Great pub talk about stuff that doesn’t matter

Now, I know for absolute certain that there are a number of readers of this blog, but very few ever leave comments. The principal purpose of this entry is to try to get people to actually contribute. Well, and to improve my own social life. I REALLY want to hear contributions on this one folks, even if you come back and add them in six months.

The idea is to identify the top ten topics as a subject for pub conversation. A good pub conversation is something that people will tend to have strong opinions on, yet is completely inconsequential so is unlikely to accidentally offend or accidentally lapse into socially divisive profundity. It is a celebration of all that is great about shallowness.

Here are my starting offerings (forgive me for I shall doubtless add more as comments to my own blog, which seems faintly egocentric):

1. Who was the more talented Beatle? Lennon or McCartney?
2. At what stage exactly did Friends stop being funny and why?
3. Which year was the best for “Big Brother”?
4. What was the best number one of the 1980s?
5. What song would be a better national anthem for the UK than "God save the Queen"?
6. Which is the best ABBA album and single?
   

Feel free to contribute answers to any of the above questions, but PLEASE add similarly inane questions.

Cute and funny v tedious and depressing

When surfing youtube a while ago, I came across this brilliant spoof song by one Stephen Lynch. It really is funny and it's so worth looking at. I did laugh. Have a look at it by clicking here. That shoudl take you to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkx8khougwY

He's also a bit of a cutie to boot, eh?

Oh God, as I write this I'm watching East Enders special Christmas Day edition. Because it's East Enders, one of the longest running characters has just died. Why do they always do something miserable on East Enders for Christmas? I'm a bit "bah humbug" about Christmas, especially this year as the first Christmas since my parents split up, but I want cheering up a bit rather than depressing. East Enders is so self-consciously gritty that it's just plain depressing.

Japanese Paris syndrome

I just love this story I heard of today. Read it by clicking here. Honestly, it's so worth it.
It's almost wonderful how much different nationalities conform to the stereotype.

Cartoon legend snuffs it

It’s sad that Joseph Barbera has died. He was half of Hanna Barbera, who made the most excellent cartoons that people my age grew up with.

It’s always been odd to me that Disney have a bigger name, when Disney’s cartoon characters were frankly rubbish compared to MGM (who Hanna and Barbera previously worked for) and HB studios later. Really, the most minor characters in HB cartoons were better than any of the Disney characters. Rosemary the telephone operator’s bit parts in “Hong Kong Phooey” were more memorable than anything I’ve ever seen Mickey Mouse do. It’s such a shame that HB didn’t open the theme parks. Disneyworld is excellent (I’m gay, remember) but just how excellent would it be if the characters there instead of being lame arse nothingness like Minnie Mouse were instead Scooby Doo (not Scrappy Do though, which was a serious error), Top Cat, Hong Kong Phooey, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Dick Dastardly and Mutley? Disney, or more precisely Pixar, have come up with some excellent characters in recent years but HB were always in the lead when they were still in the game.

Isn’t it curious how if you were to ask people to name a cartoon character, many would say Mickey Mouse first, even though few will have ever seen a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Something to do with branding I suppose.

Christmas carols

I just heard a Christmas carol for the first time this year. It surprised me how lovely it was and how much it made me connect with childhood feelings of Christmas, instead of adult hassle of Christmas. One so rarely hears Christmas carols these days because shops just endlessly play bloody awful compilation albums of bloody awful Christmas pop songs. Instead of “silent night” or other beautiful songs, we endure an endless loop of Slade and Yoko Ono singing “a velly melly Cleesemas.” Happy Christmas (War is Over) my arse, Mr Lennon. I really do want the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to be over, as do most people in Britain and America, but our earnest wanting doesn’t seem to make any difference. Christmas really isn’t about politics anyway, especially the naïve sixth form nonsense you passed off as philosophy. I've always really quietly had it in for the myth of John Lennon.

Stop! Season of goodwill and all!

I do wish that it were easier to hear more of “O come all ye faithful!” and the like. They are simply more lovely songs than the pop trash. I should remind you that this statement comes from somebody who genuinely loves "STEPS", so I've no objection to pop music whatever! There's a time and a place though. Do we not hear them because shops are afraid somehow of upsetting non-Christians? If so, isn’t the mere mention of Christmas a problem?

I do like to hear “Stop the Cavalry” by Jona Lewie and the Band Aid song though. They can stay.

Financial learnings of the Great Britain for make benefit glorious nation of Romania

Greetings from Bucharest Otopeni airport. I’ve been in Romania for a few days, teaching how to account for complex financial instruments that to a large extent don’t yet exist in this country to a small group of appreciative, motivated and generally pleasant people.

I am fond of Romania. The Economist newspaper recently fairly described it as a charming and spirited place. These are the last couple of weeks of Romania being in Europe but not in the EU, as 1 January heralds what I hope will be a real new start for this poor but potential-laden country.

If you sneer at the idea of Bucharest, first look at the town around you. If you live in Wigan, your home does not measure up to Bucharest in terms of charm, prettiness and things to do. It’s also unlikely that your neighbours are as nice. Here are some things about Romania that I find interesting:

• “Cold Mountain” was filmed here. To be fair, so was much of “Borat”. Much of the Romanian countryside is remarkably beautiful.
• The people from Borat’s village are much miffed at being misled about the eventual film. They are each speaking in Romanian in the film, which is odd as Borat himself speaks semi-disguised Czech.
• The price of land around Bucharest has gone up by a factor of about 20 in the last few years.
• A few years ago, I failed to take advantage of an investment opportunity to buy land in Bucharest.
• The language is surprisingly easy to understand, being that it’s the closest surviving language to Latin. As almost all the TV’s in English with Romanian subtitles, just about everybody has enough English to communicate and they’re happy to.
• The people are distinctly Latin in temperament. They have little of the sullenness and arsyness that so characterises many Slavic countries.
• Ceausescu’s “securitate” had a reputation for being the most brutal of the communist secret police. They’d have to be; getting Romanians to obey anything, including traffic signals, would require some measure of brutality even today.
• The currency is the new leu (lion in English). The old leu was hyperinflationary, meaning that an average hotel meal could easily set you back over a million. There were 50,000 to the pound. Last year, they launched the new leu. This confusingly knocked off four zeros instead of a vastly more intuitive three or six. New sparkly indestructible Australian style plastic bank notes were issued, to replace the sparkly plastic indestructible bank notes that had only very recently been introduced.
• People still speak in terms of the old leu. When somebody asks for 26,000 lei, they really mean 2.6 lei. Generally, I meet this confusion by stuffing the equivalent of a 50 pound note in their hands and wait for a total surprise about how much change I get. To date, I’ve never been short changed, despite it seeming that I haven’t the first clue of what the money means. (I have a habit of checking afterwards when I have time). I fear that the same would not be true of taxi drivers and street hawkers in England.

At airport security, the same rules apply here as in the UK; with our recent paranoia that small bottles of water may be an immediate threat to life. In the UK, there are always the plastic boxes the other side of security that contain a querulous and petty little collection of nail files, small nail scissors and the occasional corkscrew. I just saw a similar collection here, except that it was augmented by flick knives, Swiss army knives and, most amusingly, a foot long wooden mallet with metal spikes at the end of it. This didn’t fit in the plastic box, so had been left on top of it, within easy reach of anybody else who had just passed through security. I can only imagine the argument that would have ensued as this was confiscated; presumably from an irate chef. It would not have been out of context to see hand guns and assault rifles in there as well.

In Russia, I’d find all of this truly scary. Somehow here in Romania, it’s funny and oddly charming. As the Economist said, it’s a charming and spirited place.

A rant about organic food

I’ve just been reading some facts (I like me facts, me) about how it’s actually more environmentally friendly to buy New Zealand lamb in the UK than Welsh lamb. This is a thorny subject which I suspect will elicit a response from a certain blogee and I have to say I’m not convinced entirely, but it’s interesting to consider the facts. What appears to be the right thing to do so very often isn’t. For the curious or the Welsh amongst you, this is apparently due to the fact that production in New Zealand requires virtually no energy and the meat is cheaply transported by slow, densely packed boats.

Take organic food. Well, if you must. It is now a talisman of being posh and English to buy organic food, as to feed kids anything other than organic food is seen as downright evil. I’m afraid I think the evil is the school run filling the middle class roads with cars and helping fragment society, but that’s a different matter. Here are a few facts about organic food that somewhat challenge the bogus green credentials of “going organic”:

It takes vastly more space to produce than intensively farmed food, especially organic meat. There’s not enough land for Britain to feed itself organically.

Organic is resolutely NOT a synonym for environmentally friendly. It is very rarely produced locally, often instead being airlifted from warm places far away. Sorry folks, but if you want organically produced asparagus and mandarins with your Christmas dinner, they didn’t grow in the Costwolds. They started their journey to your table being packed into a crate to fit into a 747 somewhere a long way away, quite possibly by people who would see a job with Nike in Indonesia In environmental and ethical terms, the avoidance of pesticides isn’t the issue. as a bit of a step up in their earning potential.

Farmers’ markets are bollocks. Have you ever seen the inside of a Tesco truck? It’s packed to utilise every centimetre and is a remarkably efficient way of getting stuff from its point of production (“A”) to its point of consumption (“B”). Driving a 4x4 with one passenger to a farmer’s market 20 miles away to buy some carrots and broccoli produces a warm feeling of being at one with nature, but also a much bigger carbon footprint than Tesco’s mass logistics. Of course, it would be rather good if Tesco favoured local suppliers and they would if we really wanted them to. Tesco would sell pretty much anything if we showed any sign of wanting to buy it. That’s the plus side of them being psychopaths.

I am always amused at the sight of 4x4s parked outside organic shops (there’s one in Chorlton in Manchester if you fancy a look at what I mean). The irony would be funny if climate change weren’t such an immediate crisis. The reality, of course, is that people aren’t actually buying organic food. They’re buying the idea that they’re a nice person and they don’t care to look too deeply under the surface to things as pesky as facts.

While we’re on a roll, let’s have a look at the Common Agricultural Policy.

The CAP is an abomination. It may have made some slight sense in the 1950s (especially if you were French) but it’s a nonsense now. It indisputably keeps the price of produce higher than it would naturally be. I’ve heard reliable estimates that each family in the UK pays EUR 900 more than it would need to each year because of CAP subsidies.

Such things don’t especially bother me because, let’s face it, me and pretty much all of my friends can afford to pay this premium for keeping Provence real priddy for our biannual trips to the Med. But a high proportion of Britain’s population get by courtesy of the ASDA value range. These kinds of costs matter to somebody earning the minimum wage. They matter a lot.

By keeping prices artificially high in the EU and paying EU farmers to over-produce, it makes it mightily difficult for farmers in developing countries to get a fair price for their goods. The CAP is a cruel barrier to fair trade and we owe it to people in developing nations to abolish it.

Which leads me onto “fair trade”. Ah, perhaps I should leave that for the next post while I wait for your shouts at me.

Gym bunnies

Today’s been busy so far. I’m flying to Prague for work and am on a Friday afternoon flight from Manchester to Prague. The flight, predictably, is full of stag night boys, each of whom is determined to have the time of his life. If that’s not possible, each seems to be earnestly determined to beat their “PB” for beers sunk. The drinking has clearly started and as far as I can see it’s all a very well intentioned affair. Nevertheless, the Friday afternoon MAN – PRG flight is basically the preserve of stag nights up for “doing it large”. Henceforth, I shall refer to Friday’s flight OK645 as “the vomit rocket”.

I managed to get to Homos Place for a personal trainer session this morning, which I’m proud of managing to squeeze in. Once again, there were two muscle men, who I think are German judging by their accent. I’ve no idea if they were trying to be funny (I instinctively assume not) but they were weightlifting together and rather egging each other on, in heavily accented English. Here are some of the phrases used to encourage each other through the pain of lifting remarkably big weights:

• “Harder! Come on, harder!”
• “Take it! It’s no good if it’s not hard!”
• “Hard, you want it hard!”
• “Yes, come on, that’s it, PUSH!”
• “Come on, make it hurt!”
• “Give me more, you KNOW you can give me more!”

Andy (personal trainer) and I rather followed them around for an hour, as it was completely class entertainment. I don’t think that they had any idea how much like some bad porn film soundtrack they sounded. We giggled like schoolgirls at some of the stuff they were coming out with. It’s all great fun.

I bloviate, you bloviate, (and more probably) he bloviates…

Dictionary.com has a great opt-in, which is to receive an email with their word of the day. It’s an American site, which means that sometimes the definitions they send are slightly off target compared to their “proper” English use. For example, it defined prevaricate as to deliberately depart from the truth. A flurry of emails between me and similarly minded English pedants later and we concluded that this must be the US meaning, which is more sinister than the UK meaning. The same is true of the word scheme, which in the UK is often something as benevolent as a pension but in American English almost certainly refers to criminality and conspiracy. Perhaps this says something about the more twitchy and suspicious nature of US society?

One word that came from word of the day is “bloviate”, which is rare in America and virtually non-existent in England. This is a shame, as it’s a fabulous word. The Americans have done such violence to the English language but we should encourage them when they invent good words by using them. To bloviate means to speak loudly, pompously and at length. I’m currently having lunch in my favourite coffee shop in Manchester and listening to a solicitor bloviate to his more junior colleague. Simply listening in has given me much information about their business, their colleagues and potentially sensitive information about their corporate clients. Surely no profession has the same tendency to bloviate as lawyers? As a chartered accountant, I’d recognise that bloviating in a public place is also a breach of confidentiality ethics.

I’m so glad to be out of law.

Veil, again

So, the teaching assistant in Yorkshire who was suspended for refusing to take off her veil when teaching English to kids with special English needs has been sacked. Quite right, too. Click here for the story if you've not read it.

This comment is resolutely not racist. It’s simply not possible to do the job properly with some kids with one’s mouth covered, as some lipread. She’s no more qualified to do that job than I am qualified to work as a Rabbi. The local authority did well to stand up for commonsense against the tediously inevitable charges of racism. That slightly surprises me, although it pleases me too.

I have to say that I find the Arabic tradition’s assumption that women have to cover themselves with a veil, or men will be driven into a frenzy of unstoppable sexual urge rather offensive to straight men. I don’t think that’s racist but I’m open to feedback that it is. I suppose that if they’re not used to the sight of a woman’s naked (feigns shock…) face then it might be mildly distracting for a moment, but they’d get over it. In much the same way that I got over the slight distraction of seeing lots of completely naked unusually fit men at the gym. You simply quickly stop noticing such things and get about your business. Sorry boys and girls, I defend your right to wear what you want in general, but you really are being silly. Get over it.

Dragostea Tin Dei (and other shite)

Sorry for the slight interruption in ramblings. I’ve been chided by a few people by email for the interruption. Sorry, I was in Gran Canaria for a week, doing very little (or at least very little worth hearing about).

I came down to London for what was basically a job interview yesterday and am catching up with friends. The interview was more of a fireside chat with somebody I’ve known for ages, although not well. An advantage of being an old git is that people in “the industry” already know who I am so it’s really just a case of whoring myself around for the best offer. Here was a typical part of the conversation with my female interviewer/ past colleague:

Interviewer: “If you’d come here six months ago, we were so busy, I would have bitten your hand off right there and then. And your head.”

Me: “Well, as long as you’d left the bits I really care about alone.”

Interviewer: (Laughs) “No point going there. I know that I’m not exactly your sort.”

Me: “Not unless you’re hiding a big secret. The bigger the better, if you get me.”

(General “fat slags” giggling and pleasing thoughts that we’re both being paid to talk shite).

The evening brought a very pleasing dinner with a friend who is very good fun and who I am apt to forget is very important. In a couple of hours, she basically put several months’ worth of work my way. I am lucky indeed to not only be able to get work quite easily, but also to get to work with people I like and respect. If I’m currently whoring myself around for money (as I am), I have the advantage of being a whore who’s fond of his clients. Can’t moan at that.

I between meetings, I went to Holmes Place in Putney. It’s much smaller and more crowded than I remember from my years of living in Putney; nothing like as good as Homos’ Place at the Printworks in Manchester. I’ve developed an unfortunate habit whilst jogging of unconsciously singing along to whatever’s on my ipod. As playlist “Gym A”, includes high energy camp trash that even I’m quite embarrassed to like, this can be particularly unfortunate. I realised that I was muttering away to “Numa Numa” yesterday; to the slightly amused bewilderment of the guy in the Coldplay T-shirt next to me. Muttering is about accurate, as this particular piece of auditory shite is in Romanian so I understand only a very few of the words. Sod it, he’ll never know who I am. In Manchester, people are far enough spaced apart that they don’t hear. In the more high density set up of London, I’ll have to learn to breathe through a gag whilst still jogging.

Freedom of speech, again

Our glorious government is apparently outraged that the fact that a jury has acquitted Nick Griffin, the leader of the extreme right wing British National Party, of inciting race hatred. He’d described Islam as a “wicked, vicious faith”. Read the BBC news version of the story here.

Yet again, I despair of New Labour and thank God (or Allah if you prefer) for our common law traditions. A jury of 12 ordinary people has more power than the government. I find Nick Griffin and his compatriots repellent. Yet who the hell can possibly believe that passing laws to prevent people from expressing their sick views is going to kill those views? Who shall decide what it’s OK to say and what it’s not OK to say?

Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, head of judiciary and a prize moron said “[ramble, ramble, ramble…..] what is being said to young Muslim people in this country is that we as a country are anti-Islam, and we have got to demonstrate without compromising freedom that we are not.”

Look Charlie, you fool, the truth is a significant minority in Britain is horribly racist. The bare fact is that parts of this country are anti-Islam. I don’t consider myself racist, but there are certain elements of Islam that I don’t like one bit, mostly because of its homophobia, and I ought to be able to say so. Criminalising opinions that you don’t agree with will, rightly, make martyrs of people.

How will “Charlie’s law” work? Will there be lists in the town halls of Britain saying what we can say and what we can’t? The common law has had hundreds of years to determine an appropriate balance between freedom of speech and inciting violence and it’s done a good job: a much better job than I can imagine Charlie Falconer could do of anything. Keep your interfering hands off this country’s traditions.

Why you should despise Bush

To my considerable shock, I discovered this morning that my cleaner supports George W Bush “because he’s a nice man.” She must be one of the small minority of people in Britain who knows the results of the US mid-term elections and not be both pleased and relieved. I hardly knew where to start and I seriously momentarily thought about asking for her key and suggesting that she doesn’t come back.

My cleaner is a nice person, who I suspect is greatly influenced by a friend of hers who lives in my block. This friend is somebody who I took a visceral dislike to when I met her (she seems the living definition of smug, petty, reactionary horridness).

Some things are so obvious that it’s hard to say why you believe them. If somebody were to ask you on the spot why murder is wrong, you may stumble for a moment to collect your thoughts. Your most likely answer is “because it obviously is!” That’s much how I answered the question of why I believe Bush to be bad news.

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to think it through, I thought I’d outline my top ten reasons for why the right thing to feel about Bush is loathing. I’ve tried to restrict myself to ten. Only the first two of these came to mind quickly enough to share them with my cleaner.

1. He stole the 2000 election. His henchmen deliberately designed voting forms to cause voter confusion in Florida. His pals on the Supreme Court shamelessly abused the sacred trust given to them when they were sworn in when they stopped the proper process of enquiry to usher Bush into power. Any statistical analysis shows the result in Florida to be totally invalid.
2. Despite the above, he had the sheer gall to take the oath of office; the only promise of which is to preserve, protect and defend the constitution. This supposedly Christian man took this oath with his hand on the Bible. This means he’s either lying about his faith, totally without understanding of what the oath means or just deeply stupid. My belief is that he’s all three.
3. Despite overwhelming evidence, he refuses to even acknowledge the damage to the planet that his buddies in the oil industry are doing. This is unforgivable.
4. He has no understanding or respect for the rule of law. Guantanamo Bay is an abomination. Tony Blair has a similar disregard for law. In civilised countries, we are ruled by laws, not by the whims of the most powerful. Protracted internment without trial is indefensible in all situations. Any court would agree to imprison people who clearly represent a danger. So why is Bush so determined to keep them outside the reach of the judiciary (remembering that a bent judiciary gave him a job in the first place?) Guantanamo Bay is also a violation of the US Constitution. I refer to my earlier point about failing to even observe the constitution, let alone protect it.
5. His government frequently bullies the media to ensure that alternative arguments are not given voice. A democracy requires a free media and he knows that. The neo-conservatives in the US aren’t just hostile to the Democrats, they’re hostile to democracy.
6. He greatly exaggerates fear of terrorism to get his way on a bunch of deeply unconnected things. He never tires of making political capital out of the tragedy of 9/11. This desecrates the memory of those who died.
7. His management of the US economy shows a deep lack of concern for consequences, as long as those consequences won’t be on his watch. The US economy is in la-la land and will inevitably crash sometime soon because the deficit has spun out of control from the beginning of his administration. He inherited the US economy in excellent state and has destroyed this in rapid time. Once again, the Democrats will have to mop up the mess. Bush and his pals will manage to spin this as the Democrats’ fault.
8. He smoothed over the anger caused by stealing an election in 2000 by promising to be “a uniter”. He then went on to bang on about gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research and all sorts of other issues that have no place in US politics (if you don’t know why, read the declaration of independence and the constitution itself. You’ll find very little about morals and values and rather a lot about freedom, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”). He did this as a way to keep his pals in the home educating, frothing-at-the-mouth, howling-at-the-moon extreme Christian right happy. He has surely been the most divisive president in living history. He has divided America in a way that will take decades to repair. In 1787, the world was a much more religious place, but the authors of the constitution were wise enough to ensure that religion and politics were kept at a safe distance for the good of both. Bush doesn’t care about this, as long as it gets him votes.
9. His obfuscation over a wide range of political issues is shocking. Osama bin Laden (remember him? He’s not talked of much now as he got away) has never had anything whatever in common with Saddam Hussein. They’re both foreign and frankly darkies. That’s good enough a connection for most of America. Bush knows this and he plays on it, despite the inevitable consequences of social strife and division.
   
10. He is just plain stupid. Leaving aside his inability to string together a sentence (even when an obliging speechwriter has pre-strung and autocued it for him) he has little less than contempt for history. Gulf War (part 2) was clearly going to become Vietnam (part 2). People in the street in Manchester could have told him that. At the time, I believed that invading Iraq was unavoidable, at least after some of the grandstanding and pose striking of the equally odious Jacques Chirac. However, there was never any hint of an exit strategy. He was stupid enough to believe that “mission accomplished” was true back in May 2003. Nobody who takes such a misplaced pride in being ignorant of the lessons of history should be polishing the White House floors, let alone soiling the Oval Office with his presence.

If you’re a Republican supporter and you’re offended by any of this, go to hell. Leave a comment though, as your pathetic attempts to justify your mindlessness will give us all a laugh.

On the plus side, America has belatedly woken up to all this. This is despite the inexpressible right wing propagandist bias of the US “news” media, meaning that a decent number of Americans are defiantly able, against considerable odds, to think for themselves – eventually.

God Bless America.

Morrissey, just get over yourself mate

My earlier excitement at my “new” Technics turntable has faded somewhat.

I’ve come to realise that it’s just not very good. I was listening once again to Strangeways here we come by the Smiths yesterday. Of course, Morrissey’s always rather been one for slurring and wailing but I’ve had to come to realise that every now and again my turntable slows down and speeds up again. This causes transient key changes that are little short of alarming.

Ah well, what do you expect from ebay? I’m not going to buy another though. It’s good enough to get the gist of the old records. Back in 1987, lyrics like “there’s too much caffeine in your bloodstream and a lack of real spice in your life” just seemed ironic and funny. On a bad day nowadays, they sound semi-autobiographical.

Oh God, I'm turning into Morrissey.

From 13 November – 20 November, I shall be in Gran Canaria on holiday. I can’t wait. I shall probably take my computer and thus blog from the poolside. Escape from my rantings is not that easy.

I’ve just found out that BBC Children in Need is Friday 17 November. This means that I shall miss the annual spectacle of:

• People behind the counter in building societies dressing unconvincingly as a teddy bear
• TV newsreaders doing a “hilarious” can can dance routine
• Weathergirls doing “Singing in the rain” (or some other such pun)…again
• Having a can waved under my nose with money demanded with menaces.

You will have gathered that there is little about Children in Need night that I don’t thoroughly loathe. I loathe the forced, false, embarrassing hilarity. I deeply resent the implication that if I don’t give generously, I’m a total bastard and most probably a child molester. I deeply disapprove of TV newsreaders becoming celebrities in any case and watching them do “wacky” things is as inappropriate as it’s embarrassing. In general, anything that tends to be described as “wacky” is hard to bear.

Perhaps above all, I deeply think that we shouldn’t live in a society where children can be in genuine need and get government off the hook by contributing to charity. If there’s need there, it’s the job of government to tax me to fix the need. This means that it’s almost certainly not need, but want. Very often, the “need” is actually disability. So it’s just one big conscience assuaging exercise in pity, allowing people to then spend the next 12 months pretending real social need isn’t there. The whole thing is as bogus as hell and I’m so glad to be missing it. Don’t give them any money; it only encourages it.

In just over a week, it will be Remembrance Day. When I was at school (I left in 1987) almost everybody wore the Haig Fund remembrance poppy from the start of November for about two weeks. The word “poppy” sounds soft but it was a touching symbol of remembering the suffering and sacrifice of previous generations.

For the benefit of foreign readers, Remembrance Day is the anniversary of the armistice that ended the Great War. It is the eleventh hour or the eleventh day of the eleventh month each year. The national ceremony of remembrance is led by the Queen the nearest Sunday to this date. It’s normal to wear a poppy as remembrance. This isn’t a tradition in Ireland, even though huge numbers of Irishmen died in WW1 under the British flag.

I’ve noticed that each year, fewer and fewer people wear a poppy. I find this sad. When I was in my early twenties, I always thought that it might be some distant comfort to veterans and surviving relatives of those who died to see younger people recognising their sacrifice and loss. There are still lots of these people around. Also, I honestly believe that there is a need to remember. It’s a cliché that he who doesn’t learn from history is doomed to repeat it. Perhaps it’s not a cliché? After all, the Bush administration seems not to have heard it.

Yesterday in central Manchester, I noted that perhaps one in a hundred people was wearing a poppy. British troops are being killed in significant numbers in Iraq right now and don’t we need to remember that?

Go on, get over the fact that wearing a poppy sounds a bit like like wearing a pansy! This is one of our few clearly honourable traditions and we shouldn’t let it fade away.

The wheel of steel

For the last 20 years or so, I’ve really wanted to own a Technics turntable. I’d always resisted this, but gave in a year ago and bought one on ebay. It arrived without a stylus, which was a considerable disappointment that it took me nearly a further year to fix. But fixed today it was. Now I have a sexy technics turntable, together with the strobe light thing to get the speed right. I find that strobe light thing really ace for some reason.

So I shall spend the next few weeks making friends once more with the inexcusable shite that I listened to in the 1980s. A brief run-through of some of the records (especially the greatest hits compilations) really proves beyond reasonable doubt that ephemeral pop of the 1980s really was as bad as you remember it to be.

Tears for Fears (OK), Go West (one good single), Tanita Tikaram’s second album (shocking), Howard Jones (surprisingly OK) and the Thompson Twins (who I shouldn’t have mentioned because you’ll now have “Hold. Me. Now” in your head all day. Sorry.

Room 101

I’m aware that I have a habit of writing nothing on this blog for ages, then come in there with a big long blog entry that is so long it puts people off reading it. This is reducing my potential number of readers and is certainly reducing the number of comments I receive.

So forgive me, if you will, for indulging in something of a filler tactic. I have fallen into a habit with a good friend of mine that we send each other very short text messages about two things. The first is when one of us spots a celebrity. For example, when I saw Sir Ian McKellen at Homos Place gym the other week I sent her a text message just saying “Ian McKellen, Homos Place, MCR”. It’s a strangely satisfying thing to do. I shall share such things with you as well on the odd occasion that they happen (I live in Manchester, not Soho).

The other thing we do is send each other text messages about the small daily irritations of life. Sharing them with another really helps restore balance and sanity. I recommend that you do the same. Feel free to post your “Room 101” entries as comments.

The name, as I’m sure you know, is derived from a (still) very good TV show in the UK where celebrities come on and list things that would be in their own private Room 101 (from Orwell’s 1984). It’s rarely less than funny. Ann Robinson famously put the Welsh in Room 101, which is the only noteworthy thing I feel she’s ever done.

Anyway, here’s one I sent the other day to get the ball rolling.

Room 101:Daft young women who go to work in MCR in late October wearing sod all, whine endlessly about the cold & inflict suffocating extreme heating on others.

To make it more sport, if it’s possible to keep these within 160 characters (I’m too mean to pay for long text messages), it’s best to do so. On a blog I guess one could be more creative. Write them as haiku perhaps?

For a laugh

This is a slightly unusual blog entry for me. No stream of consciousness, no ranting.
I was sent this by a friend today and I thought I'd share it. It really amused me and I hope it amuses you too.
A week after my car was broken into, I still haven't got it back. It's all a bit of a pain now.

Hell hath no fury like a woman who needs a slap

So, Naomi Campbell has been arrested for assault. See the story here. Technically, I expect that she’s been arrested for battery, but I won’t go all lawyer on y’all.

As the title implies, I believe that she needs a slap. Sod counselling, just a slap. In Britain, it's now illegal to smack children, but I do believe it should be legal to slap adults who are really, really asking for it.

I’ve always found her completely insufferable and this doesn’t surprise me one bit. I completely fail to understand how anybody who consistently behaves so badly without actually doing anything interesting to balance it can attract the admiration of absolutely anybody. Am I the only person who thinks that she’s dense and spoilt? Sure, shooting to fame age 15 must be quite tough (especially for somebody clearly below average intelligence) but she sure as shit has enough money to buy counselling to deal with it. To be fair, it's alleged that it was her counsellor who she hit, so perhaps that won't work. Personally, I think she should be kept in a cage, away from the rest of us.

Diana Ross, amusingly, was arrested at Heathrow a few years ago for battering a security woman. She defended herself by saying she was a “diva”. Silly bint. I faintly forgive her though because she’s made some nice hummable tunes over the years. In Britain though, if a celebrity slaps somebody else, they get arrested. She and her publicity people were appalled that she was subject to the same rules as the rest of us. Welcome to Britain, sweetheart.

And while we’re at it, what do we think of Heather Mills-McCartney? I’ll leave that for another blog, I think. Let's just say that I'm going to take a bit of convincing that she's telling the truth.

Unexpected poignancy

As you may know if you read the blog below, my father recently left my mother. I’ve no idea if they’ll get back together, or even if I want them to. If it means a significant chance of everybody going through this again if it reunion doesn’t work, it would be best for everybody for them to part for good.

This seismic event happened a fortnight ago and I’d not actually seen Mum since. Don’t jump on me with this one: my Mum and I are very much alike. We appreciate the offers of help and support but only want to see people when the time is right. We’re much the same when we’re ill. I knew that I had to force myself to keep contact to phone only until she suggested meeting.

I don’t think I’ll come to terms with calling that house “Mum’s” rather than “Mum and Dad’s”. I think she should sell it and buy something smaller somewhere else. Even if they somehow get back together, the place will be full of unhappy recent memories. I think she’ll do that.

We had a very enjoyable evening together, talking a lot and going for dinner in a nearby pub. Neither of us cried, although it was always under the surface. It’s the small things that catch you unprepared and thus likely to cry. I stayed overnight but lay in bed until Mum had gone to work. Again, it’s what she’d want: she hates saying goodbye. After she’d gone, I got out of the house quite quickly but noticed the odd sadness of noticing that the fridge and cupboards were full. It might be comfort shopping (which would be out of character) but instead I think it’s just that she’s never in her whole life shopped for just one person. She has no idea of how few things she actually needs, so the fridge is full and stuff goes to waste. This will upset her, I know.

I’m sure that people who have experienced bereavement know these feelings. You come to terms with the drive and the wardrobe being empty. You rehearse the right words to use and refer to “the situation”. But you’re not quite ready for the shock of seeing the shocking nakedness of your mother’s hands with no rings for the first ever time. You’re not ready for opening the cupboard and finding yourself implausibly blabbering over the unexpected sight of an unopened packet of ginger nuts. It’s truly strange.

Thieving Salford Scallies

On the whole, I respect the police. Well, the English ones at least. I am not a fan of the Czech police one bit, who I invariably found to be parasitic and a general irritation. I always thought of them as wasps; seem to see them out everywhere in vast hovering numbers (at least when the weather’s nice); a generally malevolent presence and source of irritation without any apparent purpose.

The Greater Manchester Police called on me yesterday to tell me that my car had been broken into. They were down to earth but polite - first name terms straight away. They followed the rules by the book, for example by making sure that I didn’t see the twelve year old scrote who threw a brick through the driver’s window to steal my satnav. This, apparently, is because it’s not unknown for irate victims of petty crime to take the law into their own hands and give the kid a good kicking, even though the police are right there. Predictably, I find this idea amusing. It was also pretty obvious that the police would have been quite pleased to see somebody deliver a good kicking to the kid and his associates that he’d grassed up but professionalism precluded them turning a blind eye.

I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that I was politely asked if I could take myself and my car to a police station a few miles away while they took this kid for “a word with his parents”. They promised to join me there in half an hour and keep me for no longer than half an hour when I got there. They were good to their word on both counts.

During my wait at the police station for the arresting officer to come and take my statement, I found out a number of interesting things. The first is unsurprising; the police deal with the dregs of society and generally have a slight gallows humour about society as a result. They were quite clearly pleased to be dealing with a punter (me) who was polite to them and keen to help without making a fuss or wallowing in self-pity. It’s only a car after all. To be more precise, it’s only a skoda.

I hadn’t paid attention when the arresting officer gave me his name so I didn’t know who to ask for. The best I could come up with to describe who I was looking for was “Late twenties, about five foot eleven, scouser”. This was a sanitised version of what I had really been thinking which went more like “Late twenties, nicely toned, cute, nice eyes, nice smile, about size 11 feet and surprisingly pleasing voice for a scouser”. I thought it best to find something between my description and theirs which would probably be “Male IC2” or something equally technical.

The policeman on the desk smiled wryly and said “They’re all scousers. Manchester’s policed by scousers and Liverpool’s policed by Mancs. It’s the only way they can all get a normal life when they get home.” I find this fascinating. The M62 evidently daily supports a partial swap of populations that police each other, presumably crossing in the demilitarised zone known as Warrington.

Anyway, they got the kid, I was able to confirm that the satnav they’d caught him with red handed was mine because it had all my data in it and they’re now confident that they can “finger” four scallies that they’ve been after for a while. They were quite open about this being a “nice job”. They were all a bit upset that this had happened at the end of their shift and they would miss the Liverpool football game as a result, but the job had to be done.

To make things even better, the immensely helpful skoda garage stayed open a bit late to take my car from me and keep it secure for a few days while they replace the bust locks and the window; thus allowing me to get the 0730 flight to Bucharest the following morning.

Cute policeman told me that the parents of the scally they’d found with my satnav seemed pretty likely to dispense some tough love over the weekend. This added to the “nice job” aspect, as this is apparently rare. It’s normal for such parents to smack the kid around for having screwed up their job, apparently. It seems that this kid had fallen in with the wrong crowd.

In a rather strange twist, I’m told that I am invited to go back and make a further statement about my feelings of what punishment the kid should get. I don’t approve of this. I want the kid (or his parents) to pay for the damage but it’s not the place of victims to decide punishment. We don’t have a system of sharia law in England, nor should we have. Victims of crime are hardly likely to come up with a proportionate response. Of course, I’ll have to pretend to be outraged to slightly balance the softy social workers who will be pulling in the opposite direction. It’s all nonsense though.

Ah, what a nice thought this is. Nice policeman has my mobile number and he’s promised to call me on Monday. Is it wrong for me to be looking forward to my rendezvous with a handsome man in uniform?

A human tragedy

This is a photo of a fifteen year-old who in Manchester today pleaded guilty to murder of a younger boy. He was duly given a life sentence with a minimum “tariff” of twelve years. It’s been the main story on the BBC news site all day. For those unfamiliar with English justice, this means that he will be inside for twelve years at an absolute minimum, no matter how contrite and unthreatening to society the parole board judges him to be. If he’s not held to be no threat to society, he will be inside for life without any further trial.

It’s a really very tragic story, of course. He cynically persuaded the younger boy to his house, made a sexual advance on him and, upon being rebuffed, apparently felt that he had to kill the younger lad as this was the only sure fire way of making sure that nobody would find out. This latter stage of the plan also appears to be premeditated as a contingency.

A few thoughts occur to me on this, in addition to feeling the pain of the family of the victim. The first is what the hell is going on with our society when a fifteen year old is so messed up about his sexuality that the fear of it being discovered motivates murder? Obviously, this kid had some huge psychological damage but it was a gay panic moment that caused the murder itself. The media is making a bit of a deal of the fact that he’s gay, which I can’t help but feel is probably helping create the circumstances that caused this murder in the first place.

I also did find the photo rather sad. This is obviously a kid who is really scared and he looks vulnerable too. This kid seems to me to be a bit of a victim too. Obviously, about 0.0001% as much of a victim as the kid that he killed with a frying pan and a knife, but a victim nevertheless.

Perhaps most disturbingly of all, I have to admit that I found him really cute. It’s something to do with the rabbit caught in headlamps look. Perhaps this explains my tendency to find occasional romantic partners who are both younger than me and generally also nutters? They’ve never been fifteen though, I wish to point out!

It’s all very sad indeed. I don’t think that vengeance is an honourable thing in a civilised society and I do wonder how this kid (who is a few miles from my flat I presume) is feeling tonight. Still, at least nobody in the prison’s preparing a lethal injection as I suspect they would be on the other side of the Atlantic.

Veiled racism or commonsense? You decide.

Britain is currently caught up in debate over the preference for (a minority of) Muslim women’s preference for wearing a veil is a Good Thing. Have a look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/6050392.stm if you’re not up with the story.

I find it slightly depressing that the only time we have a debate about something like this (ie something that matters) is when a politician whose star is fading sees it as an opportunity to make a run for the deputy leadership of his party. Sorry Jack, mate, I’ve always thought you were OK, but nobody’s fooled by the timing here. A whole party conference just passed and nobody even noticed you. It was time for you to stir something up to get noticed again.

We have become scared to debate anything that might offend people in this country. To illustrate, speaking as a gay man, I’m totally happy for people to tell me they think I deserve to burn in hell. I’m happy for them to express these (shit) opinions as long as they don’t start the process there and then with a petrol bomb. It remains my absolute moral right to do as I wish, no matter how much they voice their disapproval. Equally, Muslim women are thoroughly entitled to wear whatever they wish, but it remains our right to give voice to the self-evident observation that it’s an impediment to fully functioning in our culture and that, frankly, many of them look like an obese version of Darth Vader and thus plain silly.

As I understand the law of England now, however, anybody having a pop at me for my sexual preference could be accused of a hatecrime. Equally, I could be accused of inciting racial hatred for the paragraph above. Sure, it might be bad taste and/ or unfunny to others, but it’s nothing to do with hatred. It is wrong to choke off a right so important as freedom of expression to protect a (non-existent) right to not be offended by the views of others. Britain has never had any right to be protected from being offended, nor should it ever have one.

If a person can’t do their job properly because of some traditional article of clothing, that’s unfortunate but surely just bad luck. She has to get another job which enables her to exercise her right to dress as she wishes, whilst still being able to perform properly in the job. Some jobs are incompatible with people’s traditions by their nature and denying this is the folly of dogma. All dogmatic politics and religion are, in my view, just institutionalised and ritualised cop outs from reality.

There’s something faintly disturbing about how a well reasoned, measured (if politically opportune or cynical) comment by one of yesterday’s men can cause such furore, followed by overwhelming support. What other latent views do we near universally share that could equally be ignited I wonder? I do hope that they’re benign.

I have a confession to make. This blog entry was originally posted as a comment on the very excellent ambulance driver blog http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog It’s worth a look at this blog if you haven’t already. The book of its previous entries “Blood, Sweat and Tea” is also a good Christmas gift.

This is a slightly more personal blog entry than normal. It’s all been a bit quiet on here for a while, since I’ve been on holiday (Dubai – bit crap, will explain why in another blog). Also, I came back to find a family crisis. I’m an only child so our family is small and we just don’t have crises. It’s not our way. Well, it wasn’t until now.

I found out that the day after I went away for a week, my father walked out of the family home, leaving my mother alone. This really did come out of the blue. They’ve been together for 37 years as happily as any couple I’ve ever known. Unlike many people I know, I was lucky to have a childhood in a home with a huge amount of love and stability. A stability that it’s hard to believe could ever be undermined. Sure, in the last few years they’ve not seemed to laugh quite so much as they used to, but I thought that was just work stress and getting older generally. It’s an unwelcome surprise.

Neither of them told me anything was wrong and yet (forgive me for mumbo jumbo potential here), I somehow knew that there was something very wrong somewhere when I was in Dubai. That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t settle and enjoy myself I think. I rebooked my flight and came back four days early.

I have a theory that the generally accepted stages of grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance) are actually the fives stages of dealing with shock. People who have lost loved ones after long battles with cancer don’t seem to go through these stages in quite the same way that people deal with shock of loss from a car accident or heart attack. I go through these stages in immense speed when I see signs like “Pizza’s £2”.

Well, true to form, this is how I felt when I found out at work on Monday. My own stages of dealing with trauma appear to be slightly modified: Practical plan-making, Bargaining, Anger, Depression, Acceptance. At first it was all very matter-of-fact and about what practical steps I could take to try to reduce the stress load for both of them. Then I felt a bit shaken and by the time I’d gone out for a couple of drinks with my pal Vince, I’d got to the stage of randomly crying mid-sentence. I’m over that now I think, but it was a curious feeling. It hurts so much to think of them both being lonely with nothing I can do about it. It is a weird fact that my mother had never once in her near 60 years slept alone in a house until a couple of years ago when Dad was away for some reason overnight. That’s what comes from being from a huge family and marrying very young. Imagine how painful that loneliness must feel. Forgive me if I stop imagining it, as I may very well start to cry again in this public place.

As an only child of parents who have always seemed to be very in love and thus deeply co-dependent, I’ve always had as my deepest dread the day that one of them dies, leaving the other alone. Somehow, it seems that they are both experiencing this at the same time. Except, as my mother said, if you’re bereaved you don’t feel the same sense of having been voluntarily snubbed.

If you have kids, don’t have just one. There will come times in that kid’s life when they will ache for the experience of having a brother or sister, even one they’re not especially close to. They will need the strange reassurance of knowing the somebody else understands the full picture precisely.

Neither has a side love interest, but they’ve decided that they need to part, at least for six months. I don’t think that they’ll get back together, which might well be the best thing. I can’t believe I’m thinking this way.

Meanwhile many of my greatest fears spring to mind. I am sure that my father is self-medicating with whisky. I’ve seen several friends lose parents and close family to the addictive effects of a whisky bottle (it always seems to be whisky). There’s nothing I can do about that, so I just have to put it to some dark corner of my mind and try to forget about it.

At 37 years of age, the reaction to this is different to age seven of course. It doesn’t affect my own domestic life, the trauma on a personal level is much less. Against that though, middle aged maturity makes me more sensitive to the pain that each is feeling, I suspect. The sense of grief is more vicarious grief, rather than personal grief. Yet many of the same well-known thoughts have somewhat ludicrously pestered me: did I cause this somehow by something I did? Is there something I can do to keep them together? It’s ludicrous to have these thoughts deny one access to restful sleep, but it happens.

I keep having “September 12^th” thoughts. That’s how I describe trying to deal with acceptance that something has happened that seems impossible and must have been a dream. I first had that feeling on 12 September 2001. It’s become a daily reality recently.

Yet in crises like this, one can’t help but notice the enduring strength of the human spirit. Although both are immensely sad, both my parents are getting by and I can see that they’re both taking comfort in the knowledge that things will get better. Mum is coping better than Dad, which doesn’t surprise me. My extended family were a great comfort to them both while I was away, which in turn is a vast comfort to me. I have called a couple to thank them for their support and concern. I’m suddenly forced to unexpectedly face one of my greatest dreads and I’m also getting by. Add to this the confusion of the fact that everybody else in the story is a week ahead of me in terms of reaction. That’s a very confusing feeling. But the simple fact is that life goes on and somewhere above the Manchester drizzle, I’m confident that the sun is still shining. I’ve been lucky that I’ve never felt the effects of the death of somebody close to me, but for the first time I can really understand how people get through the crisis.

Lookalike

Politics, as well we all know, is little these days but showbiz for ugly people. Charles Clarke (pictured) is in politics.

On my walk up to the gym earlier, I noticed a slightly pathetic old bloke on his mobile phone in a doorway on Deansgate, slightly outside the security zone of the Labour Party conference, which seems to be going on forever. He had a passing resemblance to Charles Clarke. He seemed somewhat flustered and irritated, as if his cab to the airport hadn’t turned up.

Upon very slightly closer inspection, I realised that it actually was Charles Clarke. He also had a trolley dolly bag, thus suggesting there was decent chance that he was irritated precisely because his minicab to the airport hadn’t turned up. Meanwhile, a couple of hundred metres away, it was obvious that something big was going on. I later found that Bill Clinton was in town. The media were falling over each other to get pictures. After all, there aren’t enough pictures of Bill Clinton in the world, so getting more today would be a matter demanding immediate attention.

Meanwhile, the man who until recently held the third most powerful job in Britain was huddled in a doorway with nobody except me showing even a passing interest.

That’s showbiz, Charles.

Labour go home!

My fair city of Manchester is currently playing host to the Labour party conference. Everybody seems to think that this is a great honour for the city and generally a Good Thing. Everybody, that is, apart from those of us who actually live here.

For the last two nights, a helicopter has hovered over my flat for much of the night. I presume that this is somehow to protect Tony Blair, who is staying in a hotel a couple of hundred metres from my flat. It’s bloody irritating, let me tell you. I also can’t help but wonder if it’s just to make the whole thing seem more important: sort of making the Prime Minister more prime ministerial.

The city is absolutely swarming with police in luminous jackets; major streets are blocked off with large metal barriers that are designed to allow people to walk or cycle through, but would be heavy enough to stop a truck packed with explosives in its tracks. There’s something a tad uncomfortable about living just outside the perimeter of a probable terrorist target.

Yesterday along with many others, I had my photograph taken on the street by several policemen with large cameras. There’s something menacing about being photographed by a policeman wearing a jacket marked “evidence gathering” in big bold letters. The evidence they were gathering was that I was walking from A to B as best I could. My suspicious behaviour was to be near the protected zone without seemingly good reason (living next door presumably not being good enough reason). I have never sneered at another human as much as I sneered at that policeman. Should I ever actually do anything like become a serial killer, the photo will make a suitable illustration for the background behind the newsreader, since I would surely look very sinister and aggressive. Not because I’m sinister and aggressive, but I do not like having my photo taken for purported “evidence” when all I’m doing is walking to work. It’s plain wrong and Big Brother very truly IS watching you. He doesn’t quite know why, but he’s still watching you and taking photos which will no doubt be scrutinised and neatly filed.

Went out to restaurant Choice last night with Mum and Dad, for the first time in ages. Choice is one of Manchester’s more upmarket restaurants and it’s a bit of a favourite of mine. Sadly, it later became packed with Labour party delegates; a number of whom were predictably awful. One guy in particular fancied himself as a bit of a ringleader and he saw it as his right and duty to fill the place with his boorish presence. Scouser, unsurprisingly. My recent personal dealings with scouse union leaders have sadly done nothing to improve my mental picture of both union leaders and scousers, as the men in question (who I obviously can’t name) are crooks. It’s a shame, the ordinary union members they represent deserve much better. Several of the diners continued to wear their ID badges around their neck, presumably as some badge of honour because they were important enough to get in and we weren’t. I suspect that they thought it exuded some sort of mayoral aura. It actually looked more like a “Jim fixed it for me” badge of the type that Jimmy Saville used to give out to kids in the 1970s than a chain of office. Pillocks. I couldn’t resist saying to one of them on the way back from the toilet, in a manner of affected helpfulness “Sorry love, you know you’ve forgotten you’re still wearing your badge?” She chose to ignore me and that made it all the funnier for me.

I really do wish that they’d all just go back home.