today : I exceed expectations

Expectations. Here's the thing that I find annoying. You can't lower the bar for knowledge, perfomance and debating skills when you are talking about people who want to be either the most powerful person in the world or understudy to the most powerful person in the world.

There should only be one bar an extremely high one. Presidents and Veeps should be extraordinary people and it makes me wonder why it's so difficult to find people who have depth of knowledge and excellent communication skills I personally know loads of teachers who have that skill set, as well as self control, endless capacity for work and a proven ability to operate under immense stress without needing regular relieving rounds of golf or fellatio.

The only test that Joe Biden and Sarah Palin should have is not 'did they exceed the expectations that we have cynically and relentlessly lowered?' but do they have the vision, chops and nouse to be President? After all, incumbents have roughly one in eleven chance of being assassinated, or a rougly one in five chance of dying in office or having to resign. That's pretty small odds for someone whose main goal is to exceed expectations.

today : let's remember who's to blame for all this

Clue : It's not the rabbit

today : scary news story of the week

Scrolling across the screen on CNN World.

"Buffet warns : reject bailout, face meltdown"

today : I get a feeling of deja vu

Members of Congress. We are minutes away from disaster. We are facing a global crisis that will be the main battle of the 21st Century. If you don't do what we propose, then American life as we know it could be finished within the hour. Doomsday is upon us. Therefore we MUST take immediate action. Yeah, I know you want to read the fine print but there's no time. Just say the word 'Yea' into this microphone and sign on the dotted line. What? There are people saying that our plan isn't very well thought out.? You need more time? You want to see the evidence? Nonsense! It is the only plan for victory over the fear that strikes to the very heart of the American Dream. Just sign here and then you'll be a hero. You will save the world from a pernicious global threat and everything will be fine...

today : I am mildly disappointed

I don't like to say it, but when the Hadron collider was turned on and then nothing happened, well, part of me was disappointed. It wasn't that I wanted the earth to be swallowed into a black hole, but part of me didn't really mind. The same happened when Lehman Bros disappeared into its own black hole of bad mortgage debt. I kind of wanted the entire banking system to go into meltdown. I was apprehensive, waiting for the dominoes to start falling. And then I was mildly disappointed when they stayed upright.

I really really don't want anyone to suffer at all. But just a small part of me is so seduced by the society of the spectacle, that it just wants more and more spectacle. And better spectacle. When an earthquake happens, I want to see it happening, when the Tsunami happened it was mildly frustrating that it took several days for the cameras to arrive.

Two things have ramped it all up. Firstly there were the green night vision pictures of Baghdad being bombed in the first gulf war. It was war, and it was live. Right there on my TV screen.

Then there was, of course, September 11th 2001. As a spectacle it was stunning. The size and awfulness of the events unfolding on our TV screens trumped everything that had gone before, and set the bar for the flaneurs in us all.

So to find that the world financial system has been temporarily reprieved has left me a little disappointed. Who wants an economics expert explaining short trading and toxic leveraged instruments when you can have falling buildings, explosions and the earth disappearing into a black hole like a tissue into a vacuum cleaner?

today : Why the Republican colour is red

Here are the fundamental lies at the heart of monetarist freemarket economics. The government wants no taxes, apart from when they want to spend them on a war. The government believes in small government - hands off business - unless it means subsidising businesses such as defence contractors, or oil conglomerates or car-makers, or any business that might lose votes if it closes. The same goes with regulation and free-trade. The freemarketeers want totally open borders, apart from when it suits them to raise tariffs in order to protect profits.

In the 1980s Reaganomicists lined up to diss Russia as 'evil' At the heart of Communist economics is nationalisation of capital. In fact, the term 'left wing' in the USA and even much of Europe is a term of abuse.

But how can we describe the bailing out of investment banks and using the public funds to underpin mortgage companies? Surely the market can sort these things out? After all, we have been told endlessly for the past 30 years that the market is king and should be left alone.

Nationalisation: isn't that one of the basic tenets of communism?

Today : I was a teenage grammar fascist

I am not a grammar fascist, I am all for the evolutionary development of language and all that. But that's not wholly true. Even though I hate language mavens and grammar fascists and would happily burn every book Lynn Truss has ever written there is a kind of clash between heart and head going on inside my very being. I can't help it, it's a kind of instinct. Even today I tutted towards the radio when the presenter used the word mute instead of moot (it's something that I've noticed recently, from people roughly under the age of 30. They don't know which to choose). Fact is that in spite of my intellectual take on the slippery, ever-changing dynamics of language, from a very young age it's got under my skin when people get it wrong.

The first time I can really remember trying to correct someone was when I was in middle school. Perhaps 11 or 12. Johno Mallen was the kinda cool kid that everyone hung around. He was striker in the football team, had older brothers with motorcycles and all that. Once, in a school football match I skinned four players on the right wing, did a Cruyff turn and put in a perfect cross for Johno to head in on the run. It was a perfect goal. So perfect, in fact, that the opposing team's coach, who was reffing, disallowed it for some made up reason. This made me so angry that I scored five more goals, fuelled solely by revenge.

Johno was always coming to school armed with pulpy, well-thumbed paperbacks full of sex and violence, and new swear words that he learned from his older brothers. One day he arrived with an insulting simile: 'You're like my urinate.' All day he went around saying to it to anyone who deserved a friendly chiding. 'Give me back my pencil, you div, you're like my urinate.'

And all day I remember thinking to myself. That is just wrong.! You cannot use the infinitive, Johno. Urine is the thing, urinate is the thing you do. You cannot use a simile that compares someone to a verb.

It didn't work of course. Thankfully Johno learnt another 'cool' insult from his older brothers and the phrase fell rapidly into disuse.

Stepping up The Ladder

On the evidence of his convention speech, John McCain looks like a fairly decent guy. I can deal with a fiscal conservative whose social policies are fairly libertarian. I can also deal with someone who has a history of annoying his own party by not toeing the line. So far, so good.

But when dealing with polticians I am always acutely sensitive to hypocrisy. What tends to happen with even the most idealistic public servants is that they compromise. Sometimes this is purely pragmatic. Compromise is a way to get things done. But other times their eyes grow big with power and they shed ideals in direct proportion to how many votes they can get. Stepping up the ladder, they make friends amongst the influential whose mission it is to influence politicians. They enjoy the attention, the wealth and the feeling of power. Their decisions become motivated not by ideals, or even ideas, but by expediency.

So rather than choose Joe Lieberman as his VP, McCain chose Palin. She is the exact opposite of him. Extreme rather than moderate. Socially illiberal, economically ideological. And the fact that she is a woman, and therefore bizarrely touted as some kind of consolation Hillary. Is he in charge of his own campaign, or has he ceded himself to the machine that can get him to the top of the tree. Oh how his long dead father would be impressed if he became the Prez.

It is this that makes me distrust him. His eyes are as big as saucers and he is shedding (or hiding) his moderate pragmatic side by the day. Palin was the expedient choice; a bespectacled rung on the ladder to power. Nothing more.

today : Bristol fashion; not ship-shape

The private lives of politicians DO matter. It's context. If a politician makes a point of decrying adulterers and then is caught in an adulterous tryst then he or she has forfeited their right to separate private and public. The same on any given issue. A politician who campaigns on reducing debt and then is found to have overwhelming debts is in a similar position.

I found the dilemma myself as a school teacher. Having to present lessons on non-smoking, alcohol and sex, whilst knowing that my private opinions were at odds with what I was teaching. Actually they were not always at odds but mainly more complex than the line presented on a worksheet. The difference is that I was fulfilling orders - presenting material specified by a curriculum. I was not voted into my job as a result of my personal opinions or behaviour.

Yes, there are grey areas. Doctors who lecture their patients on the dangers of smoking then light up themselves are blatant hypocrites. But does this affect their ability to prescribe nicorette, or alter the facts they present as persuasion? I think not. Doctors, like teachers do not put themselves forward as leaders.

Which is why Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy matters. Palin supports the teaching of abstinence only, 'family values' and a traditional Christian moral outlook. It's unfortunate for the daughter, but she is now but she is the poster girl for how teaching abstinence only is a lunatic stance. Perhaps if the girl's mother had accompanied her to a clinic and explained to her the options for contraception then she wouldn't be in this position.

The episode puts Palin's political and policy judgement in question. Not only was it compounded by the fact that it was cynically put out on a day when the media was obsessed with Hurricane Gustav, but undermines Palin's suitability to be VP to an elderly guy in remission from cancer. Leaders are not just what they say, but what they do. If you don't want to be judged on moral issues, don't pronounce them for political gain in the first place.

It's the economics, stupid!

The fact that so many of Hillary Clinton's supporters are reported as being so bitter that they are considering voting for the other side astounds me. In fact, if she is genuine, the woman who appeared in the McCain ad claiming as much might just as well walk around with a big hat on that says "I am a moron!"

What are these people on? And more importantly, what is their actual engagement with politics? Even with America's useless, shallow news coverage, they must have got an inkling that government is about such minor things as policy, rather than wholly about the genitalia of the participants.

And of course when it all comes down it actually is the economy, stupid. Or rather economics, stupid. Everything flows from the green river. Even the big social and ethical issues are based on economics. An example : People are less inclined to have abortions if they are wealthy enough to afford their children. Even drug addicts are less of a problem if they can afford their drugs, rarher than steal to buy them.

I simply cannot understand how 'political' people can chop and change so capriciously between ideological extremes, seemingly on a whim. And of course, this doesn't only apply to Hillary's women (so I can't be accused of stereotyping women as capricious and whimsical, as if I ever would). Elections are decided by those who show up, but more specifically by 'swing' voters - essentially those that have little engagament or are too stupid to understand the real issues. How scary is that?

today : The Glorious and the Inglorious

The past couple of weeks has seen the creation of many new sporting heroes. Here in Britain, several people, previously little or even unheard of have, by dint of winning Olympic medals, catapulted themselves into the public consciousness. I guess nobody is more famous in the world right now than Usain Bolt. And I imagine he will not be paying full price for trainers anytime soon. Michael Phelps will probably end up very very rich through endorsements and the like.

Sport is made up of moments. Rebecca Adlington's expression of joy and disbelief when she won the 400m freestyle gold. Bolt dancing the last 20 metres of the 100 and still smashing the world record and Michael Phelps touching a thousandth of a second ahead to win his eighth gold. Their glory will be remembered, and it shall remember them.

It's ironic then that Don Fox died today. Rugby League is a parochial little sport, confined to a small number of Northern English towns and followed mostly during one match per season - The Challenge Cup Final at Wembley. Don Fox was a giant of the game. Record try scorer for his clubs, a stalwart of the international side and generally revered as one of the best players of his generation. Yet he will be remembered for one inglorious moment. With his team trailing 11-10 in the last second of a Challenge Cup Final, Fox - already named man of the match - lined up a simple conversion in front of the posts. It was the kind of kick that he would pop over without a second thought week in week out. Yet nerves got the better of him and he skewed the ball wide of the posts, losing the cup for his team.

Matched with an iconic snatch of commentary: "He's a poor lad!", Fox went down as one of the sport's (and British Sports') most famous moments; the epitome of the last minute miss.

Which is kind of cruel. Because even criminals have a shot at redemption.

Another interval

Time for another short break whilst I go into hospital for an operation.

Brown's Requiem (2nd movement)

And of course, operating from a position of weakness: where the press are keen to attack and every chancer MP thinks they can get their 5 minutes on the airwaves by protesting their opinions, Gordon Brown walked headlong into credit crunch.

Even though you could argue it was tangentially partly his fault, the recent financial problems would have faced any UK leader, and are, ironically, a lot to do with the Tory obsession with Reaganomics.Obsessive Chile-style privatisation of public utilities were sold on the basis that it would bring prices down. But after a bit of consolidation, it turns out your utilities are run by two or three giant companies who can then turn he screw and put prices up at will. The price of gas shadowing the price of oil is a myth peddled to us by greedy corporates in order to gouge profits. What used to be British Electricity is now EON and EDF, French and German corporates respectively, who care nothing for British customers apart from how much they can make from us.

The ridiculous acceleration of the oil price is the work of the Bush/Neocon oligarchs. Even if Britain didn't send a couple of hundred troops to Iraq, we'd still be at the mercy of the Sheikhs and the Texans. Similarly, the mortgage crisis and credit crunch is the result of rampant monetarism - not really Brown's fault. The problems that people are pinning on the PM really are the result mainly of global conditions. Perhaps Labour shouldn't have sold us the endless economic miracle of ballooning house values, credit and standards of living.

Basically he's done little wrong in policy terms, yet placed himself in prime position to take all of the blame.

Brown's Requiem (1st movement)

From where I am sitting, under fire Gordon Brown made two mistakes. The first was to let his advisors prepare the ground for an election and then call it off. The media has been narked with him ever since, because they were denied their moment of excitement and self-importance. You would go a long way to find a story about Labour or its leader that is couched in even neutral terms ever since. And most media reports are still informed by the bitterness of disappointment.

The second mistake was intertwined with the first. Brown allowed an attempt to portray him as cuddly and nice. There are two types of successful politicians. The likeable and the hated but respected. Blair was the first kind. He managed, for the most part, to put people at their ease and come across as a well-intentioned bloke, whilst in the background he had Campbell to shout and swear and issue threats to one and all. Brown already had the stereotype of the 'dour Presbyterian Scot' attached to to him, and foolishly tried to deny it.

When Brown took the helm, I suspect the 'advisors' were too bogged down in the Blair project, desperately trying to make their new charge into a doe-eyed sympathy magnet. Really they should have tapped into the dour Scot thing and thrown in a bit ofrighteous fury for good measure. The decision to bottle out of calling an election was okay, but he decision to soften up the media before a decision was made was idiotic and possibly fatal.

Brown should have been different to Blair. This is mainly because Blair did his thing so very well, but also because people need variety. Instead of being committed to the Health Service because it saved his sight when he was at school, he should have been committed to it because it is scandalous that any country doesn't have free universal health care. He should have challenged his opposers. "If you don't support the NHS then you support poor people dying in the streets." (which would have been pretty much correct for the Tories). When the 10p tax thing came along he should have stood up and said: We are right and we are not changing our decision. If some people lose a couple of quid then tough, those same people have a new hospital, a new school, child tax credits and a job. They are just going to have to lump it for the good of us all."

Instead he allowed himself to cave to that week's opinion polls and performed a pathetic, spineless U-turn. And now every little thing is ripe for pressure from the media and the back-benches. Brown looks weak whatever he does.

today : Summer arrived

today : unpacking from my holidays

One of the reasons that I have a link to Greg Palast is that I am a fan of his. His work is relentlessly depressing, confirming all that you thought about everything going to hell in a handcart (in fact just pulling into the car-park and ready to disembark) and the sheer amorality of a world run by globalised capital. But with jokes. It's a pretty difficult trick to pull off, but Greg manages to be write in a funny style. In one way this is a negative. Palast does come across like some guy in a bar with a slightly battered hat worn at a jaunty angle (the hat is another reason I quite like him - there are not enough people who wear hats anymore, at agles jaunty or otherwise) who will give you his version of the world over a series of ales. And this slight stylistic dishevelment does make it easy for people to dismiss him (and other protest people like Michael Moore) as NOT SERIOUS.

Maybe Greg should start wearing a pinstripe suit - looking like those he seeks to bring down; infitrating them by stealth.

today : bon vacances

My blog has decided to take a spontaneous vacation, booking itself on a flight to foreign climes for a refreshing and well-earned break.

today : Medicine Man

I am a great believer in medicine. I guess I have to be, given that I rely on them so much. I take an awful lot of painkillers to relieve chronic pain.

I love Strawberries and Strawberry Jam. My sister and brother cannot abide it. It all goes back to when they were given pills as children. The pills were always concealed in a blob of strawberry jam. Why I was never given jam with my pills, I don't know. But I don't possess that negative association.

Like food, medicines and treatments should taste and feel correct. Let me give you another example. I always take my co-codamols in soluble form. The act of drinking the bitter dissolved pills is part of a ritual. The taste of them on my tongue is the first stage of pain relief. Taking them in dry tablet form is just not the same.There is a psychological effect in the way they are administered, which feels like it aids the actual chemical effect of them.

Inhaling Vick's does little to actually dispel the symptoms of a cold. But the smell of it conjures priceless memories of being cared for as a child and therefore the smell of Vick's is one of care and of getting better.

The medicine cabinet is full of memories.

A quick off-the-top-of-my-head list of evocative medicinal smells and tastes would include:
Elastoplast
Germolene
TCP
Tincture of Myrrh
Calamine
Buttercup Syrup
Covonia Cough Mixture
Elliman's Rub (it smells like concentrated wood-shavings)

But the palliative effect of medicinal treatments also takes in actual feelings. The beauty of Whitfield's ointment is that it stings like hell for a few moments. Putting it in between your toes to treat athlete's foot is marvellous. The sting makes me feel like it is actually attacking the fungus. Okay, it stings. But a sting isn't proper pain - it's the extreme cousin of the itch family of sensations.

Al this a prelude to a complaint. I needed some anti-septic ointment due to the fact that I was cruelly attacked by rose bush whilst dabbling in the garden. Several thorny lacerations ensued. A visit to the chemist initially was disappointing. The only Germolene (my preferred brand due to it's wonderful aroma) available was some new-fangled odourless type. I simply don't understand the idea of odourless anti-septic cream. It's like making non-acidic vinegar or soda flavoured Whisky. I was about to leave empty handed when I spotted TCP ointment. I asked the chemist if the TCP ointment smelled like TCP and he assured me it did. So I bought it.

But when I got home I found that there was something wrong. It did smell a little like TCP, but not really. The makers of the ointment had decided that adding menthol would somehow help with the odour. It's a bit like that flavouring that in one concentration is used as almond flavour, but is actually nothing like almonds, then in another concentration is supposed to be black cherry, but is actually nothing like black cherry. This TCP had elements of the TCP smell but just wasn't TCP-y enough. The makers had been caught out by their laziness. Not only had they betrayed the aesthetic of their brand by adding menthol to the mix. But they had made their ointment less effective by taking away the reservoir of positive psychological side-effects associated with each user's personal history of TCP.

As a protest, next time I'm getting Savlon.

today : Maybe this time

When we first saw Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic convention, it was clear that he was a gifted orator. This is just one of the reasons why I want him to be the leader of the free world. I though to myself - now wouldn't it be nice if THAT GUY was running for Prez. His 'victory speech' this week was truly great. I know he had a partisan crowd in a party mood but he blew the doors off the place. It's rare to witness that surge of emotion that goes through a crowd as the speech huilds to a climax. It reminded me of the surge of noise that accompanied the great UK earthquake earlier in 2008.

But even though it is splendid to have a potential leader who can not only string a sentence together but can use language and rhetoric to inspire there is the question of substance. And do my ears decieve me? Obama seems to be a man who is not scared of portraying the issues as complex, and describing them as complex. His speech on race was the first time I really wondered if he could be a serious contender. Most leaders ignore subtlety like Bush ignored New Orleans; the best they do is circle above it looking bemusedly out of the window.

Obviously, I am not American. But I guess I'm not alone. Already, just the fact that he is as close as he is has sent a huge message to the world. Previously, we were pretty pissed off with America's arrogant isolationism and tub-thumping dunderheaded Neocon blundering. Now we are thinking : maybe it was the government and not the people. Maybe the people are okay after all, and the idiot cabal does not represent them.

today : three! word! chant!

Of course, now the race is on there is one crucial thing we must focus on. Which candidate has the best three word chant? We need something like 'Where's the Beef?'.

Of course Obama has the early advantage because he has a three syllable surname, which helps. I guess McCain, not having a three syllable surname is on the ropes already. Maybe people can chant Sen-a-tor!, or failing that Ov-en Chips!

Why Americans don't do spontaneous community singing like us more cultured Europeans I don't know. I guess some of them probably even struggle with the three word chant.

today : I hold my own fuel protest

In a world so full of things to complain about I have chosen to focus on one thing. Not for me the woman who abused me for being a cripple, when I didn't move out of her way fast enough in the entrance to the supermarket, and then went into full-on Jerry Springer guest verbal abuse mode when I chided her for being so impolite. Not for me the guy, whom so keen to push to the front of the queue in a shop, failed to leave me time to actually put my sticks back to the floor and barged me out of the way, knocking me to the ground. Not for me either the person whom, when parked in a disabled space without accreditation, also verbally abused me (in front of his small children, who were sitting in the back)when he saw me simply looking at his windscreen as if I might be looking for his blue badge. I was, because I saw him pull into the space as his wife jumped out and ran into the shop, but until he began his shouting and threats I'd actually made the decision not to verbally challenge him.

Instead I am beginning my own fuel protest. Like lots of people I am not happy with the silly increases in fuel for my car. However, unlike lots of truckers I am not thinking of blockading the motorway (like they don't do that every day anyway). My protest is more specific.

At certain petrol stations, I sometimes cannot even get fuel into my tank.

What happens is that I follow the protocol : disabled drivers honk their car horns and flash their lights to get the attention of the station staff. The idea is that someone comes out and helps you put the fuel in, a little like a full-service fill up in the USA or how it used to be in England 40 years ago. It saves the immobile from having to get out of the car and walk to pay.

Except someone doesn't come out because they are either stuck running the station on their own due the oil companies cutting costs, or they have no idea what to do because they are blockheads or haven't been trained due to the oil companies cutting costs, or they cannot be bothered because they don't get paid enough to care due to the oil companies cutting costs. If someone does come to help, then it means an annoying and humiliating relegation. The disabled driver is often less important than restocking the drinks cabinet, sweeping the forecourt or straightening the newspaper display.

That's 2.3 million drivers on the road who simply have to sit and wait until someone decides they might be in as much of a hurry as everyone else.

My suggestion is that all disabled drivers should just pull up to the pump and wait until someone helps them. The oil companies might start training their staff if they realise that their pumps are blocked all day by angry crips, refusing to move or unable to move due to their empty tanks.

today : vroom

After a two week posting drought I still haven't had time or inspiration to do anything. So instead of a real post I am presenting a picture of my new car.

today : books yet to be wrote

Book One.
Title : Look At Me.
This is a factual book that explores the idea that, as the world gets smaller peoples' impulse to be noticed as unique individuals is becoming the major influence on society. It looks at the phenomena of personalised marketing, Reality TV. anti-social behaviour as an expression of a feeling of overwjelming 'dotness', the explosion in genealogy and the death of the collective mood for change. Lyotard + Friedman + Dawkins have synergised to attack our notions of individuality and individual freedom, leaving us with a caricature of real choice i.e. label shopping and the desire to make political choices based on personal impulse rather than collective good.

Book Two
Title : Really Rubbish Recipes
A collection of the most hideously inedible and unhealthy recipes culled from crap cookbooks down the years.

If anyone wants to commission me to write these then I will happily take offers. If anyone wants to nick my ideas then don't because it will cost you lots of cash.

today : In praise of shoes

I am obsessed with shoes. Not, I might add, in some Candace Bushnell kind of way. I have little or no interest in whantever is the latest hot designer. But given that I am a middle aged male that is no surprise. Neither do I have some kind of fetish. My obsession is lifelong but purely practical.

The fact is that, as I was born with bilateral talipes, my feet are just not normal. They are shaped unlike anyone elses and have an eccentric way of behaving. As a child I realise that my parents sacrificed a lot to buy me shoes. This was for two reasons: firstly, in the 1970s shoes were rubbish. My strangely shaped feet would chew a pair into unwearable shreds in a few weeks. Secondly, shoes that were wide enough to fit me were rare and therefore expensive. This meant my parents were forced to take me out shopping for shoes sevarl times a year. I'd place my foot on the measuring thing that they don't have anymore in shoe shops and find that I was at least a G fitting widthwise, if not an H or an I, when the widest shoes were no more than a G. I also have one foot much shorter and wider than the other. Even the most experience footwear salesperson would tut and look askance when we asked if there was anything in my size. They would disappear into the back room for what seemed like hours on end, before returning, shaking their heads.

Occasionally I will find a pair of shoes that fit me perfectly. By this I mean a pair of shoes that don't cause me extra pain than I already suffer when I put them on. They never actually fit me perfectly, as even bespoke made footwear doesn't fit me perfectly, as my feet have detailed demands that would shame the Palestinians and Israelis in the detailed demands stakes.

So, I was delighted last year when I found a pair of shoes that fitted the bill. Not only were they rather comfortable , but have remained so for more than a year. And this is in the face of the fact that even the best shoes i have ever owned during my adult life have only lasted about 3 months or so before my strange gait wears them away. These particular shoes appear to be indestructible. They quickly zoomed to the top of my personally compiled 'best shoes of all time' chart.

Now the thing is, I decided that it would be sensible to buy another pair exactly the same, and so went on the interwebnet to find some. To my chagrin, it turned out that these particular shoes, which I'd bought in a sale for a tenner, were a highly prized limited edition Skate Trainer - namely the 'Globe Chad Thomas'

The good people who decide these things had not taken me into consideration when they strategised their marketing. One of the common side effects of disability is a rapid decline into relative poverty. I just don't have £148.50 to buy the last remaining size thirteens on the planet

today : screw it!

today : crimes against culture pt2

...and while we're at it, can we please find out who it was who decided to 'adapt' Susannah McCorkle's perfect version of the The Waters of March in order to try and make us feel better about an electricity company that is fleecing the poor and elderly for more and more of their cash simply in order to keep the lights on and avoid hypothermia? These bastards should be wired up to their own supply for crimes against culture and also because they are greedy money grabbing amoral ****!

today : crimes against culture pt1

The fashion for using popular song on TV adverts is kinda fun. It's so obvious that I don't know why anyone didn't think of it until the late 1980s. Culture is resonant, and the association of certain tunes with adverts is a powerful thing. Currently, the singing dog advert for the VW Golf uses an old tune to brilliant effect.

However, there are some things that should be off limits. I am going to cite two current examples: the use of Edith Piaf to advertise spectacles and the use of The Irish Rover to sell butter.

The first one is just tasteless. Piaf doesn't deserve to be part of some cheap advertisement. You can just tell that the execs involved had no idea who she was until the 2007 film came out. And the joke is crap. No, rien de rien, no je ne regrette rien is translated in subtitles, and then the next part of the song is translated hilariously as 'apart from the fact that I didn't go to Specsavers'

Oh, the beautiful use of irony. My sides surely split with uncontrollable mirth.

At the same time, the people who make Clover - the non-butter butter - have decided to appropriate The Wild Rover and replace the words with some blather about eating Clover. Which is kind of blasphemous. Just because a song doesn't have copyright doesn't mean that it's fair game. The wild rover is a small but integral part of our culture - like Auld Lang Syne or Happy Birthday - and shouldn't be allowed to be butchered by these vacuous chancers.

Which is my point, really. This whiole mullarkey shows modern media types as shallow, insensitive fools who have no understanding of the way culture operates and no respect for culture as art, only as fleeting commerical opportunity.

today : flamin' 'eck!

"Their despicable activities tarnish the lofty Olympic spirit and challenge all the people loving the Olympic Games around the world,"

"We strongly condemn this vile behavior."

No, this is not an anti China protestor making a statement about the behaviour of the Chinese government towards its own people and the support of violent fascistic regimes, but the Chinese condemning legitimate protestors, whose 'vile behaviour extended to such crimes against humanity as shouting, setting off a fire extinguisher and getting in Konnie Huq's personal space.

They gave themselves up. Only a government so caught up in the mindset of ultra control and a poltical culture that despises protest and dissent would comment in this way. The first thing they need to learn is that they cannot control what happens beyond their own borders; especially when they have to resort to hideous tactics of violence and repression to control what happens inside their own borders.

today : Useful statistics

Usually I try to create my own content rather than pinch stuff from others. However, for this, I have made an exception, just because I though it was pretty funny.

today : Companion Wars

Freema : Is it because I is black?

There's something wrong. Something I can't understand. Something I don't quite believe. Everyone is playing a straight bat in the press but it just seems to be odd. This is the big question. Why on earth is Catherine Tate on Dr Who?

Now I have to admit that I am not a fan of hers. I think her feted comedy show was okay, but not the superb brilliant wonderful ground-breaking thing that we were told it was. I think there are plenty of comedic character actresses who could have done just as well.

But to make her into The Doctor's new companion is a mis-step. Her character of Donna doesn't fit the bill. I hate to say it but she is just too old. All the way back in history, companions have been ingenues who discover their strength and resourcefulness during their time travelling adventures with the Doctor. That's why Billie Piper's Rose was so spot on. She was a modern feisty girl who took on the mind-blowing adventures offered by the Doctor with aplomb.

Yes, there is something in the 1000 year old man showing a young the ways of the universe that perhaps requires some psychological investigation, but to have an older companion breaks the formula and frankly risks alienating the audience. After all, one of the functions of the companion is to be the eyes of the audience. An audience which is on the whole fairly young.

But here's the thing that just feels wrong. What did Freema Agyeman do to upset everyone? The character of Martha Jones was potentially terrific. Yet she was never really given the chance to develop much beyond being besotted by the Doc. I've seen this given as the reason for the character being shifted sideways into the rather dull Torchwood - a bit like when football clubs 'sack' their manager by shifting them upstairs to be director of football. But aren't all the Doctor's companions besotted by him? That's the idea - that he offers them a life so much more colourful and fantastic than being drearily earth bound. But he has to ditch them because he is immortal and they are not.

Dumping Martha after one measly season smacks to me as premature, as if there were some politics at play that we don't know about.

today : Maximum Bob

I don't like violence. I don't ever wish to encourage it. But...if Mugabe tries to steal the Zimbabwe elections yet again and it ends up with people on the streets I surely will support them, however violent their protests. Obviously, I don't want to see an orgy of killing but the dilemma of the non-supporter of violence is that it does work in many cases. In fact, bloodless revolutions are rare. And many extremely bloody revolutions are just in their intentions. For someone who abhors violence I was pleased to see Ceaucesu put up against a wall, not averse to seeing Saddam Hussain swing and glad to see many other tyrants given a good taste of their own medicine.

I want the monks of Burma and Tibet to get out on the streets. It cheers me to see people who feel so strongly about principles that tney are willing to risk their lives, even though I despair when those lives are lost.

The sensible thing for Mugabe to do is to take the exile package that would surely be offered and just give up. After all, he's in his mid eighties and could do an Ian Paisley, being remembered at least in part for the gracious slide into retirement. For not putting the army on the streets. People might even remember him as a patriot.

The sensible thing for China to do is to grant Tibet its autonomy. It will happen eventually so shy not cut out all the hassle and do it now. (I feel this way about Scotland too, although I doubt there would be similar bloodshed).

Hopefully, at the very least, the focus on Beijing in the Summer will prevent the Chinese from their ethnic cleansing. It is a massive job to seperate land from people by killing the people and I'd like to think they would look at history and see that it kind of doesn't work. Neither does it enhance anyone's reputation.

today : the blameless

Somewhere in an office in the bowels of British Airways HQ there sits a faceless, nameless man in a grey suit. He is satisfied, as he neither thinks or believes that the fiasco at Heathrow Terminal 5 is anything to do with him. The blame is someone elses, although whose he couldn't say exactly.
Around him are other offices occupied by other faceless, nameless people in grey suits. They all think and believe the same. At Terminal 5 people are missing weddings and funerals and hard earned holidays, cricking their backs trying to sleep on airport chairs. Somewhere underground there are 15,000 items of luggage with owners, but nowhere to go.

Nobody is to blame. It's nobody's fault.

Everywhere. Schools that send 40% of their pupils out without the ability to read or add up. Hospitals that wheel their patients, not to the exit, but to the morgue, because the operation was a success but the infection didn't respond to treatment. Banks that leave their mortgage holders homeless, building projects that overun by years and vacuum up taxes, innocent citizens locked up whilst the guilty walk away laughing, companies with tanking share prices and swathes of redundancies. Armies that are supposed to liberate but end up brutalising and pissing on the faces of the people.

None of this is anyone's fault. In fact it isn't even anyone's responsibility. It just happens. Like when kids kick people to death on the streets, stab each other in gang wars, steal anything they haven't got and terrorise their communities. It's not their fault because nobody has taught them responsibility. Just like the man in the grey suit, they are blameless.

today: Easter Traditions

Yay! It's the Easter holidays. Now we can all kick back, munch chocolate, watch useless kids films like Freaky Friday on the TV and look forward to the clocks going forward again.

And we can also laugh and cringe, as the delegates at the National Union of Teachers Conference get their moment in the press.

I am sure they enjoy it, those NUT types. Every year there is a raft of headlines and news stories inspired by their Easter Conference. And it just happens at the time when all the other newsworthy stuff shuts down and has a couple of weeks off. So they have a clear run. Whichever correspondents draw the short straw and have to work the holiday weekend is dispatched to wherever the pissed-off pedagogues congregate.

What follows is a run of stories that often begins with some legitimate teacherly issues. Class sizes, Literacy, Special Needs, pay, workload, curriculum changes etc One or several of these is debated and gets an airing in the press. But as the weekend drags on the NUT conference always turns into a 1970s Union conference. Delegates bring their (left wing, as the NUT is always mentioned as the 'left wing' teachers' union) political views to bear on conference resolutions, many of them only tenuously connected with teaching.

It all starts to sound like a bitchy staffroom at the end of a particularly hard day.

This year we had The Koran being taught in schools - a pretty good idea in itself, but just not the kind of thing you trumpet loudly at the front of a conference when journalists from the Daily Mail are present. Then we had teachers accusing the Armed forces of - shock horror! - recruiting under-achieving working class boys into their ranks by visiting schools. This the NUT delegates' way of objecting to the war - finding a way, however, flimsy, that their objections can be attached to their profession.

Most of these issues are well worth debating. But NOT when the rest of the news cycle is dry and they become front page news.

The standing of teachers is already plummeting. The Tories spent 20 years undermining the professionalism, pay and status of teachers. And, despite some pay increases since 1997 the downward curve has continued. Partly this is to do with the 24 hour news culture. Not only are any negative education stories kept alive for longer, but they are then endlessly debated by people who have the knowledge of a sea-sponge and the debating skills of a roof tile. On top of that the 24 hour interactive news culture gives endless voice to the opinionated correspondents - many of whom have the opinion that teachers get paid too much, have too many holidays and have elbow patches on their frayed and battered corduroy suit jackets.

I just wish that each Easter the Sirs and Misses of the NUT delegates remember this when they stand up to get their fifteen seconds of fame.

today : for being different

I must say that i am, like many, inured to the violence and horror around us in the world. yet once in a while a story beggars my belief, this vicious murder stood out for me for two reasons. Firstly the young woman involved was trying to stop people from attacking her boyfriend and secondly, the attack was a base form of bullying. She was kicked and stamped to death for looking a bit different. Whether they were Goths or hippies or Emo's or tall or short or whatever matters not.

Her boyfriend was interviewed and said : "I just wish she had run away and left me to die".

Today : My 2008 Easter Message to the World

Rather than needlessly killing other people, perhaps think about not needlessly killing other people, because it's not very nice, okay? Also, if you are an investor, put whatever money you have into Government Bonds or Gold, as even cash under the bed might be dodgy over the next few months.

Today : Buy your snake oil and medicinal compounds here...

Yesterday I charged my first job as a consultant in my chosen field. I was wary.

Who doesn't hate consultants? They are the overegotistical, self important, I'm-cleverer-that-you, smoke and mirrors merchants who are bleeding our health and education systems dry by peddling snake-oil solutions to problems that are either mythical or actually created by consultants. They are the people who charge extortionate amounts to companies to do what the company is doing anyway. Consultants are smug. They are worse than lawyers.

I've sat in meetings and training sessions where some smarm in a too-loud tie is charging £1000 a day to address a roomfuol of grandmothers on the topic of sucking eggs, or even spouting facts and information that anyone who might read a book knows is just plain wrong.

I once spent one of those eyes half closed cheap coffee sipping mornings in a training session on teaching special needs students, and listened to an 'expert' hold forth on the topics of autism and dyspraxia. Not only did the 'consultant' wrongly describe the symtpoms of both conditions but everyone left the room wondering where the 'teaching' bit of the training came in. When it came to the Q&A session she just made up answers and spouted evasive empty nonsense.

I guess a loose definition of consultancy is that you get paid for your knowledge and experience of doing rather than actually doing something. In short, it is a licence to be a charlatan. Who is to know what you know or don't know? Not being required to demonstrate actual skill is a fantastic way to effectively get paid for nothing.

For the record, my first consultancy job depended on me having experience of doing things in the past and being able to employ my skill-set to do something in the present, so it wasn't strictly consulting in the way I've stereotyped these past few paragraphs. No meetings with powerpoint presentations and catered sandwiches were involved.

today : American I Dull

I accidentally watched American Idol yesterday. Here in the England we get all the shows from each week packaged together in one gloopy lump and broadcast on the weekend.

When I say 'accidentally' I was surfing around the channels during the dead hours of Sunday evening and whenI saw Idol I stopped and watched. So, okay, strictly I chose to watch it, I admit.

During the show I had an epiphany. I have written before about Simon Cowell's inordinate power in the pop music market and bascially my criticism of him is his narrow and rather blinkered opinion of what makes a good song. This week's Idol was trumpeted as the songs of Lennon and McCartney. One of the contestants - a pretty Fillipino-American woman, sang In My Life. And here is where I had an epiphany. Cowell dismissed it as a boring song. Another contestant - a dreadlocked Colombian American man, sang If I Fell. Cowell dismissed it as a boring song.

My conclusion: Simon Cowell has little interest in, knowledge of, or appreciation of music. In My Life especially is one of McCartney's most perfect melodies; combining pop music sensibility with the best of 20th Century American popular song. The trick is making the quite complicated seem utterly simple. The melody also perfectly matches the shifting wistful nostalgia and joy of the lyrics. In short, a work of genius. Yet I have a sneaking suspicion that Cowell is a Beatles ignoramus, and wouldn't know an American popular song if it slapped him in the face.

As I have said before, I do not envy him his success, or even really expect that he should be anything other than a moneymaking mogul. My complaint is that with such incredible marketing power at his fingertips, he is (to paraphrase what he said about the pretty Filipino- American woman) fatally safe and boring. The public has a huge capacity for consuming sophisticated, difficult and often bizarre culture, if it is offered to them. Why did the Beatles (or Prince or Stevie Wonder or Led Zep or Blur or The Arctic Monkeys or Joni Mitchell or...) strike gold in the first place? Cowell only knows the world of the superficial, forgettable and safe, and because of that does both the artists and public a huge disservice.

today : Not-quite-so-free market economics

If ever there was an action that crystallised the economics of modern Republicanism, it is the Bear Sterns affair.

On one side of their face they still trumpet free market principles, but even as they say it they pump billions of government dollars into rescuing an Investment Bank, and doing it in a sneaky way that sidesteps the law. Oh, and by the way, the plan places JP Morgan (another investment bank that exists to further wedge-up the super-rich) in pole position to take over a broken up and browbeaten Bear Sterns.

I thought that the market was King and that institutions should live and die by their performance within the market. But it seems not so. If your little family run store goes belly up then there is no help for you, but if you are an incredibly rich financial operation whose main job is to help the bloated rich get bloatier and richer, then it doesn't really matter how well or badly you are run, the Republicans've got your back.

So, hedge-fund gamblers, don't worry. Keep on gambling. The dice are loaded and you can't lose.

today: Win at all costs.

You can't really argue with Sir Alex Ferguson's credentials as a winning football manager. He reels the trophies in with almost easy regularity. But his outburst this weekend upon losing to Portsmouth showed the world in stark relief why he is despised so much. He seems incapable of grace.

There is an alarming tendency to fete 'winners' - be it in business, politics or sport. There are those who applaud the winners who stamp on their opposition, cheat, lie and treat others badly. I would suggest that anyone can be a winner if they find their niche. But win-at-all-costs? Is it worth it? For Ferguson, this means being so one eyed about referees that he is more than happy to question their integrity. With other teams it is to viciously accuse them of cheating and never concede they may have won fairly and squarely. With journalists it is to answer any criticism with wrathful outbursts of bile and sulking.

In short, whilst reeling in those trophies, he comes across as an unpleasant, bitter man. People respect his achievements in football but are increasingly turned off by his relentless nastiness.

It is only natural to be disappointed by failure. It is okay to be ambitious and exacting. But when this comes with behaving like a cry-baby and a bully it is simply not acceptable.