'time for me to go away...I'll get a new name, I'll get a new face...'

It feels like time for me to take another short break. Earlier this year I took a week or two off due to an operation. This time, it's because I have just run out of things to say for the moment.

That's the problem with having a life as narrow as my walls. I am currently more or less housebound awaiting a major operation and my horizons have shrunk to almost zero.

This means that communication with the outside world occurs through the radio, TV and internet. Because the realtionship between people and media is two-way, I find they have kind of sucked the life out of me. I might still switch on Kristy Lou Stout at midnight, but tend to watch with the sound off, looking at her beautiful face (it's like it's been naturally Photoshopped to be flawless). Because it doesn't matter what she says, in her intriguingly adenoidal voice, she just repeats the same news I have been bombarded with all day. The only reason to watch her is because she is much better looking than pretty much all other purveyors of news - although Anjali Rao runs her close.

Eventually, all TV and radio blurs into noise and begins to reveal itself as shallow and formulaic.

People (by that I mean this person) were not designed to do nothing, or indulge in only passive activity. But given the fact that I cannot walk and am in significant constant pain that is where I find myself. Until I had to quit work I was one of those people in one of those jobs who would often work evenings and weekends, and even if I wasn't working but at home I would never switch on the TV upon arriving home and only switch it off at bedtime. I'd tune in when something I wanted to see was on, then read or listen to music or do something in a "Why don't you...?" kind of way. Downtime means nothing if it stretches out in a horizonless desert in front of you.

It IS true that the more you do the more you do. My days were full from early morning to late at night, leisure and passivity only one element of a range.

But I am forced into doing nothing and this has left me feeling socially and intellectually undernourished with no social or intellectual energy.

Here's another thing. There is so much to think about that I am recently kind of given to consuming but not fully processing. The economy, the fact that we're all doomed by whichever means, personal thoughts triggered by my disability and situation, whatever else.

In the end you just wither. I have worked with unemployed people who were frustratingly free of motivation and hope. However, I get it now. Your ability to see brighter times ahead is limited by the inability to see any diferentiating lines between the past, the present and the future. Weekends to me mean nothing. Any attempt at weekend activities are merely symbolic.

And then, for me, there are the drugs. They are pretty good at slightly dulling the pain, but leave my sleep patterns destroyed and my head full of soggy sponge.

It's quite nice in so many ways. Comfortable numbness is often what we crave and I have it. I can fall into a trance-like daydream and live out some delicious fantasy several times a day. I look at complexity and my brain just shrugs and turns away.

And everywhere the internet is full of opinion and comment. It can do without mine for a while.

more groovy music to dance around the room to

today more music

Among the very best records of all time

today : groovy music to listen to and watch

today : so so so scandalous

Here's what I don't believe. That all politicians are self-serving, superfluous vermin. Of course, some of them are.

But some journalists are, as are some welders, some cheese-makers, some zookeepers, some everythings.

But to look at the press recently, you would think that our current government is morally bankrupt.
There is, of course, no perspective involved when people announce this conclusion again and again. The fact is,there has been little abnormal or unexpected in the Blair/Brown government. In fact the number of people caught in financial/sexual scandals and botched cover-ups has been
remarkably low.

The thing is - giving a brown envelope of hush money to the madame of a brothel, whilst proclaiming outrage at the country's moral decline is worthy of comment. Having a husband who once watched a cable TV porn film whilst not passing moral judgement on other peoples' sexual behaviour is not.

Similarly, is anyone surprised that political advisers might shoot the breeze making up smears about their opponents. even if I accept that Damian McBride was serious and not just having a private joke (which I don't really accept, given that there is no evidence of it), is there any shock involved?

The sight of tabloid journalists and editors jumping desperately on the bandwagon of mock outrage is funny and unedifying. How terrible is it when you are smeared?
Ask Robert Murrat, or anyone who has been trapped in the tabloid sights and shot down for fun and profit.

Each and every minor incident is blown up out of all proportion. MP behaviour consequently is
like those massively magnified pictures of bed bugs or fleas. They look scary until we realise that they are microscopic and harmless.

The accumulation of all this : the 'scandal' of MPs expenses, the ridiculous focus on every questionable aspect of politicians' behaviour is to create a mythic truth. An accepted wisdom that all politicians are self-serving vermin.

Like much of what's passed off as news these days the story feeds itself. Questions are asked..."Send us a text, call up if you have something to say about this scandalous behaviour". Suddenly what the media thinks becomes what the public thinks.

That section of the press that operates by preying on peoples' bitterness and sense of failed inadequacy kicks into action. 'They' are doing better than you and it must be
by cheating. (see also immigrants sponging off our welfare, teachers sitting with their feet up whilst everyone else is at work, celebrities overpaid for having no talent)

Another fine example of this is the policing of the G20 protests. One policeman pushed Ian Tomlinson to the ground and by dint of awful luck it looks like it might have led to his death. One policeman hit someone with a baton, one other used his shield as a weapon.

All of these incidents look pretty appalling and, of course, should be properly dealt with.. But that's three out of several hundred or even thousand police. There is no focus at all on the successful, non-violent cops, who were seemingly in the the vast majority.

And the spin machine - eager to turn the page, draw a line and avoid negative stories lasting for more more news cycles then absolutely necessary - responds.. Action is taken. Reviews are announced. Rules are changed. Legislation is proposed. Anything to make it go away.

Real scandals are rare. We should beware the media created variety.

today : my easter message to the world

One of these is good and should be encouraged. The other one bad and people should really stop doing it. I'll leave you, the world, to work out which is which.

And by the way, if you follow a church that tells you that condoms are a mortal sin, whilst you, your family and your people are dying of AIDS, perhaps it might be time to consider whether your church really does have your best interests at heart, given that they might be putting dogma before your survival. Just a thought.

today : still wired

Now the secret's out and everyone is declaring The Wire as the greatest TV show ever made (TM) it's hard to review it. If you agree with the evangelists then you are just going along with all the critical tossers who jump on any bandwagon. If you disagree then it appears wilfully contrary.

The truth is that over 5 seasons the Wire was superb. This was mainly because it used the TV format properly, realising that everything doesn't need to be explained and tied up by the end of an episode (this is the reason that I donlt like CSI - there is far too much basic explanation for audiences that don't/can't pay attention), and that effectively they are telling a 60 hour story, rather than 60 hour long stories.

This is why people are evoking Dickens, in that The Wire is quite happy to switch through a tremendous amount of characters and places to build up a multi-facted and complex portrait of a city. It's a pretty lazy comparison (maybe Ulysses is a closer model), although the writing does follow the rules of the novel rather than the rules of TV. The writers are also happy to spend hardly any time at all explaining things that have already been shown, or recapping things on the assumption that people have the attention span of a fruit fly.

This does not mean that The Wire is without flaws. Seaon 5, for example, was pretty odd plotwise and only the goodwill from watching the previous 4 seasons allowed me to forgive the bizarre contrivance of McNulty's 'scheme', or the fact that we were suddenly introduced to the staff of the paper and not given enough time to get to know them.

However, it is a measure of quality that there were no episodes that were bad, or plot turns that were fatal to the over-all effect. How many episodes of the Sopranos were forgettable or unwatchable? I can think of maybe three out of 150 or so West Wings that were poor or indulgent.

today : The Visitor

Like lots of Brits I am very excited about having one of America's most prominent people visiting our country. Katie Couric is obviously here to cover the G20 but is welcome to drop in on my house if she can fit me in her schedule.

today : wired

The BBC has finally got it's finger out and has started showing The Wire. It's funny, British TV just doesn't seem to be able to cope with the best of intelligent American TV. It never knows where to put it, especially with comedy but often with drama too. Seinfeld was bounced all over the place for years and never really got an audience here. Now the same fate has befallen Curb Your Enthusiasm - finding it is like finding a reliable stock option. The Wire found a place on the FX channel but was snuck out and got a pretty poor audience. ITV was pretty brave to buy Dexter but then couldn't decide what to do with it.

Which, in some ways is good, because we get to watch these things on DVD. Over the past couple of years critics have increasingly drooled over The Wire (I guess they got to see it) and there has been a groundswell of TV aficionados lending each other box sets and setting up informal discussion groups.

Because for really great TV drama, it turns out that DVD is the absolute best medium. The West Wing - which I still nominate as the best network drama of all time, is 41 minutes per episode. Hardly any longer than a traditional BBC sitcom. it's hard to wait a week for such a small portion. But on DVD over 24 episodes it's a different story. You can watch episodes in chunks, or even treat a season as a holiday from real life and normal TV. Myself, I can do 14 hours straight - no problem and get through a season in a weekend.

But it's not only the flexibility of watching options that make DVD the best place to catch your drama fix. The best of TV has production values that are pretty much equal to film. In fact, the only difference seems to be the gratuitous use of expensive CGI in almost every movie released these days, as well as star salaries that make Fred Goodwin's pension look like parking change in the well of the car.

Who wants to watch broadcast TV when you can get 5.1 surround, digital picture beauty from a DVD? Tonight's episode one of The Wire broadcast on BBC2 looked like an American TV series - a little too brightly coloured, a touch fuzzy round the edges, the sound compressed into a gluey, syrupy centred noise How ironic. TV that suffers from being broadcast on TV.

today : missing words

Here is the full list of 200 words which the Local Government Association says should not be used by councils:

Across-the-piece
Actioned
Advocate
Agencies
Ambassador
Area based
Area focused
Autonomous
Baseline
Beacon
Benchmarking
Best Practice
Blue sky thinking
Bottom-Up
CAAs
Can do culture
Capabilities
Capacity
Capacity building
Cascading
Cautiously welcome
Challenge
Champion
Citizen empowerment
Client
Cohesive communities
Cohesiveness
Collaboration
Commissioning
Community engagement
Compact
Conditionality
Consensual
Contestability
Contextual
Core developments
Core Message
Core principles
Core Value
Coterminosity
Coterminous
Cross-cutting
Cross-fertilisation
Customer
Democratic legitimacy
Democratic mandate
Dialogue
Direction of travel
Distorts spending priorities
Double devolution
Downstream
Early Win
Edge-fit
Embedded
Empowerment
Enabler
Engagement
Engaging users
Enhance
Evidence Base
Exemplar
External challenge
Facilitate
Fast-Track
Flex
Flexibilities and Freedoms
Framework
Fulcrum
Functionality
Funding streams
Gateway review
Going forward
Good practice
Governance
Guidelines
Holistic
Holistic governance
Horizon scanning
Improvement levers
Incentivising
Income streams
Indicators
Initiative
Innovative capacity
Inspectorates
Interdepartmental
Interface
Iteration
Joined up
Joint working
LAAs
Level playing field
Lever
Leverage
Localities
Lowlights
MAAs
Mainstreaming
Management capacity
Meaningful consultation
Meaningful dialogue
Mechanisms
Menu of Options
Multi-agency
Multidisciplinary
Municipalities
Network model
Normalising
Outcomes
Outcomers
Output
Outsourced
Overarching
Paradigm
Parameter
Participatory
Partnership working
Partnerships
Pathfinder
Peer challenge
Performance Network
Place shaping
Pooled budgets
Pooled resources
Pooled risk
Populace
Potentialities
Practitioners
Predictors of Beaconicity
Preventative services
Prioritization
Priority
Proactive
Process driven
Procure
Procurement
Promulgate
Proportionality
Protocol
Provider vehicles
Quantum
Quick hit
Quick win
Rationalisation
Rebaselining
Reconfigured
Resource allocation
Revenue Streams
Risk based
Robust
Scaled-back
Scoping
Sector wise
Seedbed
Self-aggrandizement
Service users
Shared priority
Shell developments
Signpost
Single conversations
Single point of contact
Situational
Slippage
Social contracts
Social exclusion
Spatial
Stakeholder
Step change
Strategic
Strategic priorities
Streamlined
Sub-regional
Subsidiarity
Sustainable
Sustainable communities
Symposium ­­
Synergies
Systematics
Taxonomy
Tested for Soundness
Thematic
Thinking outside of the box
Third sector
Toolkit
Top-down
Trajectory
Tranche
Transactional
Transformational
Transparency
Upstream
Upward trend
Utilise
Value-added
Vision ­
Visionary
Welcome
Wellbeing
Worklessness

There is a difference between cutting out managment bullshit and actually being frightened of language change and deciding to ban words just because some people might not understand them.

today : shadow of the ripper

I am really looking forward to seeing the Channel 4 TV adaptation of David Peace's Riding novels. I recorded all three films ready for a marathon. They are great novels. Today I listened to a bunch of TV reviewers talking about it and each had their own comments to make about West Yorkshire, even though none of them were from there. One guy seemed to throw in his Yorkshire birth as a way of legitimising his opinion that the County in the 1970s was as unrelentingly grim as the novels and films depict. All the reviewers seemed gleeful that the fiction buttressed their stereotype of the North as some grimy and grey hinterland to the Capital.

Using this logic, LA was unrelentingly grim, violent, corrupt and sickening in the 1950s. I know this because the novels of James Ellroy tell me so. I mention Ellroy because Peace's techniques are similar. He uses real streets, places, events and people from history to create a fictional documentary of the the times he is writing about. People often used the phrase imagined history. And like Ellroy his focus is the underbelly of violence, perversion lawlessness and psychological dysfunction that exists in any city.

The streets in the Red Riding novels are my streets. I grew up in Leeds in the 1970s. The events portrayed in the novels happen on playing fields where I played, roads I walked down and places I knew. It was, of course, from a junior school child's point of view, hardly grim at all. Although Peace's books reflect closely the geography of my childhood, they have little to do with my experience. The stories he exploits for his fiction - the missing children, the corruption, the vice and vermin were, at most, occasional headlines reported on Look North, the BBC local news show.

But there is one aspect of the Red Riding Quadrilogy (why Channel 4 have decided not to adapt 1977 I don't know) that was part of my experience, as it was part of everyone's experience. For many years we lived in the shadow of the Ripper. I still often drive past the place where Jacqueline Hill was killed. It's near my childhood home where my parents still live. I still go by the playing fields where Wilma McCann was found, past the school where Jayne MacDonald was a pupil. I still drive by Peter and Sonia's house in Heaton. It stands out because of its elevation from the street.

My friend Jane grew up on the same street as the Sutcliffe family and knew both Peter and his brother Trevor for most of her young life. Her time living in proximity could even have crossed over with Peters first crimes - the ones that Keith Helliwell believes were committed by him. The normal seeming 18 year old would walk with her to and from the pub or the shops. They'd cut through the woods. She has a kind of morbid obsession with serial killers, devouring books and watching TV shows. It's understandable. I, conversely don't have an obsession. Yet each time I drive past these places they exert a strange power.

Jacqueline Hill was killed on a patch of overgrown land off Alma Road in Headingley. It's behind the old Arndale shopping centre, about half a mile from the test cricket ground. I use the road as a short cut and also like it because of the elegant 1930s art deco style houses. From a very early age I always wanted to own one, but never got round to it. Like all the sites where the Ripper took his victims, it's unmarked and has returned to being just a patch of overgrown land. When the murder happened it was so physically close to my home and to some of the places I hung out that it was kind of exciting. Part of this was the fact that we drove past there on the way to the supermarket and saw the police cordons and the portable cabin used as a police incident room; then we returned home and saw the same scene on the telly. There's something about seeing familiar, but not famous things on the TV. Years later, David Jason as Inspector Frost sat on a bench in Leeds where I once clumsily kissed a girl. I found it thrilling seeing the bench, knowing that my own secret history was on the TV.

But superficial childish excitement was fleeting. It seemed that the whole city was gripped by horror. The local papers and TV news were saturated with only one story and there seemed to be only one topic of conversation. More than once I can remember listening to my female Primary school teachers discussing The Ripper as they stood supervising us in the playground.

The Ripper actually changed peoples' behaviour. Certainly, as a child I was made aware of risk: the notion that some people were simply bad. As 13 year olds we went to the school youth club, and there was an interesting sense of community. Even at 8 or 9 at night when the youth club closed, we would walk home together in groups. As boys we'd take a route that meant that every girl was accompanied to their door. It was probably an over-reaction, but I suspect I made better friends with many more girls at school because of it. Later, in sixth form, our gang was made up of the boys and girls who'd walked home together years before.

I can't remember what I age I was - probably 9 or 10, but stories about the murders led me to look up words like 'prostitute' 'mutilation' and 'semen' in the dictionary.

The Ripper introduced us all to the fact that outside our schools and gardens the city possessed another side. But my one abiding memory of the time comes from when I was almost fifteen. . When it came to the start of fifth year at school we had a careers week. It was made up of talks and visits to local employers. My school was, socio-economically, not of the highest echelon, which meant we didn't get to visit the University or the civil service. For us it was pretty much factory work plus the the army for boys and nursing for girls. The one trip I signed up for was to visit the police. I had no interest in becoming a policeman, but having already been to the tannery that still stands at the bottom of Scott Hall Road, and was literally a dark stench-filled satanic mill, seemingly unchanged since the industrial revolution, I didn't really want to visit any more factories.

So a bunch of us headed off into town to visit Millgarth Police Station. It was Millgarth that appeared on the proper BBC news whenever it reported on the hunt for the Ripper. George Oldfield himself would stand outside giving interviews, his bloated, stress-reddened face skewed against the wind blowing down the Headrow. Sometimes the reports would show the inside of his drab, strip-lit office.

Everyone was givena safety talk which was aimed at girls, and was about not going out alone in case of getting hideously killed. We sat and I remember it being a mild day and we were over-dressed, having sensibly worn coats on a school trip. We were shown around a police car (everybody wanted to use the siren but we were inside the garage and only allowed to switch the blues on and off, which was pretty anticlimactic) and then given a talk about the police. It wasn't really much to do with joining the police, but the generic talk to youths about not getting into trouble and, as we all lived in the shadow of the Ripper, there was a special bit delivered by a WPC, again warning the girls not to go out alone and get murdered. We sweated and fidgeted our way through it all. Our teachers yawned.

That was more or less it, apart from on the way out. The inspector showing us around stopped us on a green-tiled corridor and said "There's one last thing I want to show you." He gestured and we went in through some double doors. I'd seen this place on the TV and it was talked about in news reports and interviews.

We were in The Ripper Room. I remember it being quite large - high ceilinged and maybe 40 feet by 30, about the size of a couple of classrooms at my school. One wall was lined with filing cabinets, and piled on top of them were more file boxes, teetering in shambolic towers. There were several desks, one or two occupied by detectives. All the desks were piled high. Overwhelmed with stacks of paper. The floor was littered with yet more piles of file boxes and lever arch folders. Even with only one or two people working in there, it was utterly chaotic. The inspector pointed at the filing cabinets and told us that they contained records of cars and car journeys. The idea was to cross reference all the cars travelling between the red light districts of Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield and Manchester. There was mention of using a computer in London (this was when computers were extremely rare, room sized collections of cabinets with large spinning tape reels, and restricted to secret warehouses run by men in white coats).

He seemed proud of the Ripper Room, yet even I and my schoolfriends, at fifteen, could see that it was totally dysfunctional. The room actually gave off a feeling of hopeless panic. We could see the psychological trauma the inquiry was inflicting on the West Yorkshire police. The Ripper room was all anyone needed to work out that the search for Britain's most wanted man of all time was failing and entirely out of control.

On the way back to school, the bus went past Scott Hall playing fields, where Wilma McCann was dumped, past the street where Jayne McDonald had lived, past the places where the next victim could be found at anytime.

today : a sight for sore eyes

I am having yet another eye operation and will be unable to see properly for several days. Hence, yet another short break.

today : I won't necessarily follow

Help! I can't seem to escape U2. Every time I switched on the TV in the past few days there they were, waffling on about their new record, or playing it. The BBC especially indulged them in the overkill. It appeared that they were on every show on every TV and radio channel, all day every day.

Now I don't hate U2 like some people. In fact I kind of like them. I saw them on the Joshua Tree and the Zoo TV tour, as well as a couple of times before they got stadium-y. They put on an excellent and impressive show and surely deserve to be as big as they are. In terms of musical adventure they are no Radiohead but that's no crime. Yes, their brand of rock n roll is about as sexy as those textured fabricated tiles you get in corporate office ceilings but that doesn't bother me too much (although might help in the fact that I don't love them). I am not even exercised by their perceived piety and Bono's 'good works'. These seem to offend a lot of music purists and people who think that being rich automatically disbars anyone from having a genuine conscience. But on balance I think it's good that they dabble in social and political issues. They don't have to hold themselves up to accusations of hypocrisy.

The problem I have with U2 (and, to be honest, plenty of long lasting bands), is that I'm sick of their greatest hits. If I never heard 'One' again as long as I live then that would be a relief. The thing is, I could probably compile an album from their decades long output which would be brilliant. It would just not really contain any of the songs people wave lighters to at their gigs (or should that be mega-stadium events?).

The worst of these is 'Where the Streets Have No Name'. I hate that song so much. However, I do like Redhill Mining Town. I hate Sunday Bloody Sunday, but think Party Girl is tremendous. I hate BAD but love Wire. I don't like One but am amenable to Miss Sarajevo. Are you getting the pattern here? With a couple of honourable exceptions (three actually namely The Unforgettable Fire, With or Without You and All I want is You) I can't stand U2 when they are at their most U2ish, but quite like them when they aren't being very U2ish at all, as in the examples below.

today : ...and another thing

...while we're on the subject of disability and ignorance, the nine putrid imbeciles who made official complaints over CBBC disabled presenter Cerrie Burrell's arm should be tracked down and banned from ever owning a TV.

today : 2 deaths reported

The Irish writer Christopher Nolan died the other day. It kind of slipped by un-noticed, what with the Oscars and the "Satago Glacialum" and everything. He was always someone I was aware of, partly because he was roughly my age. His first novel, Under The Eye of the Clock came out when he was still a teenager and I was pretty envious, given that I was ( and still am) an aspiring novelist. I remember thinking that it read like a teenager's novel when I read it. I don't think I read anything else he wrote.

Nolan was remarkable and initially famous because of his Cerebral Palsy and was sold as the new Christy Brown. Both were Irish, writers, and both severely disabled. Both died pretty young and, oddly both choked to death. Nolan was 43.

And then we learned of the early death of another Cerebral Palsy sufferer : the 6 year old son of David Cameron.
On an early news report, the correspondent bluffed and sputtered his way through information about the condition, giving a mixture of false, heresay and true but vague information.

It's about time that people understood more about the three main conditions that affect so many people, CB, Autism and Down Syndrome. All are pretty common, yet I bet if you asked most people to delineate them they would struggle. I certainly know this is the case in the education system, as there is a scandalous lack of knowledge and training for teachers and educators, whilst at the same time a policy that seeks to maintain affected students in mainstream education. I've talked to Special Needs Co-ordinators who were vague on the details. I've also taught many people who are perhaps mildly affected, but undiagnosed. The lack of diagnostic mechanisms accessible through schools was a constant frustration.

I once attended a training session on Autism where the person delivering the information gave no information, bluffed his way through questions and referred everything back to one student they knew many years ago. I left the room angry, because there were people in the room who were genuinely interested to learn things they didn't know and they, and their potential charges, were let down.

One of the problems, I think, about these broad types of disability is their very breadth. Each condition possesses a huge range of ability and disability, each is highly personal to the person living with them, and each is complex to understand and deal with. They are just not as easy to name and box as people would like.

I hope the legacy of Ivan Cameron is that his father's politician colleagues finally begin to address society's unwillingness to learn about and engage with the issues of disability, so that children and carers can feel themselves understood more than they do now.

today: cool for CATs

Today I went for a CAT scan on my ankle (represented by the picture which a scan of AN ankle, which isn't mine. You can tell by the way that the one in the picture is fairly normal whereas mine would be a hideous mess of failed operative aftermath, hence the fact that I can't walk)

today : A woman of no importance

It has to be said : Jade Goody is an imbecile and a racist.

The fact that the poor girl is dying of cancer deserves our sympathy. Wishing death on someone or delighting in the suffering of others is abhorrent. But to respond to the news of her impending demise with an 'outpouring' is hypocritical and rather ghastly.

I don't wish it in a personal way but to celebrate the life of someone whose contribution to society is effectively zero is a flashing neon sign of our times. Jade rose to prominence for doing nothing. In fact for much of her time in the spotlight she has been a figure of ridicule in the very press who are now fawning and cooing over her. It's a clear demonstration of how ghoulish and appalling parts of our culture have become.

In many ways, her story could not have been scripted any better if the media did it themselves. It now has everything they delight in: controversy, redemption, illness and death.

When Mark Frith was touting his memoir last year, the man who was a key player in the acceleration of 'celebrity culture' said that he quit editing Heat magazine because of the increasing expectations of negativity and prurience in the face of tragedy and pain. The media began to revel in the travails of people like Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse. Basically, the joke wasn't funny anymore. And the story of Jade is the perfect illustration of this. A dim girl who is sucked in by the lure of fame, who shows little or no decorum, who reveals herself as a crass and cruel bully, whose 'life' is a series of contrivances invented by reality TV producers. Jade is the epitome of the nothingness of modern celebrity. With nothing else to contribute her fifteen minutes of fame were going to run out at some point. Eventually she was bound to be eaten up by the cancer of media attention, even if she hadn't got cancer for real.

today : Drinkin' Again

I recently took up drinking after a break of about fifteen or sixteen years. There was no single reason why I gave up, and when I say 'gave up' I don't mean I was on some temperance pledge kick or became a Muslim or embraced a particular regime of asceticism and abstinence. I just stopped going out drinking (or staying in drinking) as an end in itself. This doesn't mean that I remained teetotal either, but for a lot of years you could count the alcoholic drinks I had per year on your fingers. I still enjoyed a glass of champagne or a nip of malt, I still occasionally demolished a cool beer on a hot day or sipped a decent glass of wine with a meal. It's just that I stuck to one, and mostly stuck to none.

But the other week I just felt the urge to have a beer, so went out to buy some. It hit the spot big time, so I had another. And then I started having one regularly during the evening. Sometimes I have two. The other day I mixed myself a G&T. Next time I'm out at an appropriate place, I fancy I might order a Vodka Martini. Who knows where it will end?

I think what happened 15 or 16 years ago was that I wasn't drinking properly. It was pretty much lager lager lager - which is, on the whole, a terrible alcoholic genre. And even though I wasn't a beer monster like many of my pals, I tended to just one or two too many, enough to make the subsequent suffering not really worth it.

Which brings me to the subject of drunks. Almost all drunks are awful, dysfunctional and unpleasant to be around. Most drunks show us at our worst and most pathetic. It's hard to admire a drunk.

But in the case of Shoichi Nakagawa I think I can find it in my heart to forgive. As the finance minister of a major economy that has just announced a potential 12% loss of GDP, in a global climate where nobody knows what is going on and what will happen next, I can fully understand that Mr Nakagawa might have felt like the odd Sake or a Japanese Slipper or two.

In fact, getting completely Klangered seems like rather a sensible option for a finance minister in 2009. So Mr Nakagawa, tomorrow evening I shall be raising a glass to you.

today : the mantras of blame

Was anyone surprised that the new bi-partisan politics looks just like the old party politics? Did anyone really believe that the Republican Party wouldn't be full of out-dated, sulking ideologues, unable to accept both the seriousness of the current economic situation and the fact that their party got spanked in the elections?

I saw a clip of one of them throwing the bill onto the floor, and crying because they want tax cuts and only tax cuts. It's not a surprise. After all, Obama ran against these people. I cannot imagine that they saw his victory as some bi-partisan watershed.

But I didn't set out to talk about American party politics. I started out thinking about how, in the UK, the Tories have used recent economic and financial issues to go on the attack.

It's too easy: you lost, you are not in power and the whole reason you are in politics is to gain power. It's frustrating. And here, circumstances present an open goal that is impossible to guard. It's the gift that keeps on giving. You can put everything on the current government. You can repeat and repeat your mantras of blame ad nauseum, because you won't actually be called upon to do anything real.

This is a charge that I can level at any opposition. However, pretending that the endless back and forth blame game that is party politics as usual is apposite to the current climate is a rather hollow game.

I would be wary in this situation. The longer things go on, the less easy it will get. Obama is okay for now. He rode in to rescue the shambles that Bush left behind. But when the election comes in Blighty we will be a further year into the chaos. Real solutions will be needed. The Tories will likely win, but are also likely to walk right onto a straight jab to the nose.

I wouldn't want to be Prime Minister or President of anywhere for the next few years.

todays delicious flavour sensation is...

The pleasingly alliterative Cocoa and Cambozola

today: We are all f*cked

In war we are never told how bad it is. The cliche is that the first casualty is truth. We've seen this recently with Mr Regev's pronouncements over Israel's activities in Gaza. Whatever your opinion of what went on, you can't really say that the spokespeople were offering the straight unfiltered facts.

I think the same thing is happening with the Credit Crunch/ Economic Crisis/Depression/Credit Quake, or whatever Bloomberg are calling it this month. I understand how it works. Nobody is allowed to say how bad things really are, and as such they tiptoe around the first domino, petrified they'll be the one that sends the whole lot tumbling. Politicians and people who work in banks and finance are pretty much bound by rules and protocols. They have to be market sensitive in everything they say. So, like Mr Regev admitting there may have been one or two civilian casualties but we are unsure about the numbers, they admit there's a problem but always appear unsure about he numbers. Journalists report the daily information, but none of them really want to put it all together lest they be blamed. Even Evan Davis on his excellent documentary series exploring the causes of it all, ended on an almost patriotic note of definite (if somewhat vague) optimism

I am not fooled. Even when the numbers are obfuscated, they are obviously very very bad.

The other day I had cause to go to my local job-centre. Because I am currently between operations I needed to update my disabled status and get a couple of forms to fill in - God forbid that I, as a qualified and experienced professional, am actually unemployed! I decided to try and insert myself into the appointments system by simply turning up. I figured the combination of ice and snow outside and me hobbling, barely unable to walk, on two walking sticks, would work. Nobody would dare send me away with an appointment card, for fear of me legitimately complaining about how difficult it was for me to come back.

I was stunned by what I saw. The place was packed like Harrods on New Years Day: like some mini Grant Park. Queues and queues of people filled the foyer and spilled into the vestibule. I quickly got behind the scenes, sitting on a chair and waiting for someone to spare me a minute. The job centre is usually a fairly laid back place. The employees tick through a steady stream of 'client' interviews and the like. Often you see them chatting to each other and generally operating at a fairly low level intensity. Only this day people were frantically trying to process the sheer number of people. Ironically, the energy in the place was more akin to an investment bank trading floor.

I mentioned this to the lady who was dealing with me and she concurred that they were understaffed and overworked. "This is the one growth industry", she said.

The real numbers are on the ground. If you can be bothered to correlate all the figures given out daily on the news with anecdotes from friends and acquaintances, and add them up to things like my job-centre experience, you can build up a picture. It's what the politicians and financiers and journalists aren't saying for fear of nudging the domino:

"We are all completely f*cked."

today : fessin up

Mr Obama impresses me more and more. It was telling this week that everyone jumped on his comment that he 'screwed up' over the Tom Daschle problem. Many people seemed to take great pleasure in pointing the finger at him and treating his admission as some kind of revelation of systemic failure. It reminded me of someone whom I worked with who couldn't ever accept and apology. Several times stuff went awry and I owned up to my part in it, following my confession with an apology. Each time, I was reminded endlessly for days and sometimes weeks, both directly and indirectly, that I had screwed up. And we're talking here about me promising to collect her mail from the pigeonholes but being sidetracked and forgetting, or not putting a class set of Macbeth's back in the stock room, not appointing senior government officials.

I think Obama fessing up took the press by surprise. They are so used to the usual way of doing stuff that they can't handle it. Their modus operandi is to face down a politican who is playing never apologise, never explain and try and get them to do both. Obama stole their clothes, ironically by behaving exactly in the way the press has been begging polticians to behave for decades.

today : it's about time I defended the BBC

Y'know what? I am a huge supporter of the BBC. I think it's one of the great institutions of the world and one of the truly best things about Britain. A publicly financed but fiercely independent broadcaster with its own unique ethos and an unrivalled reputation and reach across the world.

Nothing could be more satisfying for the Beeb to know that Iran has declared its Persian Service as illegal. They must be doing something right.

Okay, the BBC, like every institution, gets it hideously wrong sometimes. Like Davina McCall's celebrity chat-show, or continuing to buy and show Heroes, or last weeks coverage of Obama's inauguration (which was pretty shoddy and ill-produced). I even once complained to them over an item on a show that -jokingly- portrayed people with club feet as dribbling hunchbacks. But on the whole the BBC is my own major source of news and information.

But it appears that the BBC has lost some confidence. Last years Ross/Brand 'scandal' was one of those occasional mis-steps that broadcasters make. No worse, really, than Jools Hollands infamous tea-time trailer for The Tube that lost him his job. When I saw and heard what had happened, I thought it pretty unfunny and rather lacking in taste, but I was pretty shocked by the response.

If one thing is for sure, it is that The Daily Mail will create waves of mock outrage and then ride them as far as possible. That is their schtick. Asylum seekers eating swans, MPs having sex with people who are not necessarily their wives (or even the same gender as their wives), asylum seekers claiming benefits and having operations on the NHS, people using swear words in public etc etc. The success of the DM is to appeal to the grump in people and pander to the middle class unease that fings ain't what they were in the old days - despite the 'old days' being a mythical construction that never really existed (apparently some kind of cross between a Jane Austen Novel and the interwar years of Evelyn Waugh novels). .

In this spirit, The Daily Mail hates the modern BBC, which should exist only to report the activities of the royal family and show things like Upstairs Downstairs, Ask The Family and All Creatures Great and Small. Radio 2 should be Sing Something Simple and Friday Night is Music Night. All this trendy politically correct stuff is just not on. People called Chakrabati reporting the news, comedians who wouldn't be seen dead in a frilled shirt and bow tie and people with Northern accents expecting to be taken seriously whilst walking the wrong way up the Underground escalators. They also hate the principle that the Beeb is funded by a special tax because they are part of the Thatcherite rump who still hate taxes of any kind.

All of which meant that when they saw the chance to stir up some anti-BBC sentiment they went for it. What surprised me was the fact that the Beeb took the bait. They bowed and grovelled and ate unhealthy amounts of humble pie. Why didn't they just tell the Daily Mail to piss off? If there's a competition between the two as long lasting and credible institutions then the BBC wins. It's a global entity that reaches probably billions of people. The Daily Mail sells a few million a day. Who stands on the stronger ground - both in the public mind and in reality?

It was probably right for the Beeb to respond in some way, but the continuing public self-flagellation just fed the beast, and weakened the BBC hierarchy.

At least they had the guts to stand up for themselves in the matter of the Gaza appeal. Again, I personally was horrified by the way the people of Gaza were treated. Whether the Israelis should eb held to account for their apparent overbombing and whether they set out to simply punish Palestinians is a whole other discussion. But the BBC was right to stand up against the protesters who were desperately quick to attach both the Beeb (and Sky News) to their bonkers Zionist Conspiracy theories (again, it's a whole other discussion but it is MUCH easier for people to rush to a conspiracy theory than to actual try to understand the complex machinations of international politics. Some otherwise clever and rational people that I know seem unable to parse Middle Eastern issues without suspending their intelligence).

Perhaps the two responses tell us rather a lot about the BBC, namely that it sees itself mainly as a global news organisation and not a provider of light entertainment, Sunday night serials and nature programmes to the people of the UK.

The problem with the BBC is that people want it to be a democratic organisation. They think that because they pay for it, it should do what they want on demand. But herein lies the strength of the institution. It isn't really answerable to anyone, but to the principles of it's charter. The BBC is at its strongest when it's sticking two fingers up at the naysayers.

It's difficult for some people to get the idea that they should pay for something that exists to disagree with them. People are used to getting what they want to hear for their money: not what they don't want to hear.

today : things not to do

I remember the feeling of euphoria when the Blair Labour Party was elected in May 1997. Everyone I knew and worked with stayed up most of the night (most people agreed that watching Stephen Twigg beat Portillo was the moment most people started to bed), yet somehow were not tired the next day. I was working in a school and even amongst the pupils there was an upbeat feeling. It was an enjoyable day. There was a TV in the staff room and during break and lunchtime people congregated together to watch replayed images of the victory rally and the Blairs greeting the crowds outside number ten.

Of course, the American experience is different. There is the election and then the inauguration. Two separate events. I guess in 97 we in England had this a little, although the time lag between us getting rid of Thatcher & managing to get rid of her government was several years, we still got to celebrate twice.

So even on the TV it's easy to sense to the overwhelming sense of euphoria amongst the crowds swamping Washington DC. I feel it too. A black President - who'd've thunk it?

I just hope the Obama administration doesn't fall into the trap that the Blair Government did - which was to believe that the euphoria was wholly to do with them, and not the fact that the people had got rid of a tired, morally bankrupt set of idiots. This led to the one major error that 'New Labour' made, and continues to make.

I am generally a supporter of Labour, and think that they've done okay in government. You can't get everything right, but the general drift of policy has been to my liking. But it could have all been so much better had they not spent so much time chasing the news cycle. This obsession with presenting a relentless come-what-may positive PR face began, I think, with the unprecedented honeymoon period. Labour had done an excellent job of presenting a unified PR front in the lead up to 1997 and for 18 months after the election they could apparently do no wrong in the polls. The spin machine, it seemed, began to believe in its own importance. Diana's demise helped Labour in the same way a World Cup victory helps whomever is in power. There is no denying that the economy was on an upswing in May 97 and Labour inherited a decent outlook. They did well to keep it going for so long.

But the problems began early on. Labour began with their habit of issuing bitty statements day after day after day in order to try and hijack the headlines. They began to try and bolster decent poll numbers with frivolous policy ideas designed to steal the clothes of the opposition parties. It's an easy trap to fall into, and, as a consequence, much of their policy has lacked focus and got stuck in the mud.

If I had one thing to say to Obama and his people, it is to ignore the polls. Take the honeymoon as simply that - a honeymoon, and not a huge validation of everything you are and stand for. When it starts to fade, let it fade but keep on with your policy goals. Otherwise you might end up like Blair - almost a great leader.

today : clarity of vision

Another short break. This time for an eye operation. You can watch a video of a similar operation below, but donlt watch if you are prone to nightmares of people sticking sharp things into your eyeballs.

today : put your hands together one time

It's odd how cultural consumption occurs. I have an aversion to hype and advertising and so tend to avoid the stuff that's now, as it is pretty much all slathered with hype. I also have the basic knowledge that a DVD or CD that is 15quid today will be 3 quid in nine months. There are certain cultural sources - magazines, reviewers and the like - that I pretty much trust, but often I'll just wander down a route of reading, watching or listening due to some bizarre serendipitous event. An example is that I discovered one of my most favourite tunes when searching for a news radio station whilst driving through New York State in 1991. The RDS alighted on a jazz station just as it started to play a song that caught my ear. I was heading along an overpass through the centre of somewhere like Vestal, with the city lights splayed out below my eye-line. The temperature was high enough that I had the window open and a cool night breeze was wafting into the cabin of the car. I was speeding along on cruise control. The groove of this tune matched the mood perfectly and I listened, hypnoitised until it spliced into the next tune, which was some badger-strangling monstrosity in 6/17 time, featuring much atonal noodling. I never got to hear the tune again, or find out what it was until a long time later. I was at a friend's house. This friend has a rather annoying habit of keeping the TV on loudly whilst I am visiting. The TV dominates the room and everyone sits and watches it rather than conversing, which sometimes makes me question why I even visit. On the TV was a film, reaching its conclusion. It was the rather soppy John Cusack/Kate Beckinsale romcom Serendipity. Two guys were on a plane and for about 20 seconds the scene was soundtracked by my New York State tune. I later used the IMDB to track down the soundtrack and then Kazaa to download the individual tunes (this was quite difficult because the film features quite a few instrumentals due to the character of Kate Beckinsale's fiance being a pretentious musician). Eventually I found it, my personal holy grail. It was Rose Rouge by St Germain.