fund.
plain ordinary slush - that you can keep.

snow

i love the snow. i always have. i hope i always will.
i love it because it is special - it transforms the world around you into a (cliche alert) wonderland.
i love it because a couple of my fondess memories are to do with the snow.
the day adam and i spent in the snow throwing a rugby ball at each other, while making up terrible puns based on tracks from our favourite rock bands. it was a day where white covered the race course estate, and turned a dour housing estate magical. it was also the day when i had icicles in my beard.
or the late night on horsenden hill with dave and a sled. the whole hill to ourselve. virgin snow. cold crisp air. clear sky, bright stars. lots of laughs as we climnbed the hill and sledded down it. it was a time just before we had to start pretending we were adults, our last time when the only cares we had in the world were to do with exams and girls (and in dave's case his only problem was how to juggle them).

it is still snowing.
it is not heavy, it is constant. the snow making a nice crunch under your feet. it changes the sounds of everything - even the traffic sounds better. people have come out to play in it, laughing and excited - their inner child allowed to make snow angels.

i love snow, always have.
i hope i always will.

dm

i love the daily mail. there i have said it.
i love liz jones. there i have said it.
if i could have the daily mail's babies i would - that is how much i love it.

i admit my love for the daily mail is odd and creepy and i should seek help, but i can't help myself.
where else can you see people get worked up by non-stories or see nothing be pumped up into something dire: the sky is falling because of eu directives or health and safety regulations.

from reading the daily mail middle-england seems to still be waging war against the boche and have yet to forgive vichy france.

sometimes it is hard to know what irks the readers of the daily mail most: health and saftey, human rights or the european union (eu).

today it is the eu.
the eu have a policy document called "developing the european dimension in sport", it was published mid-january.
the daily mail has a headline that goes like this:
"british sporting heroes 'should wear eu flag on their national team shirts'"

(now i have skimmed the policy document and i can't see anything that actually says anything like this, but i don't know what has been debated and agreed.)

as ever with the daily mail when you read the article it doesn't quite tally with the headline. but first here is a mock-up of what the daily mail thinks wayne rooney will look like in his eu approved england jersey.

the actual article does state that any such move would be purely voluntary, oh and that it be '..displayed on the clothing of athletes from member states, alongside with the national flags.'
not quite as the headline or the image would have you believe.
not quite forced to replace the national flag, more of if you want to you can have the eu flag in addition.

as if to prove what dastardly people the burghers of the eu can be the daily mail cites the recent case where the eu (the rotters) fined the university of northampton more than £56,000 for not displaying the eu flag(boo hiss - those petty minded paper pushers)even though the university had been in receipt of funding from the european regional development fund, and part of the conditions for the money was displaying the flag (but still did they have to enforce it... )

a non-story blown out of all proportion. fantastic. the usual daily mail.
it is why i love it so much.

what really makes the daily mail so very special (needs) is the contribution of its readers. here are a few of my favourites

fceu !!
- hunty, carnforth, ***** witty and succinct – unusual for the mail readership.


how about we have the eu flag branded to our foreheads? then everyone will know who owns us. the eu is like a cancer, always wanting more, never satisfied, seeking complete dominance in every sphere, spreading to every sector of our lives. please tell me, when was this war where we lost to the eu? did someone forget to send us the memo? as we are treated like a defeated people, cattle to be bought and sold. the truth is that our mps have sold us into slavery for 30 pieces of silver, generation after generation.
- dino fancellu, epsom, ***** the standard over the top, makes little sense response.

its one thing to take away our freedom to speak, but try and take my idenity and i will fight you all the way.
- anne mcguinnesss, middlesbrough ***** because our identity is always tied into what the footie team is doing.


i bought an eu flag on ebay for £5 and set fire to it on video and posted it on youtube......it was removed within 12 hours. they won't change my mind or my attitude though....
- mickey v, manchester uk (not eu), 3/2/2012 23:00
over our dead bodies, soon we will see direct action against these europhiles and their places of work
- rob, england, 3/2/2012 19:52 ***** planning a riot, which seems odd considering how the mail was so anti the rioters.
mickey and rob need to get together to plan their direct action – if they do it right they can make it a social protest and art performance at the same time. i can see a turner prize on the horizon for them, mind you being daily mail readers they probably don’t like modern art.

what a shame! i had been looking forward to watching the olympics too.
- gladys friday, london,
well i for will not be attending any england game if they have that disgusting flag on their shirts
- kazza , sunderland england, ***** two for the price of one – because we only watch these things because of the designs of their shirts (which would explain why rugby league has never taken off), and from what gladys is saying she is only there while the british team is there – so few finals being watched in her house (if she still bothers to watch).

bollocks

ok i was going to do a sarky piece slagging off experts and tink tanks.
why might i want to do that i can hear you ask.
mostly because people like the taxpayer's alliance give them a bad name. add in those 'experts' who come out with research results that either tell you the blindingly obvious (eat too much and you will be fat) or the utterly pointless.
so when the chance comes to have a pop at one of them it is hard to resist.

the bbc have a story on their site about the 'predictations' of a independent research body. the piece implies that they want their cake and eat it.
aha i think - typical. they say one thing and then have loads of caveats to cover themselves with and then say that their first claim might not be right at all.

i go over to their website and see that isn't quite what they say.
i think aha i can change what i was going to write into 'this is how the press works' type thing (of course i normally expect this sort of thing from the daily mail - not the bbc).

i return to the bbc site to prepare my piece. only to discover that i had misread the story entirely wrong and based on a total misunderstanding.

fuck.
that's why i am not an expert working at a think tank.

bonus

oh not more ranting about bonuses pat! haven't we heard enough.
well yes.
well no.
this isn't about the rbs bonus as such - though it is nice to see that sir philip hampton has forgone his £1.4 million of shares. sir philip is chairman of rbs and on the their renumeration committee.

no this mini rant has been sparked by a letter in the guardian from dave way of marks sattin recruitment.

mr. way is upset about the current wave of hostility towards the payment of bonuses. he goes on the describe the call for those in the financial services to give up their bonuses as 'a worrying sign'.
mr. way goes on to argue that to deny people the rewards for their work will drive talent out of the uk.

now when i was working my reward for good work was my continued employment, a hoped for pay rise and just maybe a bonus. the bonus was never guaranteed.

as a reminder this is the definition of bonus
1 an unsought or unexpected extra benefit.
2 a seasonal gratuity to employees beyond their normal pay.

in the world that mr. way inhabits it seems that getting £1.2 million a year salary for doing your job isn't reward enough, you also have to have a very large bonus. not a bonus of 10% or even 20%, nope your bonus has to be much larger than that say 75% or more percent.

i don't believe that people begrudge those in high powered jobs a fair reward, we might wonder what it is that they do to get their million pounds or more salaries but we understand that you have to pay to get the right people for the job.
in fact most of us agree with mr. way to the extent that people should be rewarded. where we part company is the expected high bonuses that seem now to be seen as entitlements.

what is interesting is the argument of paying good money and good bonuses appears to stop when it comes to regular employees.

meanwhile cameron and clegg have put a pay freeze on state employees, regardless of how good, or important, a job they do.

need i remind you that we are all in it together?
i didn't think so.

bonkers

i am not normally one for celebrity gossip.
there are two reasons for this - most of the celebs that covered mean diddly squat to me and on the rare occasion when someone i like, admire or respect is in the news i generally skip over it because quite often the reason i like, admire and respect them has little to do with them as people.
i suppose i don't want my heroes tarnished.

but there are times when i can't help it and i cave in and read a bit of gossip.

i can only confess that my interest in demi moore is two-fold she is a bit of a hottie and she has a bruce willis connection.

the bbc are carrying a story about the 911 call that a friend of demi moore made when she collapsed after 'smoking something'.

in the uk at the moment there is leveson inquiry going on about the press invasion of privacy into the lives, mostly of, celebs (and if we are honest people didn't give a toss about it until the milly dowler revelations). their complaints stem around the amount of personal, and often private, information that the press prints.
can't say i blame them - just because you have made a tv series or have appeared in a movie i doesn't mean that the public have a right to know what the results of your last medical check-up were.

imagine what poor old demi must be going through.
not only does everyone know she has had to go to hospital but the public also get to hear the 911 call. why? what good does it do.

then i thought what a geat business idea.
a best of celebrity 911 calls - all your faves on one cd - tiger, mel, demi and many others.
it will be a christmas hit.
k-tel where are you when i need you.

bonus

if i am honest i have no problems with stephen hester, chief of the royal bank of scotland (rbs), getting his close on £1 million pound bonus. the bonus is going to be paid in shares, so at least that gives him a bit of an incentive to do well by rbs, though you might of thought his £1.2 million a year salary would have done the trick.

the reason i don't have a problem with it is that we knew these bonuses were coming and we knew nothing was going to stop them.
the coalition might have made noises about how they were going to change this bonus culture and bring restraint - all their action seems to be little more than asking that businesses explain why they have given the bonus, give more power to the remuneraton committees to veto bonuses and pay and more transparency.
pretty much confirming that the condems talk the talk but their bark is bigger than their bite.

so let's look at why mr. hester will get his bonus. oh it is the usual if they didn't give it to him they feared he would resign and maybe some of the other board members might do to.
oh dear?
i'd call their bluff. tell them they are free to go.
ask yourself this: how many £1.2 million jobs are there? how many of them are looking for someone? then ask this: how many people are in £900,000 jobs who are looking to step up? or my old favourite - get someone from a cheaper country (if it works for all those other jobs - it will work for these jobs).
but the bluff isn't going to get called so we will never know.
(this isn't the frist time rbs have 'revolted' over bonuses, maybe it is a tactic they have learnt from the unions).

how about the remuneration committee? the chair of rbs' committee is sir philip hampton, he is also the chairman of rbs and is involved in the united kingdom financial investment ltd, which was set up to oversee the government's stake in the banks it had subsidised.
no conflict of interest there. at all.
sir philip on taking the role at rbs, famously said that his senior people were not worth the money they were getting paid. it seems he has changed his mind.

i can well imagine how hard it must have been for sir philip to come to the decision to pay the bonus.
sir phil: 'stevie we've a bit of a problem with your bonus'.
steve: 'really?' (concerned look on his face).
sir phil: (long pause, big smile) 'gotcha' (big laughs) ' you should have seen your face.'

in the end until the government grows a pair the subsidised banks will always use the threat of resignation in order to push through their bonuses. so there you have the 'reason' for the bonus (call it the best man for the job gambit).
when it comes to the remuneration committees because this is very much an old boys network people from one committee might be making decisions on people who might make judgements on them so it unlikely that they are going to be too stringent in case it comes back to bite them when it is their turn (call it the you scratch my back and i'll scratch yours strategy).

transparency means very little. we know they are getting their bonuses, we know they are getting their salaries. they could publish even more detail - but in the end all the information in the world means nothing if you can't actually do anything with it to bring about change.

the royal bank of scotland has shown it isn't going to change.
the united kingdom financial investment ltd hasn't changed it.
the con/dems seem unwilling to change it.

words are cheap, which is lucky as the bonuses are quite rich.

rubber

i like a bit of porn. i make no !ahem! bones about it. the reason i mention this is that is that the los angeles porn industry is being hit with a new law that means that male performers will have to wear condoms.
for many this is a victory for health and safety for those involved in the industry, anything that cuts down on the transmission of aids or other sexually transmitted diseases is a good thing. right?

not so. a few have complained. ron jeremy, a porn legend, says that it will remove the element of fantasy for the viewers. others say that some performers prefer not to cover up. while some say that it will be the end of the porn industry as no one will buy condon based porn and they will just turn to imported porn. of course as this is only, for the time being, going to be the law in los angeles it is likely that porn companies will just move to other parts of the usa - after all it is not like they need large studios to shoot the latest instalment of 'anal carnage' or 'facial wipe off'.

the porn industry says the fact that all its performers have to be tested for disease every thirty days is a sufficient safeguard.

(if you are squeamish skip this next paragraph - old bloke talking about having sex. you have been warned).
scroll down to where you see there @@@@@@@@@@@@ for normal service.

back in the day when i was sexually active (and by active i mean a once a week shag with the ex) condoms were always involved. i was happy to 'suit up', as it were, which suited the ex, she didn't like using the pill. there were a couple of occasions when the reliance on condoms caught me short and unlike baden-powell i was not prepared which meant a lot of hanky panky at night and a serious case of blue balls in the morning.
just to spice things up we even got a variety pack of condoms - while it seemed like a good idea at the time, it turned out to be a disaster: the ones that weren't uncomfortable just made us laugh.
only once did we have a moment of condom failure and that was more to do with dilly dallying after the event. it lead to a couple of worrisome weeks. all was well.


@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
(old bloke has stopped talking about his sex life).

i suppose the point i am trying to make with my little journey down memory lane is that using a condom in sex is hardly the buzz kill that the los angeles porn industry is trying to make it out to be.
contrary to ron jeremy's argument i don't think that seeing a bloke with a condom in a movie is going to take away from the 'fantasy' of it - that comes from the fact that the porn stars are all sexual acrobats who can fuck in positions that only trained yogi can get into, that they move effortlessly from one position to another in a ballet of porn. add to that they go on for longer and recover quicker than the rest of us can dream of and i thnk you have the fantasy part of it just there. a bit of rubber isn't going to change that.

however what a bit of rubber might do is send an important message out to all those who are sexually active that it isn't wrong to wear a condom. that wearing a rubber doesn't make you any less of a stud.

if that message is picked up on then the law passed in los angeles may just do more to cut down on stds/aids than all the guff that government and ngo educational programmes produce.

for that reason alone i say more rubber porn.

predictions

i don't consult my daily horroscope.
i am wary of what the met office tells us.
i take bus and train timetables with a pinch of salt.
i don't trust bookies with their odds.

when it comes to predictions the experts are no better than making a choice based of the roll of a dice or the flip of a coin.

the international monetary fund (imf) has downgraded its global growth forecase from 4% to 3.25%. the coalition government do not see this as a worry as it jibes with what their, sorry the independent, office of budget responsibility (obr) has to say about growth.
the obr like the imf have changed, several times their short and medium term forecasts.

the imf, who if memory serves me once praised the coalition's austerity programme, are calling for, some, governments not to cut so deep or so quickly.

changing the tune seems to be the order of the economic day.

we are expected to care what ratings agencies like standard and poors or moodys say even though they happily gave triple a ratings to institutions who were dealing in toxic debt.

if i didn't know better i would say it is like economists have minds like goldfish.

here is my idea next time the imf (or any global financial institution) wants to announce their revised figures we'll wheel out bruce forsth to go 'higher? lower?'

the mayans have more chance of bein right than the international monetary fund.

perhaps imf stands for intellectually mendacious forecasts?

gove

i may have mentioned this before but i don't like michael gove. i really don't. i was a little shocked to discover that i have a book by him, as yet unread.

the government is doing that 'let's get down with the kids' thing and are trying to use social media to spice up politics.
they have asked twitter users to submit questions that can be put to michael gove when he faces a forthcoming select committee.
graham stuart mp says, "this is a good way of breaking down the seemingly vast gap between the governed and the governing,".
he might be right, though it could also be argued that if members of parliament did their jobs properly and spent time in their constituencies then there wouldn't be a vast gap.

it has been successful with a poitive response to the request. however it must be said that this is a pretty self-selecting group of people - people who are already interested and are following politics on twitter to start with.
the gap between the governing and those who are not interested or already involved it seems will remain the same.

in the end it doesn't really matter what the response is the questions that will actually be asked will be chosen by the committee staff and the mps sitting on it.
it would have been better if the questions were just chosen at random and see what mr. gove made of them.

because of this i have not bothered to send in my question which was: "dear mr. gove have you modelled yourself on the demonic ventriloquist dummy, fats, from the movie magic."

to be honest the only thing that could make mr. gove any more scary would be to discover that he is a secret mime.

cap

there is a part of me that believes that iain duncan smith is trying to do the right thing.
there is also a part of me that agrees with the broad concept of a benefit cap.

and yet despite that and despite iain duncan smith's claims to the contrary i can't help but feel that the cap is just a way to punish those who are unfortunate enough to be unemployed.

he talks about how people are 'trapped' by benefits - he says there are people in parts of London paying more than £100,000 a year in rent "which no-one on a regular income could possibly afford".
i would take a guess here and say that the numbers who are 'trapped' this way are very few and that to use this as an example is lazy.
(without facts it is hard to know what the circumstances of these 'people' are - does he mean rent or does he mean mortgage repayments? if it is about mortgages then it is quite possible that the people involved could afford to live this way before they moved on to benefits. if it is rent it is highly doubtful that anyone was paying that sort of rent when they were working and that the rent they are now paying is more down to the greed of the landlord than the inhabitants).

while it isn't to be considered a punishment the argument's core is this - on benefits you don't want to work, in order to get you to work we will cut your benefits.
if that isn't a stick (punishment) i am not sure what is.

of course while all this benefit capping is taking place there is still no concept of where the jobs are going to come from. so does the person who can no longer afford to live in their home thanks to the caps - move somewhere else? to a part of the country where the rents are cheaper? where it is quite likely that there are no jobs?
maybe it is just a plan to ghetto the unemployed outside of the thriving cities - out of sight out of mind?

the idea of rent control seems not to be one that the coalition is going to consider and why should they - after all if someone is making money from the misery of the poor that is a sign that capitalism is working.

it has been argued that the savings of this cap is not that much (in over all terms) and that we are paying out more in benefits to the very wealthy than are going to be saved by this cap.
if this is the case - then it makes sense to means test the rich, again something that won't happen - make the poor jump through hoops to get something meanwhile let people like vince cable keep his heating allowance.

as i say i am not against a cap in principle - but i am against something that appears to have the sole purpose of punishing those worse off.
that said it is the tory way after all.

why

newt gingrich. why?
looking like he is going to become the next republican candidate for the presidency.
the one positive of that is that it should mean that barack obama will get a second term. the downside of that is that barack obama will get a second term - hey the man doesn't like the english, i can return the favour.

oddly both are good outcomes for the british government - now we can move away from the 'special relationship', especially where it relates to anything to do with the military. we can stop being a nuclear power - think of the money that would save and that could be used elsewhere.
the empire has gone.
time to move on.
let the usa's new friends back them up when they want to go off and play the world's policeman. we don't get any thanks when we do it and we can't afford it.

so whoever becomes the president - now might be the time to stop being so keen to sup at the usa's table.

lazy

it is nice of boris to tell us that londoners are lazy and worhshy.
perhaps he should be doing more to show londoners where the jobs are? maybe he should be making sure that the jobs have a living wage to them?

oh well at least it means ken has something else to fight boris on rather than the london transport fares.

why

you may have noticed that i am a bit of a sap when it comes to apple products - i just want their computers, laptops and ipads.
i love them.
i can't afford them, but i love them.

there i was having a coffee and a couple were out together but on their interconnectedness devices of choice.
she had an ipad, with external keyboard and mouse.
why?
why?
just get yourself a sodding laptop if you are going to want to be tippy tapping on a keyboard.


(also have you noticed that there is an ipad/anypad/kindle reading position - it isn't comfortable or natural but it lets eveveryone around you know you have one).

inflation

i am broke. that means cutting down on the luxuries.
i am an addicted: i need fizzy syrupy drinks. i am hooked on coca-cola (which probably isn't a selling point for them).
but needs must and i have downgraded in order to keep the habit going.

now i am down to buying a 2 litre bottle of sainsbury's basic cola "simple natural colours and flavours, still plenty of pop" goes the description.
i am the equivalent of the local drunk in the park with a large bottle of rotgut cider.

still it is cheap and it does a job.
it was 18p a bottle (that gives you an idea of the quality)in the middle of last year. it is now 25p a bottle.
gougers.
preying on the needy and the hooked.

ho hum it looks like i may have to move onto tesco's basic cola at 20p a bottle.

the downward spiral.

olympics

i never wanted the olympics in london.
why? i can hear you asking. the simple reason is i believe all major global sporting events should be played in different time zones so you have to make an effort to watch them.
it was only when it became london against paris that i changed my mind.
of course i have reason to dislike the whole thing as it cost me my job and the buggers never employed me. (what me bitter)?

anyway that was then.
this is now.
just over 190 days until the games start.
from what i can make out they have got pretty much all the stadia built on time. which alone deserves a big round of applause, but in this day and age that isn't what we want to do, what we want to do is find some reason to bitch and moan.

the stories that have popped up recently about the london oylmpics have included the problem with traffic. this may be a big problem with the 'olympic route' being designed to ferry olympic officials from plush central london hotels to the games in the east end of london (quite why the organisers have to stay in the centre of london is anyone's guess; the answer is probably to do with being smug self-important bastards).
one of the problems of the route is that they are not going to test it out until very close to the opening ceremony so it won't give drivers much time to get used to it.
i would say catch the 25 bus to the games but thanks to boris there is less capacity on them. still there is a nice tube station right on the doorstep of the games and a couple more within walking distance.

the two stories that i have chuckled over today have been the one about pollution. apparently london's pollution is the worst in europe and that will have an adverse effect on the athletes.
some of them may not have the performances they expect and this, they can now claim, will be down to the pollution.
i wouldn't mind if no other sport ever took place in london - it is not like there are several professional football, rugby and cricket teams in the capital. it is not like there are athletic meets taking place throughout the capital. let's forget that the london marathon takes place, or for that matter the triathlon events.
it must be that they are expecting olympic sized special weather.
given that weather forecasters are about as accurate and economic forecasters perhaps we will take their concerns with a pinch of salt.

not to be outdone there is a report that mass gathering risks disease spreading. not only that but there are problems when it comes to dealing and controlling large numbers of people. this is news how?
common sense really.
it also seems a bit redundant bringing this up now. it is not as if this is the first large scale global sporting event ever to happen nor is it the first large scale gathering of people.
crikey we have even had such large scale events in london, if you can believe that!

whatever your opinion on the olympics is the games are almost upon us why not just enjoy them for what they are, at least for now.
remember we still have 190 days, or so, for bob crow to spoil them with talks of strikes and such like.

i'm even prepared to forgive boris, in advance, for mugging it up and taking credit for the whole thing.
i think that is mighty generous of me.

dementia

one of the controversies over the 'the iron lady' was the portrayal of thatcher's dementia. i have no idea if it was an accurate picture of dementia, i do know that i did find myself feeling somewhat sorry for the old dear and i never thought i would say that.

jonathan aitken has revealed (because like all good tories he keeps secrets) that at a dinner party mrs thatcher did not know that david cameron was the prime minister. for aitken this is an example of how bad her dementia is.

personally i think she is just embarrassed by the preening toff and prefers to ignore him.

overheard

two pretty ladies chatting to each other. they had both been talking about why they were not going out on a saturday evening and that lead them on to a discussion about friends and men. one of them mentioned she had recently made a new male friend. it was nothing sexual but they got on well with each other, lots to talk about. he was witty and intelligent. he was also older than she was. this all led up to this quote:
"he's 55. i can take him anywhere."

it made me smile.