hope

it is amazing what a few good speeches and a few belligerent performances will do.
first there was the clarion call from john prescott that the party should stop complaining and start campaigning. it seems very obvious to most of us that the moaning minnies of charles clarke (a man who would cut his nose of to spite gordon brown) et al are providing valuable ammunition to the conservative party while wasting time and energy that could be used for campaigning. (perhaps if clarke had said he would stand as a potential leadership candidate rather than his ‘oh gordon pretend you are sick’ speech. next he will be telling alistair darling to tell everyone the dog ate his budget).
prescott is right: clarke is wrong. enough said.
then jack straw said he was up for debating with the bnp. about time someone said they would do it. too often politicians have hidden behind the ‘do not want to give them credence’ argument. it isn’t an argument that really holds much water. all it does if give the bnp plenty of publicity and allows them free reign to air their ideas without direct challenge. what most politicians are not saying is that they do not want to be seen to lose an argument with a member of the bnp. so credit to jack, it also shows the start of a bit of belligerence and fight on behalf of the labour party.
a good speech by peter mandelson that entertained the crowd.
then a decent speech from gordon brown that set out reasons why we should be thankful that we have had a labour government, reminded us what a conservative government offers (not much) and gave a glimpse of what the future will hold if labour are re-elected.
when his speech had finished there was the brief glimmer of hope, a feeling of belief that actually labour could do it. some how some way they were going to pull the election out of the hat and we would be dancing in the streets celebrating victory.
i liked that feeling, much better than the creeping acceptance that the tories were going to win and that what the future offered was going to be a pretty grim time.

i know i am being foolish. i know that i am not thinking rationally and that really a belief that labour can win is a little like expecting the cleaning pixies to tidy my flat. yet it is better to grasp that sliver of joy than it is to contemplate cameron and co in charge.

bankers

i think it is significant that banker rhymes with wanker.
that says a lot.

i am fed up with them saying that they will leave if they are taxed more - let them fuck off.
i am fed up with them being so in your face about how important they are but oh so coy when it comes to admitting to the size of their bonus they get all coy and shy about it. poor little lambs.
frankly given the amount of money the state has had to put into the financial system to keep it afloat all those bonused up financiers should be touring the country and kissing our arses and thanking us.

(oh someone on the radio has just compared the political 'attacks' on the bankers are similar to the attacks on jews in the 30s. you just have to admire people.)

(oh and while on the subject of wankers: a cbi mouthpiece was on the radio going on about the 'back office of public services'. he was going on about just how private industry should work with government in order to facilitate the downsizing of public services by cutting, but because of the skills of the private sector this could be done without affecting the frontline services because they would use their talents on the 'back office'. excuse me while i hold my breath on that because the private sector has covered itself with glory after all lets look at the financial services. ooops.
i am guessing that the cbi are not talking about asking the government to stop hiring overpriced private consultants. or perhaps the cbi will insist that private companies who bid for very lucrative public contracts actually deliver what they promise.
no didn't think so.)

averted

the four horsemen were stopped in their stables.
the line in the sand was not crossed.
the world did not end.

the jolly japers at my local cinema did actually show the new bruce willis movie.
i saw it.
i was happy.
the world goes on.

(and if i remember rightly ems you sobbed at the end of armageddon...)

disaster

i know the world is not fair.
there is evil in the world: there is corruption, war, famine, destruction. looked at in that way the world is not a nice place.

in my own corner of this great land life good be better, but we play the cards we are dealt (gotta know when to hold them, gotta know when to fold 'em, shit i am even thinking like kenny rogers now).

well it was until i checked the cinema listing for next week. there were the usual holdovers from the previous week. a new listing for 'fame' (and yes i will admit i was a fan of the tv series, and i will admit that i am looking forward to the new movie - because fame costs and here is where i start watching.
but hold on. hold on. something is missing. can't be. it is not there. no listing for the new bruce willis movie! what is going on? where is it. where is 'surrogates'. it is an sf action movie. so that makes it a high priority to see. it is a bruce movie and that makes it unmissable. but no listing. this is wrong.
this is the end of the world.
some of us are born to win, some us are born to lose, some of us are born to sing the blues (oh hell now i am channeling journey...)

and to cap it all chas and dave have ceased to be a double act.
rabbit and sideboards.

the world is an evil place my friend.
an evil place.

hooked

i am not a fan of reality tv. in all the years that such shows have been clogging up the airways i have probably watched about 10 minutes of it. i am not being intellectually snobby here, they just never appealed.

earlier on in the year antony gormley made public his 'fourth plinth' proposal. i nearly applied. i didn't and the world breathed a sigh of relief.
the plinthers (as they are known) started their period in trafalgar square. a few times i have been in the area and it was all so dull.
what on paper seemed to be a great idea turns out not to really work in practice.
or so i thought.
now i have discovered it on the web and it is engrossing fascinating viewing.
it is not always very good - for some reason they always choose terrible camera angles, which makes me think it is done automatically and so often misses out on the sign that the plinther is holding up.
that said i am hooked on it.

right now it is an unemployed bloke looking for a job having to cope with the 3am piling out of clubs youth heckling him.

one day all tv will be like this. you have been warned.

go see the future of entertainment here http://www.oneandother.co.uk/

b16

pope benedict gets a lot of bad press, a lot of it his own doing. still having survived some time in the hitler youth i doubt very much that a bit of media moaning is going to worry him too much.
he has irked many by his hard line approach to christian doctrine. it might be that he has alienated many who share his faith but not his fundamentalism. and he hasn’t made many friends with the other faiths.
i can forgive him all that. no i can, after all he is infallible and he is the vicar of god.

but fucking hell there comes a time when all good christians have to stand up and say no more. no more. and this is it. the time is now. the time has come.
for some inexplicable reason pope benedict has invited bono to the sistine chapel. true bono is only one of 500 other performers attending the little get together but we all know that we will be inundated with pictures of the oik gurning as he shakes the pope’s hand while declaring peace has broken out.

now i know what you are thinking. no i do. don’t have to be a derren or a uri to know. you are wondering just what it is i have against bono. bono who is a saint among men. for a start there is his smug attitude, then there is his sanctimonious attitude, do i have to mention the sunglasses? i’ll skip over the tax avoidance schemes of the band (but hey we all care about poverty, though we want to make sure we pay as little tax as is possible).
if push came to shove then i would have to say that my dislike of bono stems from his apparent lack of a sense of humour as evidenced by the negativland incident. sadly my ire has recently been popped on this as i have read that u2 and bono were not the instigators of the legal action against negativland.
but it is so hard to let that dislike go.
i am like a junkie and i can’t quite kick the bono annoyance.

so i am fallible.
it is why i will never be pope.
and why i will never meet bono.

thus proving there is a god.

want

this is the sort of thing that brings out the total geek in me.




i shall have to start saving my pennies.

(available from all good comic shops)

obama

listening to the obama health care speech.
as usual he is giving a good speech.
the odd thing is he is listened to and cheered throughout the speech, even though a number of people there are not keen on the proposal. when i say not keen i mean vehemently opposed to it. yet he still gets cheered and clapped.
the respect that is invested in the office of the president is immense.

i bet gordon brown and previous prime ministers would give their pinkies for that sort of respect.

stationery

i am still engaged in the continuing battle to clear my flat (where is hercules when you need him, though i think xena would be more fun)doesn't seem to matter just how much i get rid of there is still a lot left.
one thing i keep finding is stationery. note books, exercise books, reporters books, loose leaf pads; lined, squared, plain; hardcover, softcover, spiral bound, stapled the list goes on.
some have writing in. notes from meetings, notes about exhibitions, snippets of stories, lines of poetry (oh yeah dear reader i have been known to knock out a verse or two. just be thankful i have never made you suffer them), lists of things to buy, things to do, ideas for blogs yadda yadds.
but worse still are the pages and pages of blank virgin paper. in fact enough blank space for more notes, snippets, lines, lists and ideas.

such a treat.

bonus

the g20 have decided that there should be action on bonuses in the financial sector.
you can hear the cheers around the world. there is little sympathy for the fallen masters of the universe.
a financial service guy is wheeled out on to the news, he is there to tut tut the news. much wringing of hands, much doom and gloom for him.
his major argument is: if you want the best staff you have to pay the best.

well given that a large chunk of the financial sector has had to go cap in hand to governments around the world that pretty much tells me that for all the money they have been shelling out to 'top performers' all in all they have managed to get some pretty shitty staff in.
they all seem to be on a par with me when it comes to assessing risk and benefit and ability to maximise gain.
mmmm perhaps it is time for me to become a banker.

(oi you in the back: i said banker....)

changes

had a haircut.
now look more kenny rogers than bad santa - not sure that is an improvement.
it is the start of me making changes.

meanwhile in the real world disney bought marvel. bit of a shock. fanboys and geeks around the world are having kittens at what it could mean. me too.

zits

i am of an age where zits should no longer be an issue.
mostly this is the case.
currently i have two zits. very irritating they are too. each one is located in the centre of my bum cheeks. all of which makes sitting a bit of a pain. quite looking forward to squeezing them.

just thought i would share.

evil

the nhs is evil.
sarah palin said so.
it must be true.
she also said 'death panels' so that must be true as well.
she is american and so right wing that she is playing out of the park.
aha nothing to worry about then.

except you have the 'eccentric' (according to david cameron) daniel hannan, a conservative mep, who describes the nhs as a "60 year mistake" that he "wouldn't wish on anyone". even worse the slimy little toad made his statements on american tv, and not in front of his electorate. (i wonder why he hasn’t said it on the hustings and saved it for american tv? could it be he wouldn’t have been elected and wouldn’t be earning taxpayers money – oh you like the taxpayers money when it goes into your pocket daniel, just don’t like it going on the health of others.)

mr. hannan is likely to get a ‘stern talking to’ – crikey i bet he is shitting himself – still we owe him a vote of thanks as he has given us a glimpse of just how secure the national health service is in the hands of the conservatives: not very.

there is little to like about either mrs. palin or mr. hannan, palin edges it because she hasn’t hidden her views from the electorate. palin is quite tasty and appears on the pat top tory totty list, but that is me being terribly shallow
neither quality can be applied to daniel hannan; still we can rest easy knowing he will be given lines and made to stand in the corner.

fame

we live in a fame obsessed culture. the media report on the lives of the rich and famous. it could be argued that this has always been the case in the age of mass communication – we have always been interested in knowing more about the stars that entertained us. the difference now is since the advent of the internet and 24 hour news we not only want to know more we need to have more people to know about.
people will do anything in order to get their moment in the media gaze. some will take the traditional route of hard work and paying their dues to earn their fame (and then ungratefully complain about the pressure of fame). most take the easy route and appear on tv shows making spectacles of themselves, with the vague hope that they might be spotted and turned from a nobody into a somebody. a desire to live the jade dream.
then there is that even more fleeting glimpse of media stardom that is very peculiar to modern mass communication. the voracious appetite of the modern media has led to a variation on the old kiss and tell stories, a variation on the citizen journalist concept.
the other day three people were granted a different type of celebrity: infamy. the murderers of baby p have been named in the press, this now puts their lives in danger. given the nature of their heinous crime i can’t say i am too bothered. they are unlikely to ever be reformed or redeemed and no one is going to shed a tear if parole after parole is refused.
their actions mean that they will never be safe if they are ever released. in a country that, rightly, does not have the death penalty there can be no rational argument that allows them to be released from jail without protection. to do anything less is to agree to the law of the jungle and advocate vigilante justice (if the state is not prepared to execute them, then it can not be left to the public to do the deed).
luckily for me i won’t be the politician who has to deal with this question (not unless the country really does go to the dogs).
journalists have been busy digging up the dirt on the three people in question.
it is that dirt that brings us back to the kiss and tell element of fame. we have seen it with the michael jackson when friends rush forward to tell their sordid tales rather than do what friends should do: keep secrets and honour the memory (yes mark and uri i am thinking of you).
then there has been the growth of the man in the street quote. it used to be something along the lines of: “he was a nice boy”. now they are given more time and more space, their opinions given credence.
the men in the baby p murder have previous form; it appears that they were particularly nasty towards their grandmother (nothing was proven as she died before the case could come to trial). still her neighbours have been quick to jump in with their comments. they have talked about how that whenever the men visited the granny was bruised.
on the radio we heard how the granny was very nice, a friend, how they lived in a close community, a quiet community. this quickly became a commentary about the low sentences that have been handed out, how the state does not do enough to protect people and how something like this will happen again. the implication being that the public has been let down by the state and people have been murdered because of it.
yet the irony of their close and quiet community life, their regard for the granny is lost on them. as one of them said in a piece in the metro newspaper “every time they came she was bruised.”
so you managed to see these bruises but you decided to wait until journalists arrived on your doorstep before saying anything? couldn’t go to the police or call social services? doesn’t seem like you could. yet you can go on national radio and pontificate about how the state is letting people down. perhaps some of the blame can be laid at the feet of caring concerned, but ultimately, quiet communities who only care in the spotlight of the media.
yet as many in the public gaze have found there are times when it sees just the worst of things. the desire to have that moment in the spotlight, that moment to be heard sometimes ends up just reminding us that we are not always worthy of the attention we crave.

debooking

i have been on a quest; epic is too small a word to describe it, to clear my flat. over the years i have accumulated lots, hoarded more and collected loads.
but enough is enough.
time to make a move in on the books. sort them out. move them on. should be easy, oh how i wish that was the case.

the plan is the break the books down into various categories.
keep - because i liked it.
keep - because i will read it (some day).
maybe - i might read it and i do quite like it.
give to friends - books that might appeal to friends now that i have declared them free to go (the books not the friends).
give to local charity - books i no longer want, but are not going to appeal to friends can go to the local charity shop.
give to local charity level 2 - books that i don't want, but for some odd reason i don't think are suitable for the local charity shop so they go to the book bin at sainsburys.
recycle - books which fall into the categories of "i must have been in a muddy thunderstorm when i read that one" or "i have no idea why i would have bought that in the first place and surely no one in their right mind would ever read it".

so in effect we are talking about three piles. keep, get rid of and i am just not sure.

such a simple plan. it falls down the moment i start looking at the books. the obvious ones are not the problem (though the ‘i think i will read that one next’ pile is getting very large). it is the ‘to keep or not to keep’ books that are causing the problems. i look at them and wonder will i miss this book once it has gone? the obvious answer is no as i haven’t looked at it in years, but you never know when the need will crop that i need to research drugs in sports, or how drugs create visions (no idea why i have them), maybe i might want to go back and read some of the slipstream stuff i have, i doubt it but i never know. true crime, maybe (i seem to have a large amount of such books, i have no idea what possessed me, perhaps the same demon that had me getting several crowley and magik books). perhaps i will dip into those popular science books i have, same with those current affairs titles (of course in both cases they are now woefully out of date, but that is not the point.

looking through my bookcases i can find things that interested me in the years gone by. i get all misty eyed remembering the thrill of buying those film theory books, ah if only i had read them then.

even worse is the discovery of a title that looks like it would have been really good to read at the time, but now the moment has past, or has it? (put them on the maybe pile).

scarily as quickly as i am cleaning space off the bookcases i am just filling them up with the books that have been lying around the flat in teeter tottering piles.

at least now i know i really shouldn’t be buying books until i have read a few more of the ones i have. except i have a hankering to read (well i mean attempt to read) james joyce’s ulysses and i would have sworn i had a copy of it somewhere, but seems i don’t. oh well i will read another doc savage novel – just as good.

one book i won’t be reading is liz jones’ ‘exmoor files’, see what she did there? for those of you lucky enough to have never read liz jones she is one of the many confessional columnists who populate the papers. she spends a lot of time telling people how miserable her life is, but how much better it is than the life we are leading. i confess that as part of my ‘daily mail’ addiction i do occasionally dip into the liz jones life. i never feel very good afterwards.
anyway the reason i mention this is because her book gets a review in the latest private eye. as you can imagine it is not that complimentary.
however one part made me chuckle.
“one of the problems with confessional hackery, though is that you quickly run out of material. there is only so much you can confess to, even if you are fred west.”

mmmm perhaps i should have kept those true crime books.

christmas

let me be the first to wish you a happy christmas.
in the world of retail there are many people who have been working on their christmas purchasing strategies for months, while others will have been planning their christmas displays. for those hardy types christmas is an all year thing.
slowly but surely it is becoming an all year event for the rest of us.
recently i saw an advert for a well known chain highlighting their christmas line. the other night i was watching bid-tv, look i really don’t understand what the attraction is of the bid-tv channel is, but i am hooked. feel free to judge me. so there i was engrossed in the patter of the presenter desperately selling some piece of tat when he pipes up that this would be a fantastic item for christmas and that a christmas gift special would be airing soon.
still fortnum and mason’s take the biscuit when it comes to early christmas coverage. in fact they take the hamper.
yes those of you who were thinking of treating me to the snow queen hamper have waited too long, as this £25,000 hamper has been taken off the market. so where will i get my goosedown powder puff, my silk opera scarf, my magnum of 1990 veuve clicquot or that 4lb tin of beluga caviar? (if you were to press me on that i would hazard a guess that i could pick them all up from fortnum and mason.)
it is not just the £25k hamper that they have taken off the market, but also the downmarket £5,000 hamper. they have kept a shoddy £1,000 hamper available for the cheapskates out there.
the reason why fortnum and mason have taken these hampers off the market because in the current climate they are “probably not appropriate”.
after all with unemployment approaching three million it makes sense that fortnum and mason show a more socially aware and more caring side. i am sure the fact that they get some press coverage for this move is just a happy by-product of the move, though i am betting they are kicking themselves now as they read that the banks have no such qualms about current climate and are about to splash the cash when it comes to bonuses.
let me be clear here.
there has never been a time since the establishment of fortnum and mason (1707) that is has been ok to drop £25,000 for a christmas hamper. for a large chunk of the population that is more than they earn in a year and that is a situation that has always been the case.
true the current financial climate is not a good one, but for most of the three million who are unemployed and the millions who are existing on the breadline what is being sold in fortnum and mason is the last thing on their mind, they are more concerned about the price of bread and milk in their local supermarket.
the only people who are going to be put out by seeing a £25,000 price tag on a christmas hamper are those city whiz kids who now find themselves surplus to requirements. my heart bleeds for them. call me scrooge.

still if you have a few thousand pounds burning a hole in your pocket and you really need to get a christmas hamper there is always harrods, although they dropped their £5,000 hamper are offering to have a personal shopper go around with you to fill up the trolley for you. i am sure you will be a few (hundred) pounds lighter after that. while harvey nichols has decided to stick with their £2,500 christmas hamper.
i’ll have three please.
by the way merry christmas.

education

funny thing about politics when you are in opposition it is easy to score points, in fact it is very hard not to. the joy of being part of the opposition is that you can pretty much criticise anything for any reason.
take education.
every year when the gcse results are posted the conservatives are there trumpeting on about how standards have declined and how the papers are so much easier than they were in the good old days. their can be no confidence in the results is their cry. surely though this can’t be true as most of the top grades come from public schools. do the wealthy middle and upper classes really spend all that money just to get qualifications that no one has faith in? that can’t be right.
so it must be the state sector schools whose results we cannot believe. those estate kids who go to the local comprehensive must be getting a dummies guide to exams paper each time they get to sit an exam. that must be the answer.
unless of course the real benefit of the public schools isn’t so much what you learn but who you learn it with.
so the bottom line seems to be that it is all too easy for children to pass their exams. they need to be challenged. they need to be truly tested; they have to prove themselves in the heat of the exams.
fair enough you might say.

yet when the sats (that is standard assessment tasks to you and i) results decline in english for the first time since the tests were introduced (1995) what do the conservatives say?
step forward michael gove and tell us: "we have seen a historic drop in english results, the brightest students are not being stretched, and the weakest are being failed the most. it is deeply worrying that english results are in decline."
from that you would think that the drop had been from the highest mountain and into the deepest abyss. when in fact the decline was from 81 to 80%, a big, a very big 1%, disaster.
i believe mr. gove has entered hyperbole corner.

hold on a second haven’t the tories been complaining that standards are too low, that it is all too easy.
now call me stupid (and many do) but if you are planning on making something harder you are expecting to see more people fail because if they don’t then the tests are the same as they were before.

really all this shows is that in opposition over education the tories have their cake and they have eaten it.
oh we want things to be harder to reward those that work harder.
oh no fewer have attained the standard this year it goes to prove education system is wrong.
all the conservatives are really complaining about is that too many oiks are passing too many exams. if someone from the local comprehensive is getting those results it just makes the private sector look a lot less attractive.

for all the talk about them being caring and compassionate the tories never really change. problem is this time next year they will be in power,

back

it looks like my internet problems are solved.
it looks like i am back.
it looks like i will be writing more rants.
it looks like you lot are going to be suffering my poor prose and even poorer puns.
it looks like the rain has gone and we can all see clearly now.
(have no idea where that came from.)

technology2

not been on for a while because i have screwed up my internet.
normal service will be resumed soon.

(longer version below.)

technology

gentle reader you may have been wondering where i have been, or you may have been thanking your lucky stars that you have been spared my brand of drivel. even so i think you deserve to hear why i have been absent.
currently i have an adversarial relationship with technology. sometimes it is my freeview box that just cuts out, or has a magical digital signal that works fine for all the really bad tv stations but doesn’t work at all on anything i want to watch. then there is the digital radio that turns itself on and off whenever it pleases, often in the middle of something i was enjoying listening to (and i will ignore the fact that the cd player on it has decided it will never work no matter what i do). shall i mention my dvd recorder that allowed me to record the recent (excellent) torchwood series and then decided at the very last moment to make the disc unplayable (not only did i lose the series, i also waved goodbye to the amiable film ‘cat ballou’). the ipod can’t be left out with its occasional moments of temperament when it just decides that the best option is to freeze. lovely. my mobile phone is a constant source of irritation i either lose if for periods or recently it has decided not to make a sound, leaving me to guess if i have been contacted (which to be honest is a rare occurrence anyway).
still the most recent technological disaster has been my loss of the internet. now i can take full responsibility for it going the way of all good things. i had stupidly taken the laptop to the local ‘idea store’, or for the old folk out there the local library (you can tell the difference between a library and an idea store thusly an idea store has wi-fi and computers and lots of people making lots of noise on their mobiles or just chatting (loudly) to each other, while sometimes eating smelly food. a library is quiet and has books. what me old fashioned? yes.) i was there to use the wi-fi. unlike anywhere else in the western world to use the wi-fi you have to reset everything on your settings. this i did. the really dumb thing was i didn’t make a note of what i was doing.
cluster fuck time.
get home and the internet and i are no longer intimate friends but acquaintances who have lost touch.
not to worry i can save this. i can rescue this. i can do this.
no. nope. nada.
worry time.
to cut an epic to a long story: i gave up and decided it was time to renew my broadband.

simple. so simple.
if only life was like that. really life would be great if it were that simple.
a period of reflection who to go with i plunk for bt.
a call to bt gives me more details and lets me know what information i need to provide them with, naturally enough i don’t have my customer reference number as i do that online (see the problem).
go to an internet café to log-in to my bt account. i am not recognised. what? ask them to send me my password again, but to answer all the questions they pose i have to see my bill (see the problem).
find an old email from bt click on the link to my online account and it takes me straight there (no need for a password or username, nice).
get customer reference number.
make the call to bt to place the order for broadband. now bt love their menus. so after a few minutes of digging down into the menu options i finally get to a point where i can place the order.
i do.
five working days.
fantastic.

the days go by.
internet hub has not turned up.
misery.

curse those post office employees for being on strike they are preventing me from getting back to the internet. now as a working class warrior (armchair division of the glorious galloway regiment, retired subs not paid) i can’t actually fault them for being on strike so i just grin and bare it.
ah my copy of last week’s socialist worker has arrived so the bt homehub can’t be far behind.
nope.
wrong.

apologies to the vanguard of the proletariat that are the postal workers, they were not to blame for holding up the bt hub.
no it was bt. the very helpful chap who took my order didn’t actually take my order.
a big thank you to him and may he have boils on his bum for the next ten years.

another game of going through the bt menu system and a new order placed.

so perhaps next week i will be online again.
keep your fingers crossed. i know some of you have been missing this.