Playing it Straight (or Jewish?)

Now I rather like trashy TV, me. It appeals to my inner chav.

To satisfy this need, the other night I was watching “Playing it Straight” on Channel ITV 7 (or something), as it’s mindless enough to watch whilst packing a suitcase. The idea is that a gorgeous girl needs to work out from a group of about 10 all very attractive men which ones are gay and which ones are straight. If she picks the man of her dreams, there’s a risk that he might turn out to be gay, in which case he wins $200,000 or something preposterous and she gets nothing except disappointment and national humiliation for the weakness of her gaydar. In a previous series, this happened but the deluding gayboy chose to split the winnings with her; presumably on strict condition that she didn’t try to celebrate with a shag.

It’s all fairly harmless fun, or so it seems. I happened to channel hop to something where some Jewish guy was being very earnest about persecution of the Jews. Fair enough, the Jews have had a seriously rough time. Then I realised that gays were also victims of the holocaust and are still seriously persecuted around the World.

Let me pitch an idea to you. How about a TV series where a group of blokes tries to get the amorous attention of a girl? If she accidentally picks one of the Jews though, he gets to keep the money and all the viewers get to laugh at how he was obviously Jewish and she must have very poor skills at spotting a Jew when she sees one. The point is that he’d have to hide his Jewishness for a several weeks to get there.

You buying the idea? Well, I hope not because it’s appallingly offensive. Yet we tolerate the idea that gay men hide their sexuality in the name of entertainment, with the show playing to every stereotype in the book along the way. The fact that this is OK (and that I’d not even thought it otherwise), yet the parallel Jewish show would have the square root of zero chance of being made really made me wonder. Either it’s time that Jewish people got over their past (and present) persecution, or that we gay men need to be much more alert to being ridiculed, lest this ridicule turn to something more sinister. Most probably some combination of both.

A query for Boris

Apologies for the lack of blog entries for ages. I've been simply excessively busy so I made a conscious decision to suspend just about all of my hobbies until I'd cleared my backlog. This included blogging.

Having moved to London recently for work, I have become reacquainted with all the city's good things (eg theatre) and its many bad things (principally everything to do with transport).
One of the things I have long despised about London is the sheer lack of taxis. London cabbies seem to be held in a public affection that I find wholly impossible to understand. There are too few taxis in London, especially at night. We all tolerate it and we shouldn't.
Boris Johnson is slightly mad but he's running to become mayor of London. Despite Boris's free market enthusiasms, I saw nothing on his website about specifics of exactly how he was going to improve London's pitiful transport system, should he become mayor. I therefore sent this query via his website:

"Hi

Could you please tell me what Boris’s position is with respect to taxi deregulation, or at least doing something that means it’s possible to get a taxi in London late at night? I’ve travelled to a lot of cities around the world and without doubt London has the most expensive, most hard-to-get taxis of any city I’ve visited. Many people don’t go into central London at the weekend because of the pain of getting home. This must be extremely bad for London’s economy and robs us of the facility to enjoy our city to its full potential.

If Boris were clearly to support a policy of loosening the grip that licensed taxi drivers have over cabs in London, he’d get my vote instead of Ken. I just can’t bear the idea of vast numbers of foreign visitors coming to London for the Olympics and finding that we have about eight taxis that work after 11pm and they cost a king’s ransom. In an age of GPS, there is simply no need for “the knowledge” and the restrictive practices that go with it. More, cheaper taxis would improve people’s lives much more than they might initially imagine.

Regards"

I shall let you know what reply I get.

Reinventing the wheel. Yet making it worse.

After Enron’s collapse, the US government passed a new law on corporate governance. This law placed all sorts of restrictions on what directors of listed companies could do, it imposed an obligation to maintain systems of proper controls; it tightened up procedures to ensure that auditors were more independent of the directors who appointed them, allowing the auditors to report more faithfully to the shareholders who were really employing them. So far, so good… sounding.

In reality, it’s a mess. The ensuing Sarbanes-Oxley Act (so named after its senate sponsors) is an over-long mess of box-ticking specificity and officousness without much by way of principles. It’s a classic case of a bad law being passed in a hurry to achieve a noble aim. It also highlights another characteristic of America that I find irksome; the lack of willingness to look outside their own country for solutions.

In the UK, we had our corporate governance scandals a decade earlier with the likes of Robert Maxwell raiding his employees’ pension funds to bolster up his fraud ridden empire. Our response was various calmly researched evidence based reports, culminating in the UK Combined Code. The Combined Code works. You can also print it out and fold it and put it in your pocket, which always seems a good characteristic to me of well drafted laws. Its authors, especially Sir Adrian Cadbury, are eloquent champions of practical, good corporate citizenship. Many of the “innovations” of Sarbanes-Oxley were rather similar to the UK’s existing rules, yet with an impractical bent added to them. They were thus neither innovative nor efficacious. There is fairly compelling evidence that directors of US listed companies are now unwilling to take normal commercial risks, such is the fear of personal liability they work under. This risk drives up their salaries. They are cutting back fiercely on R&D. Their companies are holding excessive cash balances. In other words, they’ve become scared of their own shadows. This is a bad thing in a free market system. At the same time, accounting firms and lawyers are all making bumper fees on “S-Ox” advice to directors, which I am sure is generally a lot of money for stating the obvious, yet providing directors with a literal “get out of jail” card if anything should go wrong. The whole thing means that investment is not happening and resources are being squandered.

Perhaps it’s because we’re a small country, but in the UK we have a noble tradition of looking abroad for solutions before trying to fix problems ourselves. In my experience, we should generally look to Australia first for solutions to most problems. No nonsense Aussie pragmatism has generally solved most problems already I feel. Our national football team has recently been managed by a Swede. Our royal family are basically German. We’ve allowed our domestic car manufacturers to die, because we knew they were rubbish. Nationalism should not be allowed to get in the way of commonsense.

Sarbanes-Oxley could be greatly improved by scrapping it, especially section 404 (too tedious to bore on about why here) and replacing it with the UK’s Combined Code. But that’s not going to happen.

28 years since they blew up Mountbatten

On this date in 1979, the provisional IRA blew up a small boat off the coast of Ireland that was owned by Lord Louis Mountbatten, cousin or something or other of the Queen. I remember it very clearly and, interestingly to me at least, despite the fact that I was just ten years old and despite the time that’s lapsed, my views haven’t much changed.

Even at the time, I remember having formed the idea that Lord Mountbatten represented everything wrong about Britain and its colonial past. He was born into supreme privilege and despite having no recognisable skills held a series of lofty positions, including being the last Viceroy of India. Leaving aside the fact that Viceroy is a silly concept and Britain had no right to occupy India or anywhere else in the first place, surely such an important position ought to have been filled by somebody with some relevant skills, rather than simply being closely linked to the royal family. I have read a number of analyses of the latter days of British rule of India and in particular the manner in which Britain withdrew in an unorganised fashion; leading to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths. No historian I have read had much good to say about him. He must have stood on many people of more lowly origin but incalculably greater talent in his allegedly distinguished career.

He had a castle in Ireland, apparently some relic of British imperial rule there too. Every single aspect about him that I have ever heard of says uniformly “upper class twit”. I have much respect for the institution of constitutional monarchy and great respect for the Queen as our head of state but, paradoxically I’ll accept, I have a considerable loathing for power that comes from inherited privilege. This is especially so when it’s twinned with natural arrogance.

One of the reassuring things about the British royal family is how essentially middle class they are in their values and lifestyles, despite the opulence that surrounds them. They are, however, surrounded by a ring of toffs who I to this day hold in considerable contempt. Many of said toffs are relics of defunct foreign royalty; deposed in their own country for being generally objectionable. Lord Mountbatten’s real name was Von Battenburg. Go figure. Prince Phillip (unloved husband of our Queen) is truly Prince Phillip of Greece. Prince Phillip is Louis Mountbatten’s nephew. Go figure again.

Now not saying that he deserved to die, but he did mouth off an awful lot and frankly if anybody is ever a legitimate target (big “if”), it was him and everything he stood for. At the time, I distinctly remember saying “no loss” or words to that effect, to the considerable surprise of my family. Having learned more about the man since, I’m afraid my sentiments remain entirely the same.

I must have been a very odd ten year old.

Why I love the BBC

I note that the BBC has been denied the licence fee income that it wanted. I am saddened by this as I personally am willing to tolerate some inefficiencies in the BBC if allowing some inefficiencies to exist means the BBC can focus on making programmes and not playing politics with the latest government fashion for consultants and targets.

We in Britain have this curious system of licence fees. If you own a television in the UK, you have to buy a licence for it, at an annual cost of GBP 135.50. This is used directly to fund the BBC, without going through a central slush fund the way our car licences do. Many people resent paying this, especially those on lower incomes who are less likely to watch as much BBC output as the intelligentsia. I think they have no idea what good value for money it is. For this fee, we get four main television stations, a suite of stations for kids (meaning that parents can park their kids in front of the TV in the knowledge that the kids aren’t being sold to by advertising). We get seven national radio stations, from the wonders of radio 4 (talk radio as it ought to be) to pop music. There is a network of local radio stations, which I’m not interested in but I’m glad they’re there. We get the outstandingly excellent BBC online, which I notice is most people’s home page, throughout the world. Per service provided per day, it’s amazingly cheap.

The BBC works out therefore at GBP 11 per household per month. Many, many people pay over three times that for satellite channels which are, in my opinion, rubbish. I’m glad that the choice exists but we need to remember that illusion that commercial channels are free really is an illusion. Commercial channels make revenue from advertising. Coca Cola, for example, must match the commercial spend of Pepsi to stay alive. Hence companies have to pay lots of money on advertising, which is passed on through the cost of their products. It’s a form of indirect tax. I believe that studies suggest that the true cost of commercial television is at least three times higher than the cost of the BBC.

I take heart from the fact that political parties all accuse the BBC of bias against them. This means the BBC is doing its job of investigating and not pandering to power. This is in marked contrast to American news stations, about which I have nothing much good to say at all.

I really believe that the BBC sets the standard in broadcast journalism. We Brits are no better than any other nation at believing our own propaganda and so we should be sceptical about generally touted views such as this. For example, my travels around the world have confirmed for me once and for all that Britain’s NHS resolutely is NOT the envy of the world, despite what people and politicians say. Indeed, most countries are somewhat bewildered by it. I’d take the Australian or French health care systems any day. The BBC really does stand for the best of British though; sometimes the received wisdom is actually wise. When big news breaks (and I mean news that people actually deep down believe is news, not missing kids in Portugal), they all switch to the BBC. BBC America enjoys a similar effect in the USA, I’m told. News and current affairs are the raison d’etre of the BBC. I’m awfully glad that more lowbrow channels exist, for I love my dose of Big Brother, but the BBC stands unique.

I believe that the licence fee is unfair and I think it creates an annual public relations nightmare that the BBC ought to live without, although this doesn’t mean the BBC ought to take any advertising. The BBC ought to be funded out of general taxation, with fees set by an independent board of governors with limited ability for the government of the day to resist this. It’s right that the government of the day has little control over the BBC’s policies but has control of the purse strings with the annual fight over setting licence fees. The BBC ought to be entirely independent of government, guaranteeing its constitutional place as the core of the independent news media. Partiality becomes obvious when compared with the litmus test of the BBC’s coverage.

So I do wish that we’d stop making the lives of those who run the BBC so bloody difficult. We seem to mourn the BBC rather than celebrate it. Sure, the BBC is occasionally politically biased. Sure, it can sometimes be a bit smug. Sure, I’ve met some people whose puffed up “I work for the BBC” manner does little to make up for their actual unendurable mediocrity. Overall though, the BBC is a thing of wonder. It’s always the thing I miss most when I’m out of the UK. Please let’s keep it special and realise how much value it gives to our society. Without recognising its value, we might lose it. Trust me, once it’s gone, you’ll miss it more than you’d ever imagine.

Dodging Dean

I’m currently on yet another work trip to Jamaica. As more frequent readers will know, I have rather mixed feelings about Jamaica. The last week has made me significantly fonder of it.

When I arrived, the taxi driver told me that a star was coming. Excited by the remote possibility that Matt Damon had finally come to claim me as rightfully his, I asked for clarification. Then I realised that “star” was heavily Jamaican accented “storm”. In these parts of the world, you don’t hear people talk in hyperbolic terms about hurricanes; they just talk about storms. If they’re recalling a particular storm, they talk about Gilbert or Wilma, as if talking of members of their family. Ivan is the Jamaican equivalent of Voldemort: the storm that shall not be mentioned by name. Ivan made a right mess. Ivan was a bastard.

I rather like the fact that they call a hurricane a storm. That is, after all, what it is, albeit a bloody big one.

Talk of the impending storm was always there in the background of most conversations, but it only came to the foreground on Friday. Hurricanes tend to change directions so often that people keep a watch on it, but don’t get too jumpy until a strike seems imminent. As ever, I was amused/ bemused by CNN, where presenters openly and pompously stated that the people of Jamaica They really weren’t; they just deal with stuff as it happens and in a proportionate way. God, I despise the American “news” media, for their sheer lack of professionalism. Huge storms are a constant risk here. If people panicked each time one might strike, they’d live in constant, debilitating fear, so the people of Jamaica keep are wary, but they don’t get carried away. Most people are OK in storms. Generally, if you have a house with a roof that’s not made of corrugated zinc, you’ll be OK. If you live away from the shoreline, you’ll be fine. It won’t be fun, but you’ll be fine. And it probably won’t happen anyway, so (to quote one of my colleagues here) “will ya get a grip, man!” I feel that Jamaicans could teach many people in the world a thing or two about dealing with the distant threat of terrorism. My own anxiety about hurricanes is understandable, but it’s fuelled by the media and is thus disproportionate to the real risk. were ill prepared and in denial about the impending catastrophe.

In fact, Jamaica has a very well organised system of dealing with impending hurricanes. They take the power grid down a few hours before the storm hits in order to minimise damage that live wires inflict upon themselves and thus minimise overall down time. They offer shelter to the poorest. They impose a curfew to limit looting because, God knows, there’s no shortage of less savoury Jamaicans who love nothing more than a nice bit of looting. In other words, they have it pretty much sorted. They know that hurricanes are a threat to the poorest and that’s where they dedicate their efforts; the rich are well enough resourced to look after themselves. The Jamaican authorities apparently spoke to FEMA in the USA as Katrina headed for New Orleans and said that their experience would be useful to help the poor of Louisiana, seeing clear parallels with their own situation. With predictable arrogance, the US authorities spurned the offer; countless Americans suffered or died as a consequence, while the authorities focused their attention on marshalling fleets of underfilled 4x4 cars out of town, leaving the poor in their homes below sea level to suffer without support.

I’m sounding rather anti-American. I don’t mean to; I like America and I adore the American dream. I just find it extremely frustrating and arrogant in parts.

We finished work at lunchtime on Saturday, three hours early to give people time to board up, etc. Most people have some and basics ready; only the terminally badly organised made a run on the supermarkets. Again, the news coverage was misleading. I’m afraid that if people can’t work out that they need to have certain non-perishable basics (torch, candles, battery powered radio with spares, tinned food, manual tin opener, bottled gas stove) ready for the season for the hurricane season, the Darwinian order is that their terminally poor organisation puts them at serious risk of involuntary removal from the gene pool. These people were a minority, but a minority that provides good pictures for television. Hence the World is presented with them as the norm.

I was planning to go to Florida for a few days in any event, as I had a layover and I’d prefer to spend it in Florida than Kingston. I brought my plans forward a day, as although I was rather tempted to experience a hurricane, but I feared the potential lawlessness that may follow from a direct hit from a category 4 storm. Jamaica’s not the most law abiding of places at the best of times. Desperate people and stretched emergency services could be a bad combination. I realised it would be foolish to stay, so I left, but I felt a coward in doing so. In the end, I left to avoid days of involuntary disconnection from my creature comforts, like itunes, blogging and Facebook. That’s the measure of how shallow I am.

The phrase “calm before the storm” should be taken fairly literally. One does indeed experience a significant calm, with blue clear skies and little wind. I can’t be sure that I’m reading something into this because I knew of the imminent storm, but there was a sense of something unreal. Atmospheric pressures plummet as a hurricane approaches, so perhaps we can all sense that? Certainly, the low lying land by the sea on the way to the airport was oddly flooded by a calm sea. It just looked and felt odd; the same way that a solar eclipse feels strange even before totality; the light is like twilight but with no long shadows. It’s obvious that something eerie is approaching. Seasoned locals told me that suddenly elevated sea levels are their natural warning to batten down the hatches. The low pressure literally sucks the sea up a good few feet. This is what causes the most damage; sea levels are high even when calm. Add a big storm to that and you don’t want to be too near the sea, or live below sea level. Guess where the rich people and the poor people live?

Let me just do a quick diversion into the story of the flight out. I got a flight to Atlanta, which Delta had laid on specially, presumably as a profit seeking enterprise. The flight was busy but not full. Stories of planes leaving full with stranded distraught people left behind do not tally at all with my experience. Despite the sense of emergency and despite having driven past homes that the very poor were in serious danger of losing, there was still no end of fuss from the overprivileged, overpampered and plain overfed passengers. The two girls in front of me (who were morbidly obese and were Jamaican-Americans I think) had asked the crew for four packs of peanuts before we’d even pushed back. They were, so they said, “starving”. I shit thee not when I say that one even pushed the crew call button to ask for more food as we were rolling along the runway for take-off. Trust me, they could have not eaten for three months and still be far from even thin. One had come equipped with a special extender seat belt because the standard one couldn’t reach around her girth. There’s something utterly wrong about this kind of scenario. I felt like I was one of Marie Antoinette’s closest helpmeets at this moment, just for being there. Some inner sense of morality made me decline the free food and drink. It just seemed wrong to feast as we flew out of a potential disaster zone. The people who’d driven us all to the airport, who had handled our bags and efficiently screened us through security were all staying and they weren’t making any fuss, yet “we” continued to be unreasonable and demanding. They had every reason to hate us, yet they didn’t seem to. Indeed, they mostly seemed to think it was a lot of fuss about a “starm” that might not even strike anyway, although it was seen as a real risk. It was seen as a particular risk as it had a male name. In a place as superstitious as Jamaica, the pattern that hurricanes with male names are the ones to hit the island has not gone unnoticed.

I’ve blogged separately about Atlanta airport, but I truthfully believe that riding out a category 4 storm would be less stressful than flying through American airports on international flights with American airlines (any of them rather than American Airlines the company, hence the lower case a in airlines; grammar matters!) I loathe Atlanta airport and the fuss coming out of Fort Lauderdale I shall bang on separately about that. Suffice to say that the calm way in which Jamaicans deal with real risks in a proportionate way compares exceptionally favourably with how the US government deals hysterically with overstated risks of terrorism. The Jamaicans address their risks; the Americans make lots of noise and fuss but don’t deal with the actual risks in anything like an efficient manner. today was inexcusable and a major security risk in itself.

So back in Jamaica, things are almost normal. The eye of the storm passed about 50 miles to the south of the island and it didn’t intensify to category 5. There’s a vast difference in the destructive power of category 5 compared with category 4 and a huge difference between a direct hit and a near miss. This hotel is still running on its own generators, but all is near normal. Only the pool remains closed. Such is their lack of fuss that I imagine there’s a good reason for the pool to be closed. I expect it will open again just as soon as they’re sure there’s no more glass in the bottom of it, or whatever the danger is.

I was staying at the Pegaus hotel. Courtesy of airlines’ odd pricing, it was cheaper for me to bundle two weeks hotel stay with the flight rather than just the flight, because it was then deemed to be a holiday. This means I didn’t check out of the hotel when I left, because I expected to come back. I did tell reception what I was doing, but I think they were a bit too preoccupied with the matter immediately in hand to pay much attention. When I arrived today, I found out that the hotel was closed as there had been a fire there. I began to explain what I’d done and the girl smiled and said “Ah, you must be Mr [my name]! We’d wondered what had happened to you!” For a hotel with hundreds of rooms, this was rather cute. It’s not been a good 12 months for the Kingston Pegasus hotel. Firstly it achieved notoriety for the alleged murder of Bob Woolmer. Then came Dean; immediately followed by a fire that caused its temporary closure. Apparently, one of the backup generators caught fire, with this fire spreading to the storeroom where they keep the drink. Jamaican rum, I am told with some chuckling by the remaining staff, turns out to be a mightily good fire accelerant. You couldn’t make it up, could you? So they booked me into the neighbouring hotel, from whence I presently blog. All is fine. It would be better if Sprit Airlines had managed to deliver my bag to Kingston as well as deliver me. My recent experience is that the people of Jamaica make considerably less fuss about hurricanes and hotel fires than the people of America make about routine baggage handling. I have decided that there is much about Jamaica that I like. If ever I’m here again when there’s a “starm cummin’”, I shall choose to ride it out.

STOP PRESS! Atlanta airport WORSE than LHR/ LGW!

Forgive the laziness of this posting. I admit that it's a cut and paste from an email I just sent to a friend. I'm still steeling myself for the blog about hurricane preparation that just has too much to say and will need serious editing down.

(Australian friend had just described herself as being so tired she was "flat out like a lizard drinking").

I love the slang “flat out like a lizard drinking”. I don’t entirely know what it means, having no more than the most trivial of knowledge of lizards and their habits, but I like the imagery of it. I’m in the USA at the moment, so anything figurative, metaphorical and generally not desiccated of all irony works well with me. As I’m sure I’ve banged on about a hundred times, America enthrals and appals in equal measure for me. Excuse me here while I relive a horror to help exorcise the ghost of it and deal with the stress….. I got here yesterday, having experienced the quite shocking horror of the process of arriving in Atlanta airport from an international flight. I won’t go on, but suffice to say that it was an entirely unnecessary drama and chaos that I seriously doubt even the Czech Ministry of Bullshit could have come up with. Basically, you go through immigration (drama), collect your bags (unseemly drama) then go through customs (drama). So far, so normal. However, you then re-check your bags as if embarking on a ghost flight, go through security for some ghost flight (utter drama), get a train to another part of the airport (drama as the layout of the airport makes no sense and the announcements are entirely unintelligible even to a native English speaker), get back on the train after getting off at the wrong place several times, then appear in some vast hall that merges seamlessly into a car park where there is a rabble of shouting people climbing over each other and shouting some more. This is the second baggage collection from Hell experience in an hour, but this one is so very much worse than the first. Last night, it took me nearly two hours to find the bags that I had already picked up in the same airport. As the whole thing is open to the general public, there’s always a very strong fear that it’s just been nicked by one of the many hovering n’er do wells. Just appalling: quite the worst airport experience I’ve ever had, including the Balkans, Africa and everywhere in Eastern Europe a decade ago. The whole scene was a disgrace to civilisation. The evil genius of the Bush administration is that somehow everybody blames this state of affairs on the irksomely misnamed “war on terror”. So don’t blame non-existent organisation, blame the darkies.

Get Real!

This is an interim blog, knocked out before I settle down to the mother of all blogs, being my heroic experience of being in the course of a hurricane before I got on a plane to considerable safety and comfort. Were I a CNN reporter, I’d be looking for a medal for my bravery at leaving it to the last minute before leaving the thousands of natives behind.

I digress and I haven’t even started. Impressive, huh?

The theme of today’s lesson, ladies and gentlemen, is the important difference between what is REAL and what is NOT REAL. I feel that there is ever a growing blur and it’s not a GOOD THING. For the benefit of people who have a difficulty separating the two things, I shall use block capitals. To start the illustration, I shall recognise that saying this is a lesson is NOT REAL. Saying it’s a rant is REAL.

Mika has a song in the UK charts at the moment called “Big girls, you are beautiful”. The video, as far as I can tell, includes a large number of “curvy” ladies gettin’ on down with the super-lithe Leb and them all having a good time. As far as I can tell, for I had to avert my gaze for fear of bringing back up the pie I’d just wolfed.

For the love of God. What would Mika know? He is somewhat flamboyant, light on his feet, etc? I just cannot wait for the Pet Shop Boys to release a sarcastic cover version of the song called Big girls, you are beautiful (but if you were thin, you’d be sexy). I’m no snake hipped wonder myself, but I know that. Because I can cope with what is REAL. Pretending to be sexy whilst excessively “curvy” (ie fat) is NOT REAL. Get REAL before the cakes destroy your lives, will ya? Lay off the pies, big girls, or there is a serious risk that you will enter your forties with an inadequate ration of lifelong sex, a house full of cats and toe nails painted blue, because you think it’s wacky. Save yourselves now by engaging in what is REAL and spurning all that is NOT REAL. It may be tougher in the short-term but the longer-term benefits can be considerable.

Clothes sizes are surely part of this. I take anything between a 32 and a 36 waist, depending on where I shop. Certain shops are known to be “generous” in their sizes, which means I guess I’m really buying a 38, masquerading as a 34; especially if I’m in America. This sort of nonsense wastes time as I have to try on multiple sizes that can wildly and depressingly wrong. Why don’t they just use REAL sizes? I’m convinced that NOT REAL clothes sizes are a contributor to the very REAL obesity epidemic.

Why do lifestyle magazines always release the August edition at the end of June? The REAL story is that it’s July’s edition but that’s not exciting, so they call July’s edition August, even though it is NOT REAL. I can hypothesise no reason for this at all. Any suggestions are warmly welcomed.

Mika, according to Wikipedia, is dyslexic. Dyslexia is REAL, although I very, very strongly suspect that for a lot of claimants, it is NOT REAL. I’m a bit of a rubbish reader myself, but being that I was brought up neither in the 21^st century nor amid the middle class, I was never labelled as such. I was just a bit crap at reading, in much the same way that I am crap at catching a ball or running. I learned to cope perfectly well with both impediments. Despite my possible dyslexia, I was never bullied at school; which I attribute to not claiming to be dyslexic. I believe the same is true of food allergies, with 90% of claimed food allergies being imagined but 90% of genuine sufferers being undiagnosed.

Next in the list is science fiction. Sorry folks, but jedis, the Force, the Lord of the Rings, second lifers and the whole plethora of related things are NOT REAL. Speaking to other weirdos in Klingon is not clever, it just makes you a knobhead. You could have spent that time learning Spanish, for Christ’s sake. Spanish is useful, because it is a REAL language used for conversation and commercial discourse by lots of REAL people to buy and sell REAL things in REAL places.

And to finish for today, let me, predictably, get onto A level grades. Fully more than a quarter of people who enter for exams get a grade A now. This has been achieved despite far more people staying on to do A levels than in the past, presumably meaning the population taking the exams are on average less academically inclined than a couple of decades ago. The only purpose of A levels is surely to filter out those who have a natural aptitude for the subject they’ve taken, heavily laced with a measure of who did their homework. In fact, I firmly believe that all exams are 80% the latter and 20% the former; in years of teaching I’ve known many dumb but studious people do well. They are thus intended to be a relative measure, which is useful in deciding who gets a place at Cambridge (I didn’t but fair enough as I was both insufficiently bright and insufficiently studious) and who gets to do media studies at a former polytechnic.

Every single year for 20 years or so, the number of people getting the higher grades has increased. Not one year has shown a backwards step. This purported improvement in standards is self-evidently NOT REAL because it’s simply not logical. Neither human evolution nor teaching can advance to the stage where an absolute increase in intelligence is possible in one generation. Neither can everybody be above average. “Average” has become a euphemism for below average in all sorts of things (gentlemen, a different issue I know but you know what I mean….) Claiming that this is an advance is NOT REAL. Recognising it to be what it is, inflation, is REAL. A grade A in history simply doesn’t have the same buying power in 2007 as it did in 1987. At GCSE, they’ve introduced A* above grade A, which is both illogical and similar to when the Bank of England at some point decided it was now necessary to drop 1/2p coins and print £50 notes. That’s inflation. No number of smug articles by “educationalists” in the Guardian can alter this self-evident fact. Each year, we observe people who can neither spell nor name the capital of Germany receive top grades. The rest of us, including some A level markers I happen to know, observe with disbelief at how this situation which is clearly NOT REAL can be seen as REAL by anybody with any REAL intelligence. This happens amid a festival of back slapping and self-congratulations from teachers, whose pay and budgets are often linked to grade performance. You might as well pay Robert Mugabe based on how many new bank notes he's ordered printed this month.

Let me say warm congratulations to people who recently got A level results they were happy with. Some of you have worked really hard and are very deserving. Unfortunately, I've no means of knowing who you are.

So all in all, I’d like to start a campaign to GET REAL. It may not always be the easiest or most comfortable route, but it’s better for us all in the end.

Anybody wishing to leave a comment that I'm a miserable, mean spirited bastard; may I please ask you to stand on some bathroom scales, check for blue toe nail paint and for the presence of more than one cat first?

British airports: 4 years before London 2012 to make them less dreadful

I am writing this from the British Airways business class lounge at London Gatwick airport. If you can somehow filter out the screaming children who are running around, it’s OK. Unfortunately, my head did not come equipped with Dolby brat noise reduction. I think there’s something quite healthy in recognising the difference between being at home and being in a public space. In the latter, one has to share with others and hence consequential need to temper one’s behaviour and the behaviour of one’s children. This is an increasingly unfashionable thought.

Gatwick used to be a rather good airport, but now that security is so much slower, it’s not. BAA and its owner Ferrovial get a rough time for the unpleasantness of London’s airports, some of which I find a bit harsh. It’s not BAA’s fault that the government has introduced a number of purported security measures that slow everything up, I suspect for very little actual benefit. It’s not their fault that the trade union won’t allow them to bring in temporary labour at peak times to help ease congestion at security. Apparently, the union said they’d strike if they did this, as their members were doing rather well from the overtime that comes from snaking queues of frustrated, harried passengers. There were some very pleasant people at security today, but many enjoy their petty authority too much, if you get what I mean.

The client I’m working for has kindly bought me a business class ticket, as it’s a ten hour flight and it’s the third time I’ve been there in three months. £2,000 for the ticket means that I get a “fast track” sticker on my boarding pass, which ought to allow me to get through security quickly with a dedicated queue that I have indirectly paid a big premium to use. I am therefore subsidising everybody else, which is fair enough. I’ve spent so much time at airports in the last ten years I now see them dreary necessities to be got through as quickly as possible. I’d be willing to pay an extra £10 to knock 20 minutes off a security queue even if I were flying with Easyjet for a personal holiday. This simple solution isn’t offered for people who aren’t flying business class flights but don’t want to queue forever. The result is that families on charter flights all flood the Fast Track queue, rendering it absolutely meaningless. There’s a slight air that this queue jumping is a pleasing bit of toff bashing, which must make me the first toff ever from a mining town outside Wigan. It’s the sort of misguided nonsense that caused the eventual, inevitable, collapse of communism. I don’t think I’m better because my seat is at the front of the plane, but I paid vastly more so I have a right to the service I’ve paid for. Why am I expected to “muck in” at an airport as if it were still the Blitz?

Tony Wilson

Tony Wilson died yesterday. I guess many people won't know who he was. Essentially, he was Manchester royalty. I first remember him as a presenter on Granada TV in the 1970s, when his role was to play the fool. His credibility was only slightly above that of Keith Chegwin. He somehow managed to mix this with presenting a cool, late night music show. As a fairly young child at the time, I always thought he was rather puffed up and took himself far too seriously. I suspect I was right.

Like every single person, he clearly had faults but he was extraordinarily driven. His vision was absolutely critical to getting a vibrant music scene going in a town whose decay was very comparable to that of Liverpool. That was no small achievement. The rest is, of course, history. I believe that the amazing rebirth of Manchester from unlovely mediocrity and decay to vibrancy owes much to Tony Wilson. He may have taken himself too seriously at times but Manchester needed him. I live almost next door to the Boardwalk club and the Hacienda. I've seen him in my local coffee shop a few times. I won't miss his occasional self-importance, but I will miss his vision, his drive and his preternatural level of pride in this city.

Tony, for all your weaknesses, I salute you.

Lamenting the demise of real journalism

I just joined a group on Facebook, which is called “Enough with the Madeleine McCann Groups!” I feel I need to justify having joined this group, so here goes. Forgive the length!

The McCann parents may have been negligent leaving their three kids unattended but their subsequent suffering is out of proportion to their bad judgement, so let’s leave them alone. It’s right that they should be investigated as suspects though; simply being articulate and apparently nice people doesn’t mean the normal rules of police investigations should be suspended. Some of the more stupid media in the UK seem to be morally outraged that these “lovely people” are themselves being investigated. Bullshit, the facts are that children who are murdered are normally murdered by their closest relatives.

It seems to me that the McCanns are about the most level headed people in this whole affair and they deserve great credit for that. They’ve spoken against the press hounding of Robert Murat. The way the media (Sky in particular) subjected him to slur and trial by media is a pure disgrace. He’s probably a weirdo, but he’s entitled to be presumed innocent like the rest of us. Reporters who fill endless air time with irresponsible guff like “the police don’t yet have enough evidence to arrest Mr Murat” need to reflect on the fact that having no evidence tends to suggest innocence. His life is ruined.

My beef is how the media have turned one family’s suffering into a sick soap opera. For sure, this is a parent’s nightmare but how many other parents have experienced similar nightmares in the last 100 days? (Clue: a lot). They’ve had no publicity. The hysteria we’re seeing is probably worse than when Princess Diana died. It’s as if you don’t have a poster saying “Find Maddy” in your window, you’re almost presumed to be a latent a child killer. It’s the rule of the mob over reason and it’s just wrong.

This is a huge tragedy for the family, but reality is that it doesn’t affect the rest of us. News media ought to be more responsible and not air stories that sell disproportionate, exaggerated fear. Fear gets viewers and sells newspapers but all stories aren’t news. Even the BBC gave into this sort of pressure, which shows how much the BBC’s standards have been dumbed down.

I understand there’s zero forensic evidence of any forced entry to the flat. Isn’t it just more likely that she woke up (perhaps from a nightmare, as kids do) and let herself out onto the street? Sure, she was then abducted from the road, but it’s a “better” story to sell the fear that somebody’s going to break into your home and take your kids. After sufficient repetition, this has become a virtual truth, even in the absence of any evidence to support that theory. Folks, it’s a theory, not the truth.

This is the sort of pitifully poor “news” coverage that pollutes the airwaves of the USA. We in Britain used to have higher standards. I joined the Facebook group solely because I want those standards back. If you think that makes me a sicko, I’m afraid you need to grow up. I would be truly delighted if she is found unharmed, but I resolutely will not be putting a poster up in my window. It’s time that the McCanns tried to move on, no matter how hard it might be for them. The rest of us should have done that 99 days ago.

Weird comparisons

Has anybody else noticed how there is a tendency for writers to express the size of things relative to other, incongruous, things? Fair enough you might say but increasingly I’m finding myself nonplussed. I just read of a planet from another solar system that is apparently several thousand times further away than Mars. As I’ve never made the journey to Mars, I have little idea of what distance said planet may be, except that it is a long way away; as planets are apt to be. I imagine that travelling to Mars would take about the same time as our annual drive to Cornwall took in the 1970s, but I’m guessing.

I have also similarly informed that the average car these days is built so well that it could drive to the moon before the engine gives up. When I look at the moon, I have no means of judging whether it’s very, very big and a very, very long way away; or whether it’s just fairly big and a fairly long way away. Never having attempted to drive to the moon (not least due to the problem of reaching escape velocity in a Skoda), it doesn’t mean much to me anyway.

Frequently used comparitors are football pitches and London double decker buses, which are indeed used so frequently that I feel they ought to become a standard measure in the imperial system. The Petronas Towers in KL may be referred to as a 250 bus building and the like. Like practically every woman and gay man, I have never had a clue about football. Informing me that the Queen Mary 2 is about the length of three football pitches is considerably less helpful than just telling me how many metres long it is. In the absence of a figure in metres, I make a guess of how big a football pitch is (which is likely to be wildly wrong) and multiply my error by three. The Queen Mary 2 is 350 metres long, which I know to be exactly 7 times the length of an Olympic pool or 7.01 times the length of the pool in Wigan that was built to slightly the wrong spec because somebody bought cheap tiles.

I feel that experiences are easier to compare. If I were to describe the experience of watching a truly dull theatre production as being at least twice as long and tedious as hymn practice at school, I expect you’d know what I mean.

Very funny spoof advert

I can't even remember what the real advert was for, Sony Bravia televisions perhaps? I just happened upon this video on youtube and I think it's worth sharing. It only makes sense if you've seen the original adverts, I guess. This is what t'Internet is for! Congratulations to whomever made this spoof advert: you're loads funnier than most comedy on television.

Drop, cough and sunshine

Today the sun shined in Manchester. Woo hoo! Having been travelling abroad a lot for work, I’ve not really experienced the full horror of this year’s summer. It’s rained and rained and rained. When it’s not been raining, it’s looked like it was shortly about to rain. Hull and Tewkesbury were both very flooded, although Tewkesbury got vastly more coverage as it’s in the South. Hull is also rumoured to look better underwater. God, imagine discovering the lost city of Atlantis; only to find that it looked like Hull!

I had my pilot’s medical today, which means that I’m now OK to keep flying for the next four years. It’s always a bit nervy about these sorts of things, but it’s oddly pleasing to be told that there are no latent signs of anything wrong. No matter how secure one might feel in general, there's nothing to quite get around the dread that accompanies that instruction to cough as one stands there in naught but underpants. What's that for anyway? I feel a bit of "world wide interweb" research coming on. If anybody happens to know, please leave the answer as a comment below.

Facebook

Just in case you're somebody who tunes into this site at all frequently, I apologise for the lack of posts recently. It's not that I've had nothing to talk about. Since my last post, I have (in chronological order):

• Travelled again to Jamaica and had a rather nice time. That's the subject of a reasonably detailed post that I'll do soon. I'm now growing to like Jamaica as much as I've always liked the people I work with there.
  
• Been selected for "secondary" immigration questionning at Fort Lauderdale airport (I was the only white person in a waiting room of 45 others, which I still find troubling).
• Had a rather pleasant couple of days in Fort Lauderdale.
• Met some lovely and interesting people in Fort Lauderdale at a very tasteful gay only hotel.
  
• Made a recorded complaint about the sarcastic attitude of a security guy in the flight connections centre at Heathrow (sorry, but there's no excuse even though I appreciate they often deal with knobheads). I consider tackling petty officiousness to be nothing less than a citizen's duty. I shudder to think that there are tens of thousands of foreigners who change planes at Heathrow, for whom the flight connections centre is the only taste they get of this country.
  
• Begun to panic about how a fairly small job I'm doing for BPP and how it's taking forever.
• Been offered a fairly interesting sounding job outside the UK, but I can't tell you about that because I don't know who might be reading this.

but above all....

I discovered "Facebook". I hated it at first, because most of the posts you'll see (between users you don't know because they're friends of friends of friends of friends) are just teenage witter in text-talk. Ahem, "LOL". I think it can be too habit forming and I'm right on the edge. It can be interesting and useful though if used carefully. I've got back in contact with a few people who I'd lost contact with. I recommend it, but set yourself some limits such as NEVER using it during work hours and limiting how much time you spend on it each day. It's a bit like thinking you can handle crack cocaine though; be warned.

Text talk

Oh, how much do I hope that the current affectation of using text-talk will pass? I understand how such things as “m8” for “mate” and “LOL” for either “laughing out loud” or “lots of love” developed in the days when text messages cost a lot of cash and were laborious to write. Nowadays though, all phones have predictive text messaging and texts are much cheaper to send. There is thus little need for these affectations and there’s no need or excuse whatever when using a keyboard.

Sadly, I note a tendency to use these things even when using a keyboard to send emails. There is positively no excuse whatever for “neway” in place of “anyway”. This is especially as it took me some time to realise it meant N.E.way rather than new-way. “LOL” seems to have taken the place of exclamation marks, the latter having been so acutely overused that they no longer had any meaning to less articulate teenagers (and the middle aged attempting against all the odds and the evidence to appear still young).

I really do loathe this. I know I’m a miserable bastard, but I truly loathe it.

I have also noticed that text-talker types are prone to having their phone speakers play tinny music in public places. Said people are also likely to choose the Morse sms (… -- …) as their sms alert tone. Invariably, anybody who selects that tone also selects it at maximum volume. It’s a hallmark of idiocy.

If I reply to any messages sent to me using this form of nonsense, I shall do so employing my own derivative code. I shall, for example, spell mate as m-eight. Hopefully, this will greight on the nerves of text talking types as much as their bullshit patois gr8s on mine.

Barats and Bareta

If you haven’t yet discovered the rather wonderful college humour (well, strictly, humor) of Barats and Bareta, I suggest you have a look at their website.

In particular, “Other Son” had me laughing out loud when I first saw it. Listen out for the “My Dad!” exclamation. Watch it and it will make sense. Then look at "Cubicle Wars".

When I said laughing out loud, I meant it literally. I don’t use horrid “LOL” chatroom text-talk affectation that is so depressingly prevalent. No, I shall not say prevalent; I shall say common.

For the benefit of anybody not from working class Wigan, there is no greater insult than to be called common. It’s the old fashioned term for chav.

Creative Genuis by Skoda

Skodas used to be jokes of cars. It’s a little known fact that in Czech (where they’re made), the word skoda means “pity” or “shame”. They don’t make a big deal about that, but I feel oddly pleased at knowing it.

They’re great cars now and I own one myself. They have a lovely advert on TV at the moment where, bizarrely, a group of cooks bake a cake the shape and size of a new Skoda Fabia. See it here if you’ve not already seen it. The slogan is “Skoda Fabia: full of lovely stuff", which I think is immensely cleverly evocative. Another slogan is “Skoda: manufacturer of happy drivers”. Brilliant, just brilliant.

It’s a fantastic advert; really creative. It also generates much conversation and some heated debate on whether it’s genuine or a fake, which further adds to its efficacy and brilliance. How many adverts really get noticed, let alone get people talking about them? A friend of mine is entirely convinced that it’s a normal Skoda Fabia, covered in a thin layer of icing. I’m considering nicknaming him “Grassy Knoll” from now on.

The soundtrack is “Favourite Things” from the Sound of Music, thus confirming that Skoda Fabias are exclusively intended to be driven carefully by women and gay men. Although I’ve heard said song lots of times (natch), I’d never before noticed how preposterous the words were. Julie Andrews chirps that, inter alia, her favourite things are “door bells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles”. Schnitzel with noodles is right up there with chicken tikka lasagne as fusion food I don’t wish to try. Said song progresses to say “When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling saaaaaad, I simply remember my favourite things and then I don’t feeeeeel…. so bad!”

Now call me excessively literal and insufficiently romantic, but if a German Shepherd had just angrily taken a lump out of my leg, I really can’t imagine that picturing a doorbell in my mind would have any palliative effect.

I apologise for having put Sound of Music songs in your head. They’ll be there all day. Blame me if you sing them out loud.

Random catch up

New prime minister. Well yes, what is there to say that isn’t already being said? I reckon that Gordon Brown would be well advised to call an election very soon, in order to give him legitimacy. The economy could go tits up soon and if it does he has very little chance of winning the office. Somehow though, I don’t really care.

Bomb attacks. Am I the only person who isn’t horrified by the attempted bombings recently? My thoughts are more of relief. If the best that they can do is some bungled and amateur attempts like driving a car into an airport terminal, I am much reassured.

Bikes. Mundane as it may be as a topic for a blog, I have recently rediscovered my love of bikes. I had my bike serviced for the princely sum of £50, including several new parts. Bikes are great and blokes who work in bike shops are always lovely. I wish to marry one. To the right is a picture of my lovely Trek 950 bike in my hallway. This bike is a thing of real beauty to me and gives me more pleasure than I think owning a flash car would. Certainly per £ invested, it’s a mightily good return in terms of health and pleasure.

The Dutch. I took a week’s holiday to Spain last week, flying somewhat oddly with KLM. For somebody who’s travelled so much, it’s somewhat astounding that I’ve never been to the Netherlands. I really ought to as there’s something really likeable about the Dutch. They may be somewhat too fond of church and caravans for my true comfort, but they always seem so practical, businesslike and yet without any prissiness that I feel I’d love a weekend in Amsterdam. Anybody fancy going?

Spain. Yup, another year and another week in Sitges. That’s a bit of a gay cliché, but it’s such a great town. I also find holidays a great place to meet people, indeed about the only place I really meet people properly. I didn’t go there last year. I was a fool.

Running. Upon my return from Spain, where I’d drunk rather a lot and got into the habit where bed at 4am was an early night, I ran the London 10k run with a very good friend of mine. We did the 10k in Manchester a couple of months ago. Manchester was a lot of fun, but every step of the London one was painful. I’m still somewhat surprised that I finished it, let alone finished it with a reduced time from last time. It was grim though. Perhaps getting 4 hours’ sleep after a week of alcoholic toxic shock and no exercise beyond getting “jacked up on some cheap champagne” isn’t the best means of preparation for endurance events?

London 2012 again

I know I've already talked about this, but I had to come back to it.
Somebody pointed out to me the other day that the London 2012 logo looks rather like Lisa Simpson giving a blow job to a person unknown.
This seems like one of those ink blot tests that are designed to see if you're likely to become a serial killer sometime soon but I can see what they mean. I wouldn't have seen it myself, but now it's been pointed out to me, I can't see it as anything else.
I also hadn't noticed how "London" had been printed with the irksome but trendy affectation of favouring a lower case initial letter. How very annoying that is. Capital letters seem to be used somewhat randomly more and more. I don't approve!

Arise, Sir Salman

So, the furore this week surrounding Britain’s allegedly troubled relationship with Islam is that Salman Rushdie appeared in the Queen’s birthday honours list and is to become Sir Salman Rushdie. The nonsense starts with the fact that those named on which are not chosen by the Queen nor is it issued on her real birthday, so it is neither her honour nor her birthday, but I digress.

Salman Rusdie achieved great fame by being sentenced to death (in absentia) by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, whom I imagine was nicknamed “Laughaminute” by his friends. This “fatwa” is now not officially sponsored by Iran but a good proportion of the allegedly devout (for which read violent nutters) support it. Put it this way, I’d not want to live next door to the Rushdies nor be on the same flight as him.

He won the major UK prize for literature before he wrote the Satanic Verses, a book that I am reliably informed is not very good. It’s hardly unusual for an author of his fame to be given an honour of this sort. The government of Pakistan has angrily demanded that the Queen retracts the honour because “The move is part of a campaign being waged in Europe and the West to hurt the feelings of Muslims”. No, boys and girls, it’s called free speech. Pakistan should feel entirely welcome to give whatever honour it bestows on any author who writes a dull book that allegedly defames Christianity, the Queen, homosexuality and anything else that I consider to be part of my culture and personal make-up. That’s why England and Pakistan are separate nation states. We pander far too much to the affected brittleness of others, be they Pakistani or Welsh speakers.

Once more I feel principally concerned that the sort of tiresome, deeply predictable flag burning and affected hysteria reflects very badly on the vast majority of calm, sensible Muslims. I imagine a great many of them today are thinking “not in my name”. At least, I hope so. I am actually quite pleased that whoever decided to give this UK honour to a UK citizen rightly disregarded as irrelevant the opinions of an hysterical, posturing, ill-informed group of head cases. We should not refrain from giving an honour in these circumstances any more than we should choose to bestow an honour on Martha Stewart because a lot of Americans believe she’s a great person.

Islam appears to me to attract far too much attention from a crazy minority whom we all need to stand up to. This is straightforward bullying, dressed up as a more reasonable request for respect for the religion of another. The British high commissioner had been summoned to the Pakistan government’s offices for a good dressing down. That is their right. I really believe that Pakistan’s high commissioner to the UK should be summoned to Buckingham Palace, where I heartily encourage the Queen to exercise her right (being head of state and thus above the laws of the land) to bend over and show him her arse. Go on Liz, I dare you.