metal

i have been known to throw guitar poses; i have been known to shake my locks manically (sometimes even in time to the music). i like metal – it can be speed, death, thrash, black, industrial, prog, and big hair – as long as it is metal that is all that matters. from the basic 3-piece outfit through the twin guitar attack bands, they can have double bass drum set-ups, keyboards, flutes and violins. they just have to be metal. the vocalist can scream, they can growl, they can screech there can even be two vocalists. just so long as they are metal.
so i am a metal fan. so sue me.
on the train back thursday night (the feeling of relief of being on the last train from the north still flowing through my system like a summer’s rain cleaning the humidity from the air…. oooh get me) i was slightly shocked to watch a metal band jump on the train.
they were in traditional look – all black clothes with various bands decorating the various t-shirts. all of them with tattoos, several of them with piercings. the girls had the big platform boots on.
it was quite obvious they had come from a gig.
they were all happy, all talking about the highlights of the night.

now the first thing wrong with this was that they were travelling by train: whatever happened to touring in the transit van?

but that wasn’t the thing that got to me.
to judge from their t-shirts and piercings this was a band from the goth, industrial part of the metal family. probably with a big “type o negative” influence.
nothing wrong there.

yet there was a moment when all i could think was “oh no”. it started with a simple comment when the drummer mentioned that he had pulled out a chunk of his hair when he caught it in his drumstick. this lead into a bit about how good the guitarist looked when he shook his head in the solo. quickly followed by a comparison about hair lengths (remember this is the blokes talking) and how long it took to grow. this led into a discussion between some of them about whether one should straighten his hair or leave it wavy.

spinal tap eat your heart out.
wooooooooaorgh

next

so the last day came and went. in grand pat style it didn’t go to plan. i had this sneaky scheme to get in early, pass my keys on to someone and slink out of the place without any fanfare. with a quick exit from work i would have been back in london by late afternoon.
i was still thinking of this plan at 9am, 10am, and 11am. around midday i had revised the time i would get back to london.
in the back of my mind i knew there would be no escaping early.
who would have thought clearing out an office would have taken so long?
after much pack, stacking, boxing and throwing out i got it all done.
and would you adam and eve it even on my last day there were only 2 of us left in the building. so i got to do some of the locking process.
the only problem was that by the time i got out there was no chance i would catch the 20.05 train.
noooooooooooooooooooooo not another night in the north!

luckily saint chuff (patron saint of trains) was looking down and there is one at 20.58. phew. back in london at the wee small hours of the morning.

friday starts in a bit of sleepy daze. i have a plan for the for first month – i am going to clean my flat. long time coming i can tell you.
have even worked out the method i am going to use. split rooms into areas and then move stuff from one area to another area, cleaning the empty area. simple really.

except i ended up in brick lane drinking coffee.
much better outcome for the day.

besides i can do the packing, racking and stacking in my flat tomorrow.

well that is a good start to my new life.

endings

last day in the office.
lots to do.
mixed feelings. kinda sad, kinda excited, kinda scared.

best get back to work, while i still have a job to do.

rain

my last few days in the north and all it is doing is raining a bit, raining a lot and raining some more.
it would be perfect other than fact i have left my waterproofs at home.
call me soggy.

boris

for some odd reason when i am writing about london's new mayor boris johnson i have an urge to call him either "boorish" or "borish" johnson.
i know it is not particularly funny but it does make me smile.
i wonder if jeremy paxman ever thinks like that?

oil

we live in volatile times. the price of everything is soaring, except house prices, which are plummeting (oooh get me i have come over all daily mail on you). the credit crunch has many of us by the short and curlies.
we cry out for a leader to carry us through this economic minefield. a man (or woman, as i can do pc as well as the next man (or woman) – see i told you i could) with strong convictions, a firm grasp of the situation and bravery to chart the course needed.
step forward our broad shoudered touselled headed blonde leader boris.
yes in a time when oil prices keep going up boris, the mayor of london, has decided not to renew the deal with venezuela which allowed london’s buses to get cheap fuel, which in turn allowed them to be offering travel concessions to those on social security.
back when it was signed ken livingstone, the then mayor, claimed it would benefit up to a quarter of a million londoners, the current take up is far short of that at close to 60,000 people. still that is a lot of people who are much better off. payment for this oil was to be in the form of consultancy work carried out by london experts in the fields of: recycling, waste management, traffic and on reducing carbon emissions.
at the time the deal was struck it was attacked by the green party, who complained that livingstone should be finding ways to reduce london’s reliance on fossil fuels. which is fair enough as that is what the green’s mostly stand for. while the conservatives complained that livingstone and hugo chavez, the venezuelan president, should be ashamed of this deal as it exploited the poor of venezuela. which is fair enough as the conservative party have always stood for compassion for the poor (sorry for a moment there i was cameron’s press secretary).

step forward boris johnson. he sees the inequity of the deal. we get cheap oil, buses can pass on the savings to be poorest, and venezuela gets advice it needs. to boris and the tories there is a terrible smell about this. so they have to stop it.
boris says: "many londoners felt uncomfortable about the bus operation of one of the world's financial powerhouses being funded by the people of a country where many people live in extreme poverty" most of those people who were disgruntled would be tory members of the greater london assembly, the rest of us not so bothered.
"there are better ways of benefiting londoners and better ways of benefiting venezuelans". but “ways” were outlined and i suspect none will be forthcoming any time soon. (to be fair to boris he is maintaining the subsidies for those on benefit until the original deal runs out – august of this year.)
back when the deal was signed richard barnes, the then leader of london assembly conservatives slammed the deal because "london should not be doing business with third-rate south american dictators with an appalling human rights and democratic record."
too right richard we just want our deals to be with first-rate dictators with appalling human rights and democratic records.
with all this talk from david cameron, boris johnson and, now, richard barnes i am expecting the conservative party to unveil several ethical programmes that will ban the sale of weapons to dictatorships, ensure that countries we invest in and do business with are transparent with their human rights records, while back home i expect both david and boris to address the thorny issue of workers rights to ensure that they are protected against the unscrupulous employers. in addition to that the conservatives will lead the charge to ensure that big business pays fairer taxes because they should not exploit the worker.
then again i think that in this instance both boris and richard were just talking for effect and frankly they don’t care about the poverty in venezuela, nor do they care about the state of venezuelan workers they were just miffed that ken livingstone got a sweet deal worked out that benefited the poor in london.

still we can all rest easy as the mayor’s press release states that with the closing of the office in caracas £67,000 a year will be saved on the lonodn budget (even though that £67,000 was actually buying cheap oil).
so although london buses will now have to pay the market rate for oil boris can at least claim to make good on a campaign claim as he has stopped a scheme that he referred to as “crackers”. good for you boris.

one of the reasons that the deal had to go was that the new first deputy mayor (the unelected) tim parker saw the deal as not being part of the “core strategy” for the greater london assembly. mr. parker is interested that londoners get value for money for any deals struck. getting cheap oil seems not to be value for money.
but look boris has struck a deal with mayor bloomberg of new york. the two mayors have agreed to swap personnel and ideas so that both cities could learn from each other’s best practices.
well that is value for money. hold on my 25 bus runs so much better on “best practice” than it does on petrol.
could it be that new york is a better place to go than caracas?
could it be that boris and mr. parker just don’t like left-wingers?

but here is irony for you. do you want to know which other city has a deal with venezuela for cheap fuel?
can you guess?
score one for the home team if you said new york.

mayor bloomberg share some of that best practice with boris and mr. parker now.

zit

i have a zit on my bum.
it is not nice. i can't get a good enough grip on it to give it a good squeeze.
now it is just annoying....

countdown

the last few days of work are stretched out in front of me. the day after i leave is going to be odder than i thought.
but before i get maudlin i have to confess that of the many things i am going to miss it is going to be my air con unit i am going to miss the most. the last few hot days have reminded me why i hate summer and looking at the 2008 year planner (nothing much going on from june 1st…) the days of summer seem to go on and on and on.

geez i am a bundle of fun.

prescott

"annoying, bewildering and prickly" is john prescott’s description of gordon brown.
how do we know this? well prescott is selling his memoirs, so he needs to have something that makes us all go out there and put down our hard earned cash.
it is also the reason why we had to listen to his bulimia stories.

prescott mentions his hundreds of reconciliation meetings between blair and brown.

prescott isn’t actually attacking brown, as he professes admiration of both blair and brown. it is just that his timing really sucks.

whatever good prescott has done in the past for the labour party he has undone it all with his memoirs. for a grubby few pounds he has added to the current of criticism of gordon brown.

don’t worry john i am sure that david cameron and co will reward you well; just don’t choke on the cakes when you scoff them.

still prezza isn’t alone cherie blair is also entering the memoir business. it is well known she has little time for gordon brown, so her attacks are not unexpected.
even so she manages to shock with her revelation that tony blair is “secretly” is helping gordon brown plan the next general election campaign.
well it is nice to know that such a high-powered lawyer is such a tattletale.

gordon brown has become a shit magnet.

i am waiting for him to get the blame of the burmese cyclone.

where

a few weeks ago it was the tail end of winter.
now we seem to be in summer, what happened to spring? what happened to the lead in period of warm weather that prepares us for hot weather?
where has it gone?

as if i didn’t have enough to be miserable about, i now have the hate of summer to deal with.

boris

boris is in charge of london. cripes.
i like boris, but i am not sure that i like him being in charge of london. we shall see how he copes and what it means to those of us living here. does it mean the end of the bendy bus? i hope not i like the 25. will it mean the end of the growing building of big glass boxes? i hope so.
i doubt very much if it will end the proliferation of american descriptions such as midtown (holborn to most of us) south central (southwark) and recently the arrival of noho (marylebone), but if boris can do that then he might get my vote next time around.

the scary thing is that this result probably heralds the end of the current labour administration and the rise of david cameron and his tory party.

disaster

no matter how you look at it last night at the polls was a disaster for gordon brown and the labour government.
cameron is right to talk about it being a "big night" for the conservative party.
the electorate have given the clunking fist of brown a bloody nose and it is likely that the london mayoral election is about to land him with a black eye.

yet brown is also right to say that the results are due to the fact that there are some unusual circumstances out there at the moment.
labour is paying the price for not just these events but also for the fact that they have been in powere for a long time and that they have forgotten that they have to pay attention to the electorate.

cameron took the chance to once again point out that this was a vote against labour's top down approach to government. in this he echoes the mantra of thatcher. so under cameron we can expect less government and more local action.
but the point is what people really want is a government who will protect them from the wider world's mistakes. we want them to make the big hard decisions that will stave off the problems brought on by stupidity of greedy banks.
that is what we want we just don't want to admit it.

brown has been punished for the credit crunch, he has been punished for the rise in petrol prices (but not to worry the two companies involved with petrol just released record profits), he has been punished becuase of the rise of food, yet we know tescos will release figures of record profits and the farmers will complain that they are not paid enough for what they grow.
bad transport? it is the government - even if the rail and airlines are privately owned.
it is a long list of what is going wrong and blamed on the government. (even eard a banker blame the recent problems in the banking industry on the bank of england for not spotting the banks own recklessnes...)

but brown has problems of his own. he heeds to drop policies that are pointless and just there to make headlines - forget about id cards, forget about the 42 day limit. concentrate on what it is that labour should stand for. the people, the working people. work towards protecting them and rewarding them.

do that sort of thing and watch the votes come flooding back.

meanwhile i am going to go off and sulk as boris becomes the mayor of london.

election

c'mon ken.

yeah i know it is pretty incisive, but what else can i say?
for all his faults ken livingstone is not a tory - that should be enough to get everyone voting for him.
fingers crossed that boris doesn't get in.

punch

david cameron has “fessed” up to the fact that he has not been able to pursue the quiet politics he had promised he would do.
he believes that prime minister question time is adversarial and that commons is designed for such antics.
cameron sees himself as being robust and that if you do not take that approach “…you lose out."

of course it helps the robust performances of cameron that gordon brown is not the most gifted speaker in the world and in fact would probably appreciate a more detailed discussion of questions in prime minister questions, but that wouldn’t suit cameron.

a little like a bully cameron keeps up his one or two lines of attack “ditherer” “never answers questions”, regardless of the fact that brown and labour may have made a decision and did answer the question.

cameron is aware that the whole point of prime minister questions is not to debate the issues it is to get some soundbites.

they still remain the nasty party.

jobsworth

there i am on the train. i’ll get a first class supplement, why not i say to myself – it is not like i need to save the companies cash! so i plonk myself down in the quiet zone carriage. i get my book, my paper, my m&s sarnies and my coffee arranged and i get comfortable.

boy do i feel good that i managed to buy some supplies at the station as the train manager make the announcement that due to staff shortages there is no shop opening on the journey.

i sip my coffee and smile thinking “i don’t care i am sorted!”

the train rocks on. i read my book (it is a patricia cornwell book, a bit of a disappointment and i won’t be reading any more of her books). i am happy.

train manager comes round.

“can i get a first class upgrade please?”
“no that service isn’t available”
“what?”
“can’t give you the upgrade…”

he walks off. i finish my coffee. pack my bags.
then wander along the train to find somewhere to sit.
through two almost empty first class carriages.

the first standard class i come to is packed, not a spare seat. same with the second one. at the end of the third one i find a space i can sit in and spread out a little bit. i go back to get some of my stuff. i make the treacherous walk along the train trying not to bump into people or fall on to them and all the time trying to maintain some cool. get to where i was sitting. pick up a couple of bags.
trudge back to the standard class.
plonk the bags down.
walk back.
other passengers thinking “what is he doing?”

back in first class i see the train manager. i have a bit of a fume on. we don’t complain enough. darn it i am going to complain.
i decide to ask him his name. he gives it and then asks why.
i tell him i am going to write a letter of complaint that he wouldn’t sort me out an upgrade.
“we don’t have the staff for the service” he says.
“how does that matter? you have the machine there you can bill me?”
“no staff for the service” he repeats his mantra.
“that’s madness, besides the rest of the train is packed”
“i never said you had to move, i just told you i can’t bill you…..”

oooooops bright red, major embarrassment, jaw dropping, blood throbbing in my ears not quite hearing the rest of what he was saying
“…shouldn’t assume….”

well my apologies were craven and profuse.

to make matters worse later on in the journey the train manager has arranged to get some free drinks out for the passengers based on the fact that the shop was closed and the train packed and warm.

what a bastard, making me feel even worse for my earlier faux pas.

to that train manager i doff my cap at you for just being good and sensible at your job and to publicly apologise for making such a tit of myself.

now i know why we don’t complain as often as we should – because sometimes we look very very silly when we do.

but i did learn a valuable lesson – no jobs for me where there is contact with the general public as i might end up having to deal with an idiot like me.

enemies

with friends like these who needs enemies – so goes the old saying. gordon brown must really understand what it means.
for a few months gordon was the saviour. the serious politician, the change maker, the man with the vision thing. all it took was a stupid decision to tease the electorate that he was going to go to the polls and now brown and his party look to be ditherers and incapable of giving a straight forward answer.
more and more there is a real chance that cameron will actually when the next general election (london’s mayoral election will give an indication as to what will happen when the whole country goes to the polls.).

recently lord desai commented that the whole point of brown was to remind us how good blair was when he was in power.
now lord levy is on the attack. he claims that brown is a weak leader and this has lead to the squabbles that take place within the ranks of the labour party. levy says that brown was aware of the cash for honours (of course while implicating brown, levy makes it clear that he himself was against accepting loans). furthermore levy says that blair as commented that brown could not win against cameron in an election. this assertion has been denied by a blair spokesman. this alone is quite interesting. you can well believe that blair thinks that brown is a dead duck and has probably said it in passing to a few of his closest confidants and it is likely that levy was one of them, how it must please blair to see it out in the open like this.

it is all right though levy is very keen to point out that:
"firstly i'm a labour man, always will be a labour man, always have been a labour man.”
"my parents were, my family are, and i will never change my political viewpoint.
"i absolutely had total belief in tony blair, and i felt it was a privilege to help in any way i could both he and the labour party.

indeed levy wants to help so much that he is having his memoirs serialised in the mail on sunday newspaper (a paper that is notorious for the support it gives labour, that would be irony on my part), that he is publishing his memoirs at a time that is likely to cause the most embarrassment to the government

yes lord levy i can see you are labour through and through.

we can all take heart that lord levy is “saddened” by the bickering that is going on in the labour party. not that anything he says or writes while his memoirs are being discussed are likely to create any problems for the labour party.


lord levy is obviously a man of integrity and very trustworthy so his recent outburst can’t be about publicising his book – after all he is very wealthy and so doesn’t need the money.
it could be because he is still irked because brown replaced him as a middle east envoy
it is possible that lord levy wants to alert gordon brown to weaknesses in the labour party ahead of the local elections and to give labour time to restructure in order to fight the good fight in the forthcoming general election. because such a devoted labour man as himself would not want to give succour to the opposition, would they? in fact any of the pain that labour might feel in the polls because of what levy had written is worth it because it will make them stronger (and sell more of his book).
that is what it is. there it was in front of me all the time. lord levy is a caring parent of the labour movement and he is indulging in some tough love.

it is either that or he is just a spoilt tosser who doesn’t want others to play with his toys.

you decide.

quotes

there i was skipping through the channels when i hear the authoritative tones of jeremy paxman declare: “has lap dancing become socially acceptable?”

i was dumbstruck.

i must have missed the memo that told us that lap dancing was socially unacceptable.

live and learn.

george

and on this fine proud st george's day all that needs to be done is for me to just post this:

and did those feet in ancient time
walk upon england's mountains green?
and was the holy lamb of god
on england's pleasant pastures seen?

and did the countenance divine
shine forth upon our clouded hills?
and was jerusalem builded here
among these dark satanic mills?

bring me my bow of burning gold:
bring me my arrows of desire:
bring me my spear: o clouds unfold!
bring me my chariot of fire.

i will not cease from mental fight,
nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
till we have built jerusalem
in england's green and pleasant land.

blake's fantastic poem, set to music by hubert parry, is one of those songs that makes the hairs stand up and puffs the chest out with pride. as i type this i am listening to billy bragg version and thinking that it is a near perfect song.
it has helped get me through both my parent’s funerals.
strangely it is a hymn that has been “banned” from several of the nation’s churches because it is not devotional enough or it is nationalistic (how easy it is to confuse nationalism with patriotism), this is most notable in southwark cathedral.

where is my cross of st. george when i need it?

later on i will be doing the st. crispin’s day speech.

cruel

the latest stage in the, seemingly, never-ending political struggle between hillary clinton and barack obama to see which of them will run as the democratic presidential candidate is being played out in pennsylvania. the fight between them has been getting rather dirty.

today hillary attempted to show she was macho enough to lead the american people. when asked what she would do if iran launched a nuclear attack on israel her reply was "if i'm the president, we will attack iran... we would be able to totally obliterate them."
whooosh rock hard there hillary.

but a sneaky attack is being planned on iran. it is an attack that is worse than a nuclear strike, worse than a biological strike, far worse than boots on sand. this attack is going to hit the iranians hard and will probably change their way of life forever.

it is looking likely that tehran is going to host a chris de burgh concert. the simpering and anodyne pop singer famous for “the lady in red” is going to sing to iranians. he will be the first western musician to play in iran since the 1979 revolution.
chris may have to tone down his act for the iranians.

what i don’t understand is that in iran you have to have a permit to perform and yet chris is getting permission to play. why? how?
obviously someone is trying to undermine the regime from the inside.
once the local population begins to hum chris de burgh songs then cultural decline is not far behind.

hillary show the iranians some mercy and nuke them now before they have to listen to “the lady in red”.

quote

i can’t deny it i have enjoyed all 6 of the star wars movies. i still have fond memories of seeing stars wars on its opening day at the odeon leicester square with monty (and hearing for the first time the immortal utterance “brainblast”) or seeing it several times with adam at the granada cinema in harrow.
i never became a total star wars geek, but it was a close run thing. i could quote very large chunks of the film at the drop of a hat. i could (and would) discuss the metaphysical nature of the force. i was excited about the idea there were to be 9 films in the series, i devoured the film tie-in novels and worked out hidden histories from the hints in those books that never made it to the screen (ah the innocent days before video and dvd).
yet i never became a star wars geek.
why?
comics. comics were my first love and not even a lightsaber battle was going to change that.

it was a lucky escape.

in 2001 the jedi religion was recognised on the census. some 400,000 people said they were jedi.
presumably barney jones was one of them. barney, or to give him his jedi name of jedi master jonba hehol, was making a documentary about being a jedi in his back garden. in a break of filming a man dressed in a bin bag with a darth vader helmet on jumped into the garden and attacked jedi master jonba hehol and defeated him (the dark side winning again!).
darth appeared to be under the influence of drink.
barney, jedi master jonba hehol, was not amused declaring that "this wasn't a joke. this was serious."

to be fair to barney he knows a thing or two about serious not only is he a jedi master, not only is he a hairdresser he is also the founder (along with his brother) of britain’s first jedi church.

in a radio interview today barney said of his attacker: “he is clearly demented.”

pot and kettle.