quote

i am beginning to feel sorry for david cameron.
there he is trying hard to make the conservative party electable again, trying to get them to be the party of the centre ground, a small patch of the political landscape that during the blair years moved ever rightwards as he consistently marginalised the moderate tories by forcing the tory party to move ever more rightwards.
yet cameron has moderated their tone, he has made them appear compassionate and caring, under cameron they have been incredibly successful in the local elections.
yet some how it isn’t enough, the poor man must be wondering what he has to do.

bruce anderson describes it nicely thus: “they are willing to be led, in the way that henry viii was willing to be married.”

because the conservatives are behind in the polls, thanks in part to the “brown bounce” some of the more vocal tory rank and file are calling for the head of cameron.
it is that calm, clear headedness that endears them to the country. it is that steadfast loyalty that reminds us that we can trust tory promises.

graham brady describes cameron’s policies as "… not been making the same impact further away from london - in the north, in the midlands, in places which really are an absolutely key electoral battlefield if we're going to win a general election.” which does seem to fly in the face of the local election results – but why let the fact that 165 local councils are now tory controlled, a gain of 39 councils and over 900 councillors. for most people that would be evidence that cameron’s compassionate conservatism is getting converts, but to brady it is just more evidence that cameron just appeals to the metropolitan liberal elite – such as the thriving mertropoles of the cotswolds and norfolk.
(one can only assume that for people like brady the middle england of the tories are all living in the shires and hold somewhat bigoted and blinkered views. could that be why david cameron is trying to appeal to another group of people? i think it might be).

cameron instigates wide ranging policy reviews in order to sensibly develop policies that will allow him to present the conservatives as more than a party for the rich. “breakdown britian” (chaired by iain duncan smith) is hailed as a great piece of work (ok the fact the solution to every problem under the sun appears to be marriage is neither here nor there, i suspect fairly soon ids will publish a follow up claiming that regions who suffered from the floods were areas where there were too few married couples!)
the other reports are all due to be published shortly.
even so cameron is described as someone who is about smoke and mirrors, all gimmicks and no substance.
"i'm disillusioned because i think substance has been replaced by pr.
"what i'm asking for is some substance and some credibility and not box-ticking and gimmickry. “says ali miraj.
saatchi and stuart wheeler, a major tory donor, chip in with it should be about the economy, i.e. tax cuts, and being tougher on europe.
while everyone thought that under gordon brown we would get more of the same, we have all been surprised by some of the policy changes and announcements brown has made.
cameron was hoping to be in a position to relaunch the conservative party, as a party of the future, but he is being forced to fight the old internal battles once more.
proving once again it is very much new tory, old story.

zit

at my time of life i shouldn’t be finding zits. yet i seem to have 2 on the forehead, one on the nose and one on my shoulder.
trying not to squeeze them, but the temptation is far too much.
looks like i am going to have to pay attention to the acne advert.
and here i was thinking i was too old for this kind of zit (groan……)

24

at last i have downloaded day 6 of 24. yay.
so now i am watching day 6 of 24, just finishing covering the episodes i had already seen. now for the new stuff! jack is great. you’ll have to trust me on that. dammit.

review

it is baltimore of the early 1960s and one fat girl has a dream: she wants to be a performer on the hippest daytime tv show around. not only does she achieve her goal but she also helps break down segregation on tv.
i was going to pass on seeing hairspray – most of the reviews were so so, i am so glad i went. it is a bubbly, joyous, foot-tapping treat of a film. filled with great songs, slick dancing and strong performances by everyone in it. from the opening song of “good morning baltimore” until the final number i was smiling.
while all the stars such as john travolta (in drag and in a fat suit), christopher walken, james marsden and queen latifah (who gets to sing some great songs) deliver the film is carried along by nikki blonsky as tracy trumbald. blonsky is short and fat but an infectious presence on screen and she is blessed with a great smile and a belting voice.
hairspray is her movie.
if there is one thing wrong with the film is that she is marginalised in the films closing number.
doubtful we will see much more of ms blonsky, which is a shame.

do yourself a favour go see this film. it is a treat.

victim

fashion makes victims of us all. at some point or another we have all tried to wear something that wasn’t us but was in style at the time. most of us soon learn that we can’t carry it off and find “the look” that makes us comfortable.
while i am not a dedicated follower of fashion, after all i don’t need to be slobbishness is timeless, i understand the need for some people to fit in. so while i think low slung jeans are among the most stupid fashions going i can see why you might want to wear them in order to be at home with your posse/gang/set/crowd (or whatever the hip term is).
in my pantheon of stupid fashions is the wearing of baseball caps at jaunty angles – call me old fashion but they should be worn with the peak at the front or at the back, anything else is just plain stupid and makes most of the wearers look like window-lickers. but like i say what do i know about fashion?
i do know that there is a time to be “fashionable” and a time to just wear the item the way it was designed to be worn.
there i was the other day walking by sainburys and watching a traffic warden at work doling out tickets. he was hard at work, diligently checking each and ever car trying to discover an infraction that he could book them for: uniform equals power.
now i would like to say the chap in question looked smart in his uniform, well he did until you got to his cap. there it was in all its glory the shiny peak pushed over to the left, to make the wearer look so cool. all he did was remind me of a benny hill character.
it has to be doubtful if the trendy street youth who may have saw him thought he was the bees knees, if they paid him any attention they probably thought he looked liked a very silly traffic warden. lets be fair nothing you do to a traffic warden’s uniform is going to make you hip and trendy, once you put it on you just have to accept that for the rest of the working day you are going to look like a bloke in a uniform.
though for this one chap his ability to move the cap to a jaunty angle proved that once again fashion makes fools of us all.

denial

the day of reckoning fast approaches. we will soon have to say yea or nay to the move up north. while i think most of us know what our answers are going to be, there is still a feeling of denial. this will soon become a feeling of clutching at straws.
i also have the sinking feeling that whatever i choose will be the wrong choice - i am already have a sense of pregret.

so who has some winning lottery numbers they can let me have?

clouds

the, somewhat, freakish weather we have had (and i blame those gas guzzling soccer mums in their suvs - but it is ok we know what the solution to that is: marriage (oh well it made me laugh...) may have caused major destruction for those in flood areas (and it has not done my roof much good...) it has also created some awesome cloudscapes.
i share a few with you here.

tired

i am just bone weary tired.
i am getting old.
sleep is what i need and sleep is what i am going to get.

pic

i like this photo. it doesn't make up for the one i missed of the aeroplane over canary wharf (which would have been fantastic), but it will do.
sometimes the view west from blackfrairs bridge can be spectacular.

just before i had taken this pic i had been to the tate modern where i was confronted with a display of amatuer boxing. lots of people enjoying the pugilistic skills in what seemed to be a very odd setting. judging by the number of wine glasses around the place the tate bar did very well.

transformers

i was never much of a transformers fan; the toys came too late for me to get hooked on. not that i was allowed to escape them as the ex’s kid was a fan, so we had some toys, comics and books and there were times i had to do the voices (ah the joys of being a parent…)
the job i do has meant that transformers have been a constant in my working life, well not including the time i did filing for tower hamlets council.

tonight i went to see the live action transformers movie. michael bay, director, has been a bit hit and miss with his movies, on the one hand he has directed one of my favourite films, armageddon, and on the other he has directed the folly that is pearl harbour. no matter what the quality of the films you know they are going to look good.

transformers does indeed look great.

there are two types of transformers: autobots (goodies) and decepticons (baddies), their world is toast and now they are on our world. both groups are looking for the allspark, a cube that can create life.
first to strike are the decepticons who attack a usa army base in the middle east. their target is the base computer. they are searching for information. although they are prevented in their quest they destroy most of the base.
meanwhile sam witwicky gets to buy a second hand car, he gets a yellow camaro. although his first drive in the car ends up with some peculiar goings on, it does mean he gets to ride with the girl, mikaela, he has a crush on.
seeking more information the decepticons infiltrate air force and once again downloads information. we discover “project iceman”, and we find out that captain witwicky (sam’s grandfather) has something to do with all that is going on. now they have a new target: sam.
meanwhile sam gets to see his new car transform. the autobot is sending a signal into space.
the decepticon’s strike at sam and are only thwarted by the heroic efforts of his camaro, the autobot bumblebee.
form then on the plot gets thicker and thicker.
sam and mikaela meet the rest of the autobots and their leader, optimus prime. they learn why the transformers are on earth and why sam is so important, his grandfather not only found the frozen body of the decepticon leader, megatron, but his glasses also have the engraved map of the location of the allspark.
sam has the glasses.
all back to sam’s place to get the glasses. a bit of slapstick ensues as sam tries to find the glasses while trying to persuade the autobots to remain in disguise. it doesn’t work. sam’s parents get involved in what he is doing.
over at the pentagon they are trying to discover what attacked the base. all they have to go on is a signal. all attempts to decode it haven’t worked. one of the analysts decided to copy the signal and take it to a hacker friend. just as they find out about sector 7 and project iceman they are raided by the fbi.
with glasses in hand sam and mikaela are about to go to the autobots when they are apprehended by the mysterious agents of sector 7. first they are rescued by the autobots and then they are recaptured by sector 7.
now that sector 7 have them they are involved in attempting to solve what is going on. they are brought face to face not only with a frozen megatron but also the allspark. naturally the decepticons turn up and megatron is free.
sam, mikaela, bumblebee and some soldiers have to get the allspark somewhere safe while autobots and decepticons fight.
big fight.
we win.
sam and mikaela get to make out while being watched by the autobots who are going to hang around and protect the earth.
close curtains.

there is a lot to like in the movie. the special effects are top notch, the transformers look awesome and when they are in action it is spectacular. shia lebeouf gives a terrific performance as sam. the action is well done and is fast and furious.
personally i liked the fact that there were lots of helicopter scenes (i am a sucker for helicopters). i liked the fact that the soundtrack was mostly bereft of urban sounds and was mainly rock there was even a quasi-military march tune at one point (another thing that presses the right buttons with me). i also liked the idea of sector 7, but that is because all secret divisions of the government or secret societies are entertaining film fodder. there are some funny moments.

there is a lot to not like about the movie as well. it is a shouty movie with anthony andersen (normally very watchable) being one of the main culprits; he is closely followed by john turturro, in a role he will soon hope to forget.
much of the comedy in the film seems forced, especially the scene where the autobots “hide” from sam’s parents, at this point you didn’t hold out much hope for their chances against the decepticons. the humour and tension were poorly balanced and sometimes seemed to trip each other up.
the film runs just shy of two and half hours and there is sufficient padding in the movie that you wonder why they were not more vicious with the editing.
the only character in the film you care about is sam. his relationship with mikaela has little spark (megan fox being an identikit cutie) while his friendship with bumblebee is well done. because of this lack of connection with the other characters you don’t really cares who wins or loses you just want to go wow when the big stunt happens.
there are plot holes galore, but lets be fair we don’t go to see films like this to make sense – just that they get from the start to the finish while entertaining us. but if i had to choose one plot point that left me confused it would be: why didn’t the autobots just contact the relevant powers that be and alert them to what was going on.

all in all an entertaining movie, but to misquote, in the end “less than meets the eye”.

floaters

perhaps i should preface this by a warning: do not read if you are eating or have a nervous disposition (or more importantly: if you have taste).
most of the time when you hear the word floaters it is in a tv series such as “csi wherever”, and it is when a dead body has been discovered in a river or washed up on the beach, hence “floater” (though in some cases it would have been better to say “beached” but perhaps that is a moment of too much semantics). generally the floater is a disgusting thing the water and amphibious creatures having taken a toll on the dead body.

there are times when floater is used for a much more intimate experience.

i confess i have no idea what has caused it, but recently i can’t take a dump without leaving a floater behind. just in case you have no idea what i am going on about, a floater is when you after you have done you job and flushed you are greeted with a log that has been left behind.
it bobs in the toilet bowl just mocking you: “is that the best flush you have?”
mostly a second flush gets it.
sometimes even the second flush is ineffective.
even worse is when you flush and wash and leave only to return that night to discover a floater soup in the bowl.

i don’t think i have changed my diet. i don’t think that the toilet flush is weaker, all i can think it is i am doing much bigger poohs than normal.
if i was of a david icke like persuasion i might think that there was a global conspiracy to bring down modern society by creating blockages in the system or that this recent development of large stools is to do with global warming.

for the time being i am winning the war against the floaters, but for how long?

horrid

there was a time when i had a desire to play rugby for england. for a short sweet period of time i thought i had what it took to be an international then genetics and laziness combined to ensure the best i would achieve would be a semi-regular place in the local club’s fourth team.
but i was a contender…
i have never forgotten the dream of proudly pulling on the white jersey of england, striding out at twickenham and scoring the winning try against wales (who at the time regularly beat england…)
back then rugby was am amateur game and there were was something pure about it, and nowhere was this made more evident than in the international team colours. england – white. wales – red, new zealand – black and so on. see pretty darned simple.

it might be true that the age of professionalism brought with it a vast improvement in the standard of play (though with less of the style), but what professionalism has done has brought about a new era of kit sales and kit sponsorship. for such a thing to work you need to change the kit on a regular basis.

the recently revealed english kit is truly horrid.



the swoosh is an echo of nike (the kit maker), the cross of st. george isn’t really a cross and almost looks like a stylised version of the puma brand (surely not what nike want me to think!) in short i think it is an ugly and busy shirt. in fact it could almost be a rugby league shirt.
but as bad as the white one is the red one is awful. lets ignore the fact that red is the colour of wales and pretend that this is a harkening back to the glory days of 1966. let us even forget that there is a red swoosh on a red shirt, we’ll ignore the fact that the “cross of st george” is now white after all while all these things are bad they are not awful but i have to ask what the fuck is going on with the one white sleeve? was it done as a bet?

nike has managed to produce something that is both very camp and very shit.
apparently the practical design of the top is calculated to help england, it is just a shame that the aesthetic look is bound to have opposition players just laughing themselves into a hernia. mind you if that means that england can successfully depend the world cup then it will be job done.

in the meantime the players have to don this rather camp top
one of the results of professionalism is that the making of money becomes crucially important. one way this is raised is through kit sponsorship, and one way you recoup you costs if you are a kit manufacturer is by releasing as many kits as you can. who would have thought that nike would have given the design job to a hyperactive child?




a number of fans have called for a boycotting of the kit. other fans have said it doesn’t matter what they play in as long as they improve on the games they have recently been having.
the kit will sell and nike will be happy
me? i am already missing the plain white top.

third

i would just like to congratulate the conservative party for their success in the two recent by-elections.
third in sedgefield.
third in southall.
new labour held both and the liberal democrats came second in both.

about the southall result cameron said, “our vote held up.” which might be a sensible approach to take – except that the conservatives went out of their way to win the seat: cameron on the ground campaigning for the local candidate, a local candidate who was put in place not because he was the best the local party had to offer, but he was a respected local businessman who joined the conservatives in order to stand. (it later transpired that his company gave money to new labour… ooops). when you go to that much effort you just have to be disappointed with third place.

about sedgefield graham robb says, “we are still in business in the north-east and as we regenerate our party, we will be back in business even more”.
while i think robb has mangled english in a way that prescott would have been proud of, i think he would have been better served with the following assessment would have been “we are still hanging on”.
robb’s complacency makes you wonder whether or not the conservatives are ready for power.

considering their success at the local elections these two by-elections have to be a major disappointment for cameron and the conservatives.
it seemed like cameron had it made blair had left a bad taste in the mouth of the electorate, while brown was just not as nice as cameron.
not only has brown managed to appear both personable and competent but he has also drawn a line under much of the blair years while outlining a new(ish) direction for the government. all of this means that there is a brown honeymoon period.
result of this?
cameron’s conservatives came third.

cheers all round.

pics

not quite the wizard of oz but here are some things on journies on some yellow lines. i wonder what they will ask for when they get there?






somewhere nice to sit and watch things go by.

wankers

there is a similarity between being the author (i know it is a grand word) of a blog and a newspaper columnist. in both cases the writer is trying to get an idea across to the reader, trying to inform and entertain. in both cases 99% of the authors are shit (i include myself in that 99%) and only a few are any good.

the main difference is that newspaper columnists get read by many more people and boy there are times when they can’t stop themselves but point out that they are much better than anything that appears on the internet.

nirpal dhaliwal has recently fallen into that trap with his evening standard column (july 18th edition). he makes the point that the internet was supposed to enable our species to share meaningful ideas, but most people use it to watch porn…
now nirpal can get on his high horse because he is a published author, his “bad-boy” lit book “tourism” made waves when it was published. (though it could be argued that his book was only published because of the long-term publicity he received because of the coverage his marriage to liz jones received in national newspapers).

but it is only his column in the evening standard that i am familiar with. he tries to be witty and confrontational, dishing it to the establishment from a youthful asian perspective. only problem is (like me) he is not funny and not interesting.
but that alone doesn’t single him out when the world of the columns is filled with people like mark steel, nick curtis, david mellor and many others who think that they are funnier and cleverer than they are.

but the reason nirpal gets a mention today (and i have to say that i have no sympathy for his ex, who is also a bore) is for the following “my marriage hit the rocks when my wife found text messages between me and another women”. now i am making a leap here and would guess that messages were of a rude nature.
it might be me but it seems there were already problems with the marriage long before his missus found the text messages. so it only hit the the rocks when she caught him!
though what can you expect from a bloke whose book “tourism” seems to be about someone who shags around.

i give you nirpal dhaliwal: wanker.

metronet

ho ho ho ho ha ha ha ho ho ho ho ho ha ha hah ha bwahaa ha ha ho ho.
dabbing tears away.
metronet is in administration. there is justice in the world. let us give ken livingstone three hearty cheers for not bailing metronet out by pouring public money into a private company.
metronet was one of the many public private partnerships (ppp) that were to prove that the market is the best way to solve all problems. except that the ppps are just a way for private companies to guarantee profit without the risk. how so? because they know that the state would always underwrite the project and step in to make sure it is carried out.
that is until ken livingstone said: no!

we shall not miss metronet.
i am still laughing.
i still hate ppps, lets hope that metronet is a vision of the shape of things to come.

arty

and to round off this recent splurge of photos are ones i call arty (the farty is silent..) now if i were to be a serious artist i would have to speak in knowing (and glowing) terms about the meaning of the images and how, perhaps these colours and shapes reflected the conflict between the natural world and the zeitgeist of the city. luckily i am not, so i don't have to.
no dubt everyone is breathing a big old sigh of relief.












normal cynical serive will be resumed shortly.

flags

more pics - i told you there would be more....
these are of the union jack. i love flags, not sure i have done these ones justice though.

the last one is a feeble attempt at photoshop.

statues

this lot are almost linked by the theme of statues, almost but not quite.
still that almost link gives it a postmodern postart neoconceptualist feel, or then perhaps it doesn't.
since hearing that mr. d. hirst is about to sell a load of work from his most recent show for £130 millon i have decided that i need to talk more bollocks and pretend i have a theme to my work.
(the recent hirst was ok. the diamond encrusted skull was bland, pretty in a glittering sort of way, but nothing special. some of the stuffed and mounted animals were good, i loved the biopsy paintings but thought the paintings of the birth of his child purile. but what do i know, just say it again £130 million....)









it may be with this one that the sculptor could have left this to the imagination....

pics

been a while since i posted some pics (i know for some of you it was not long enough!)
enjoy.