I do not doubt that any remaining precious Metro-victims will find this little tale sad; but it is the way the world will be for some time yet, so it bears examination.

Mrs W and I decided over Christmas to introduce a kitty system here at Fort Yesterday. We did this for two reasons: first, to avoid spending more than we've got; and second, to try and put a bit aside for six weeks in order to have spare cash available to replace our main car. We also decided to think twice before buying that newspaper, or going for the 3-for-2 offer on Dead Sea Salt & Rare Alligator Sputum crisps. And finally, we could have meals out, but only out of our own 'spends' - not the household dosh.

Under the Brown/Darling Recovery regime, an idea has taken root to the effect that it is somehow patriotic to spend money supporting greedy retailers.....in precisely the way they are blowing the country's money propping up bankers who deserve only to be shot in the groin at sunset, thus enabling them to bleed slowly to death during the long, cold winter night. Such jingoistic propaganda is not only a pernicious form of decadent, government-sponsored temptation; it is also the sort of twaddle that got us into this enormous money-pit in the first place.

For the next decade or more, people will save to buy stuff - rather than saving with braindead institutions who use their hard-earned savings to lend to Bolivian pipe-bands wishing to expand into fully underwater Tijuana Brass ensembles. This will mean bankers pleading with us to use their unfeasibly high interest rates, and motor traders offering two-for-one deals on Bentleys. Power will be returned to the consumer at last, and sanity will make a long-overdue comeback in those households which spent most of the time since 1992 larging it with money they didn't own at rates they couldn't afford.

Anyway, if you save like the clappers during a downturn (having chosen not to drown under the upwave) there are bargains to be had the length and breadth of every High Street, market and mall. In seven weeks we saved £1700, enabling us to buy an Iranian carpet at 60% off, a car at 30% off, and a guitar at 60% off. Next stop Curry's in March, for an HDTV at 90% off.

 

 

30th January 2009

la tempete est arrivee

 

As the storm-clouds of financial insolvency rise over the horizon of the financial manager's office, it may have escaped your attention that Lot et Garonne has been battered by storms for the last few days. As you can see from the above snap, our damage has been serious bordering on traumatic: a serious tear in our pool cover. Hold that Gaza appeal BBC, this is too awful for folks of a delicate nature to contemplate.

On a slightly more profound note, we got (unsolicited) an email from our insurers Credit Agricole offering immediate assistance - with the usual checks waived. I claimed for this rip - and a fallen tree - and by return was given a no-quibble offer of cover replacement plus new tree planting costs. Wow.

For the record, Credit Agricole is not a toxic debt sufferer, believing as most of the French do that les menages trop anglo-saxonistes are not for them. French individuals don't get into silly debt because the risk-averse French banking system won't let them. But when the merde hits the air-con, the banks do not pass by on the other side.

Nota bene, Gordon.

 

a duty of care

Mum and Dad

the puerile world of james purnell

Now that Militaryband has been shuffled off to start World War III, the big new threat to everyone's freedom sits astride the sprawling Department of Work & Pensions: none other than our old chum, the indecisively invisible photograph stripling James Purnell.

Like most of those marching brainlessly forward not back in the ranks of New Label, Purnell puts forward ideas so obviously daft and dangerous, one wonders whether his vision about anything has ever stretched beyond the following afternoon.

As the Under secretary of State for Culcha during 2005, Jimmy 'Riddle' Purnell was the driving force behind the liberalisation of Britain's licensing laws, and thus the man chiefly responsible for creating an A&E funding crisis while storing up a few million more damaged livers for which our children will pay. (And they will be ours not his, because allegedly he doesn't want any.) You would think, would you not, that a chap who spent much of his childhood in France just might know the difference between a stable and a binge booze culture - but JP went ahead anyway and applied French experience to the British mania for getting as many drinks down the neck as possible.

There is not a single unbiased source who now views this bonkers policy as anything other than an unmitigated disaster. Yet somehow, Happy-Juice Jim seems to have managed the artful dodge of being squeaky clean: it's hard to find anyone who knows he had anything to do with these idiotic laws. But hopefully after this piece, there'll be a few more.

Moving further forward without looking back, after his boss Peter 'Wicket' Hain got the chop for his loan Alzheimers tendency, Purnell entered the Cabinet as Big Boss at the DWP in mid 2007, where he enthusiastically embraced that other canard of worms, The Private Finance Initiative. Indeed, as a result of his failure to attend one of the congratulatory sessions on this - yet another £255 billion disaster - James wound up in the picture despite having not asked for this to happen. That struck everyone at the time as an odd result, especially as the NHS Trust concerned had no axe to grind either way: with or without the astral Purnell presence at the photocall, they were happy just to have the cash.

Purnell (r)....not all there

Having settled in, it wasn't long before The Minister took up the cudgel against all those malingerers identified by the DWP junior Caroline Flint - a woman who always speaks her mind, which is why that process rarely lasts beyond a minute or two.

Despite the obvious fact that Laflint had got all her sums and welfare targeting completely wrong (basically accusing quadraplegics of being workshy) Purnell weighed in with more Dickensian playing to the media gallery and - astonishingly - signed off a proposal to charge interest on DWP loans to the unemployed and pensioners (loans currently given interest-free) at a rate of up to 26.8 per cent per annum. This created bewildered opposition among politicians of all parties, and was eventually vetoed by the Brownshirt himself.

But at the weekend, James Puerile surpassed himself with the suggestion that absent, non-supporting fathers should have their driving licences and passports taken away without any recourse to the Courts.

Just so we're clear about this, such is a power not even given to Civil Servants keen to intern suspected enemy aliens during World War II. Now I'm the last bloke to be an apologist for feckless wick-dippers; but can we just get real here? This is an idea in conflict with every tenet of English Law from Magna Carta onwards. The problem, however, is that J M D Purnell was born in 1970, is thus a mere thirty-eight years old, and pig-ignorant. Like so many of the Blair-Brown tribe, he has little or no experience of anything: mega-bright and the owner of a PPE from Balliol, he nevertheless understands little of any value to somebody with aspirations to solve Britain's associated problems of non-existent personal self-control and welfare dependency.

Get this for a cv: childhood abroad, fee-paying school education, Oxbridge PPE, Institute of Public Policy Research and then - astoundingly - Head of Corporate Planning at the BBC! No, I'm not kidding: without so much as an hour of commercial experience, top corporate bod at the Beeb from 2005 to 2007....as well as his responsibilities as a Government Whip. Superman or what?

The Purnell generation is of a type unique in British history, the like of which one hopes we shall never see again. Process-driven, devoid of beliefs, free of creativity - and utterly convinced that their dyslexically narrow experience is more than enough to master Britain's appalling problems. Inevitably, such enfants miserables cock up over and over again: and in order to solve each problem thus created, another central liberty is compromised, another basic freedom tossed aside with a shrug and a smile.

I want solving feckless fathers to be on my cv....never mind that it was Labour drivel that created them in the first place, let's leave the Courts out of the process: that way, we stand a chance of getting a result. Tony Blair: I want a legacy...never mind that we need an illegal invasion and then get bombed into the bargain - let's insist everyone has an ID card: I mean hey, it's just like a passport really....whoops, we've taken that away too.

There is no end to the supply of Purnellese dingbat freaks coming through. Like it or not - and on the whole, not many of us like it - the only way to render them harmless is to get the Other Lot in. At which point, I suspect, we will realise that they're just as ignorant.

But they might not be quite as unbelievably stupid. And so we must wait, and hope, and see.

 

26th January 2009

so this is what we'll do....

"Well, first of all my sworn friend Lord Maninbum is going to give away lots of your money in order to get people buying more cars again without getting into anything beyond shallow 0% debt. That will be a good thing of course because it will help all those foreign car-makers sell more cars here and thus help our balance of payments. And then as you know we (that's Gordon and I) are going to get hard-working families started on the important business of building more roads to reduce all that tedious grass which needs cutting all the time - and that will attract more of those lovely high-carbon cars using expensive petrol which we'll have to import because the North Sea Oil is running out.

"And then because we are just so green, we're going to put in another 1% of GDP to boost environmental technologies, and my good friend and inventor of the new NHS era Mr Alan Johnson is going to ban meat-meals in the NHS to reduce carbon output and give all the patients anaemia alongside their MRSA....and stop the hospital building programme along with all that nasty brick dust it would inevitable involve. It's what the Americans call Checks & Balances. Yes, that's what we're going to do, and we think it'll jolly well work a treat and you just see if the others in the EU aren't doing it too before long. Beep-beep."

 

eyeless in gaza

I do realise that what I'm about to write is going to earn me more angry emails and disappoint some of my friends, but I still cannot believe how willing intelligent people are to believe their friends are enemies, and vice versa.

Let me make this clear at the outset: the Jewish lobby is very powerful. It played a role alongside the Apartheid regime in South Africa that was dubious at best, and often uses its financial muscle to influence opinion in both politics and the media. Also, I'm not sure I'd want Mossad as an audience if I chose to criticise Jewry about something.

But the overriding consideration here is the long-term protection and nurture of liberal democracy. Israel is a stable, liberal democracy - the residue of a culture very nearly hounded to its death by the SS, and a strong alloy fused from the united defence of its realm against constant harassment and stealth attack by its neighbours. It is also an unstinting ally of everything for which we stand as Europeans.

The idea that those who wish to destroy Israel (and adamantly refuse to drop this aim) are in any way our friends - or even folks with whom we could easily co-exist in a future world - is beyond wishful thinking: it is irrational, in that it fails to recognise both what Islamism stands for, and what it does in practice.

"It's quite obvious to me" said one respondent to my recent Gaza piece on LibDemVoice, "that you have little or no sympathy with Islam". Correct. Why would I? I'm a supporter of many liberal causes, a monogamous supporter of the continued emancipation of women, and a monoculturalist committed to family life based on love and equality rather than lazy mysoginy. If unsurprisingly envious of what Muslim men have managed to arrange as an accepted social system, I do recognise their patently contrived ideas (on why wives must obey, not talk back, and welcome clitoral destruction) for the controlling male bullshit they so clearly are.

So as you'd imagine given that context, I have watched in horror as an outcry has become a tumult - and then finally 'matured' into a clamour - in favour of the BBC bending to accommodate the Islam dupes' view that the Gaza Disaster Appeal should be broadcast.

Mark Thompson confided to an acquaintance of mine over the weekend that the proposal for a broadcast on behalf of disaster relief in Gaza was 'shot full of holes'. The Beeb's DG added that he had reliable information to the effect that it was 'not unconnected to Hamas aims'. For this reason, the vast majority of Beeb journalists voted against it: and BBC newsmen are hardly slavish supporters of Israel.

Some incredible cant and rubbish is being talked about the whole subject of Gaza at the minute. For example, praise given to the Hamas offer of a one-year truce beggars belief: Napoleon negotiated a similar deal with the British in 1805 - it's what folks do when they're exhausted and need a rest. Does anyone seriously believe that - having been flattened by the Israeli army - radical Hamas is negotiating anything other than time to rearm?

We should all consider the following. Hamas is not a poor, downtrodden organisation: it is massively supported by rich Arabs, terrorist lawlessness and (tangentially) by the Russians. It has already offered $52 million of relief to its electorate - and I use the word electorate advisedly: Hamas is in power on the basis of votes, not guns. Israel eventually bowed to massive international pressure to agree a ceasefire; hands up all those who think Hamas would've done that were the boot on the other foot?

If anyone needed further evidence as to the insensitive hatred Islam has for the Jews, they would do well to note that Britain's Muslim Council lost no time in boycotting Holocaust Day. They would also be well advised to read Middle East Second World War history, and thus learn the overwhelming evidence of how Ba'athists both cooperated with the Nazis and volubly approved of the Final Solution. Wanting it every which way, of course, they now present themselves as deniers of that unprecendented level of genocide.

Britain's Justice Minister Shalid Malik told The Guardian he 'had not met anyone who supported the BBC stance'. I'm sorry to announce this, but that ludicrous remark sums up the altered reality of contemporary Islam: of the three website forums I visited at the weekend without names like God Bless Hitler, support for the Beeb was running at between twelve and seventeen to one. (On the BBCNews site it was over thirty to one, but as a reasonable man I'm prepared to accept an element of bias there.)

People who know me well are aware just how big a prat I think Mark Thompson to be. But he gets my support on this, and he deserves it. Hurrah for vision and Realpolitik.

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25th January 2009

tv listings: key considerations

If one were a consultant to a TV listings site, I wonder - what might you come up with as the most vital thing to get right? Sorry, sorry....for those born after 1980, on a critical path going forward towards a perfectionist route map, how would the importance hierarchy pan out?

Lots of pretty pictures? Nice bright colours? Readable typeface? Right way up? Well, all these would have to be taken into account; but call me wacky and surreal here - call me Bunuel if you like - I guess right up there at the top would be getting the fucking times right.

UKTVNet guide have a tendency to fall down on that Number One thing here and there. Today the mistake was whatever comes above a clanger - a cacophonous tintinabulation perhaps - by advertising the Liverpool Derby Cup Tie at 18.00 hrs.....when it kicked off at 16.00.

I'm perfectly well aware that some of us have a problem with the 24-hour clock. I'm also all for folks with this or that perceptual disability being given a job. I am, however, implacably opposed to mathematically dylexic folks being put in charge of both compiling and proofreading TV listings.

Grrrrrrr.

 

on murdering a spiritualist

No doubt some of you read the Times piece about a committed spiritualist last week who bumped off his wife. It does make one think, this sort of thing - or at least, it does me. It comes under the heading of Unwise Things to Do - as for instance the case last year of an accountant who ripped off the SAS. You can sort of see what'd be coming down the road on that one.

There are umpteen things not to do, and by and large the decision rests upon what the men of the Turf call form. Don't hijack an Israeli plane. Don't tweak Putin's nose on live television. Don't take your knickers off anywhere near Mike Tyson. And don't bump off your wife if you're a real live spiritualist.

You see, being a believer, you will know that your victim has passed over to the other side, and - if not truly at rest - will come back to exact some form of closure, such that he or she can then move onto that astral plane where all one's favourite cats, dogs and seven hundred trillion flies reside.

But astral is not a word one would use in relation to a lady ghost deeply pissed off that she's a ghost, on account of being unexpectedly dead. It's obvious the old bat is going to make the rest of his life a misery of apparition and reparation. And then - when they finally meet Up There - she is presumably going to knock seven bells out of him.

There's no understanding some people is there?

24th January 2009

farting and the women

Long-suffering men of the world unite - you have nothing to fear but your farts. For they will surely ruin your chances of getting laid - and then getting some peace and quiet in the marriage which might conceivably follow such messy business.

Women are, as all blokes know, paranoid. This was summed up by Basil Fawlty's classic line, "No Sybil, I did it just to annoy you". They imagine that chaps break noisy wind with the sole 0bjective of causing raised eyebows, tuts, glares and so forth: whereas boys will go to great lengths in order to avoid such nonsense. Before becoming half an item, men will do anything rather than fart in the presence of a woman. But unlike women, we do not have ultimate control over all things in the material world.

My former business partner Len Weinreich once told me that the secret of getting a beautiful woman to enter one's office was to fart foul wind. This is entirely correct, as men are horribly embarassed by the smell: they know full well that no woman in a meeting was ever in history found guilty of responsibility for a nasty pong.

The truth is that blokes spend long periods of their married lives striving for attention from the other half. After childbirth, for example, I have had mates try everything from cross-dressing to rooftop protests in order to get noticed by the new mum. I do not know of a single success in such an endeavour - but if only they'd thought 'Maybe I should fart'. That would've done it.

Anyway, I'm going to repeat what I was told by a proctologist twenty-seven years ago, in the hope that the odd female here and there might process the information. Men have a small bowel of quite different proportions to that enjoyed by women: it is much smaller, and thus far less amenable to all that wriggling, gyrating, reversing thing as an alternative to phhhrrrrt.

So you see girls, size does matter.

 

the gusto of umph

So much of competitive sport is about ambition. Manchester United beat Spurs 2-1 last Saturday in the FA Cup (a result unlikely to surprise blokes or interest women) but had the away side kept up the tempo of their first twenty minutes - during which they took a deserved lead through an excellent goal - they might well have triumphed.

Virtually nothing to do with commentary upon such occasions is about ambition. Most of it is the result of malapropism, and the rest an unfortunate by-product of unconscious irony. Thus it was that ITV's main commentator Clive Tyldesley told viewers, "Spurs are missing gusto". Who was this international superstar Gusto, we wondered: but Tyldesley's assistant David Pleat only added to the mystery by remarking, "If only they had umph". The pair of them are very probably right: any team able to afford both the Serie A darling Giovanni Gusto and Bundesligue striker Hermann Umph would surely carry off every soccer trophy of note.

I know full well that we have been here many times before, but there is endless fun to be had at the expense of soccer-bollocks, and as none of the TV channels show the slightest sign of spotting how ridiculous they look and sound, hopefully this can continue indefinitely. On this occasion, within seconds of taking the microphone Tyldesley remarked that United's Brazilian defender Fabio Da Silva "is the spitting image of his twin brother". That's not unusual chum, but it may well be his advisors have told him that Pleaty is getting all the laughs - and thus he needs to work harder at being a twat. Don't just be a prop Clive: be a malaprop like Pleaty.

But Clive Tyldesley was outclassed by the former Spurs manager. By half-time, David Pleat had told us when Berbatov should drop off, why his shot had left the Spurs keeper rasping at the air, how Scholes was stretching the ball, and what on earth Ronaldo was doing firing the ball across the pace of the goal. He assured us all as the teams trooped off that Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp was going to give his lads a good verbal talking-to.

Trying to get in on the act, Tyldesey asked what Pleaty thought Redknapp might say. "Well" the latter opined, "I'd have thought he'll tell them to get into the middle third with full possession from the space at the back".

It was ripping stuff, but with Manyooo going into the dressing room 2- 1 in front, as often happens the second forty-five minutes were something of an anti-climax. Tyldesley completely lost interest at one point and began talking about how to get HDTV reception, during which he was distracted by a rare moment of drama. Thus he said only "And for those viewers not watching in High Definition....."

How wonderful it would've been had he found the courage to add "Hahahahahahaha, my God but you're so sad". But of course he didn't. Instead, Clive slipped into that mode beloved of footie-drivellers when the game has become a passing fest of little excitement. When this happens, they drop the preposition between players in the passing line. Thus are born such legends as Neville Tevez, Nani Ronaldo and Da Silva Park. We shall never see their like again.

frosty the snowman

I feel it important to point out that the new film Frost Nixon is not actually about a chap called Frost Nixon. It is of course the story of 1950s conjuror David Nixon, and his fight to avoid being interviewed by the devious Oxbridge graduate Richard 'Tricky Dicky' Frost.

I felt it important to make that clear.

23rd January 2009

the hindmost

I am often asked (he began pompously) why at times my anger seems disproportionate to the role of social observer and general amateur gagman. The following episode might help explain.

We have a peripatetic hairdresser - of whom I've written before. For those who missed earlier episodes, Lorraine is married to a feckless waster by whom she has a delightful little daughter. Dad pays no alimony, but seems to be able to support three cars on his salary as a plasterer. Lorraine's view on the human condition is live and let live, an attitude that generally means the other bastards live well at her expense.

Despite this, our tonsorial styliste is a regular squirrel with her money. This has allowed her to get a mortgage on and buy a terraced cottage. There, she does fostering work with problem teenagers - in between doing the barnets of the idle rich and politely suggesting to hubby that, like, just maybe, he might, you know, cough up a bit towards the daughter.....whom he sees and takes out when he fanices it, but not when he doesn't.

Three years ago she saved yet more cash (£4000) to buy some double-glazed windows, in order to stave off hypothermia during winter. She shopped around, discovered an affordable deal from a long-established company - and made an appointment with one of their sales consultants, ha-ha. This reptile 'sold' her 'better' windows for £7000 on a 0% loan deal for another three grand over two years.....which turned out to be a five-year loan at 17.8% interest.

By the time she discovered the salesman's scam, he'd been fired by the double glazing company. And in the light of crunching credit, his employers in turn brokered-on all their debtors to a debt collection agency.

When I say Lorraine 'discovered' how she'd been defrauded by the salesman, what I mean more precisely is that she got a letter from the debt vigilantes informing her that she owed £6300 - and the debt was rising at the rate of £700 per month.

So our hairdresser rang the double glaziers, who said ooooh no, under no circumstances could they reveal (a) why they'd parted company with the fraudster and (b) where he was now.

Meanwhile, ex-hubby's new partner turned out to be of a litigious nature, and soon persuaded her paramour to sue Lorraine for more access to the daughter. (Why? You may well ask: far be it from me to fathom the mind of those in search of self-justification)

It would be pretentious indeed to say that I have 'taken on' Lorraine's case, because I'm not exactly what you'd call 'qualified' for this sort of work. However, it would be accurate to say that I have today rung the double-glazing folks and informed them that they'll be subpoenad to give us the reason for chummy's dismissal - and set in train a search for the bloke's whereabouts. Further, I've rehearsed our hairdresser's speech to her ex - along the lines of 'you sue me, and I'll set the support agencies of our Sceptred Isle onto you'.

I'll have a mixed night's sleep tonight. My conscience will be clear; what I won't be at all clear about is how our fellow humans can behave in such an unutterably shitty fashion.

 

18th January 2009

gym-gym-jaroo

I am a man of iron will, just in case you didn't already know. Only last year I gave up going to the gym for four months. Not so much as a flower of broccoli has passed my lips since 1965. I can go for years without eating lettuce, drinking Bailey's Irish Cream, chopping wood or opening even one more tin of tempting corned beef. Because my body is a temple. An exact replica of Shirley Temple, aged about eighty-one.

So when I got out of Tesco the other morning - already dressed in my gym kit, having promised myself that I'd go down there and knock off another four hundred calories - I could feel my steel spine and disciplined left cortex saying 'Resist the gymnasium temptation Wardy: go straight home, make the fire, stick a pizza in the Aga - and open a beer'.

But weakness won through. And so it was that I woke up the following day wondering who had given me an anvil implant in the shoulder during the night. The gym is fine up to a point. I think I may have reached that point.

 

job vacancy on A303

There is a bloke about halfway along the A303 who wears half a sandwich board. He wears it on his back, and walks towards the establishment he's advertising. The board says something like 'Great pub just around the corner'. When he gets to the corner, he starts walking backwards the way he came - for about half a mile. He looks pretty pissed off, if I'm honest. I reckon he might resign any minute now. As this could easily be the only job created in Cool Browntannia this week, I'd leg it down there if I was you.

We were on the road to visit chums. Sensible folks, they are - the sort who know it's all up for the global economy but have done everything in their power to ensure they survive. They live in what they themselves admit is a Footballers' Wives area, so to date you wouldn't know there's a recession on. Both the Indian we went to (Le Raj - excellent) and the pub where we had lunch Sunday were heaving.

Back here in wise old Dorvon, restaurants are deserted. Chum Richard and I went to one last week - a pub again - and we were the only diners there. Then we tried the food and realised why. Then we got the bill and double-understood why.

I give them three months tops.

frying tonight

Idly flicking the tv remote in a vain hope of finding something worth watching the other night, it soon became clear to me that there is always at least one channel showing an episode of QI - probably the best and most intelligently amusing panel show developed over the last decade. In a bid to prove this, the BBC seems to have sold it to everyone, so you can watch dear Stephen Fry age five years between 7.30 on Dave and 9.00 on More4 Plus Classics History.

The same's true of Have I got News for You, some of which is now so old, it ought to be called All Our Yesterdays. I watched an episode last week in which Blair's decision to join Bush in the Shock & Awe Show was attracting a cynically bitter sort of humour. And there was an even younger Stephen Fry on Milksop's team. Tune in to BBC4 and you'll probably be able to see him as a student on University Challenge in the days when it was called Varsity Joust or something.

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gee, fellas...how many are you?.

 

Every time I switch on the telly, there's always at least one channel debating how many species are left on Earth, and who the most successful ones are. But if the last three years are anything to go by, easily the most prolific species right now is the G.

Only the year before last, the IMF (and what's it got to do with them, I wonder?) said there were seven of them. Then there were eight. Then twelve. Last week bejesus, it was up to bloody twenty....and today there's thirty of the buggers. What's going on here? If things carry on at this rate, how in God's name will we fit them all on a Summit somewhere?

It's entirely possible, of course, that the sensitive pc folks decided having only eight really sensible and grown-up economies was just so not inclusive, and thus the bar should be lowered a fraction to let more in. I mean, if you're going to do it for Universities, why not economies? Perhaps this is what they mean by economies of scale.

The truth is, I suspect, less prosaic. It wouldn't do for an eightsome to be blamed by thirtysomething other nations for not having the remotest idea what to do in the light of nobody selling anything beyond the odd red cabbage so far in 2009, and no bank on the planet brave enough to lend the money to pay for any more. 'Three red cabbages? Are you nuts? What's their collateral?'

I say we have a mass meeting. Say, two hundred Gs. With two hundred Gs, we could - you know - set up a cooperative or something. A cooperative to encourage - I dunno - entrepreneuralism maybe?

 

14th January 2009

a good summation

Seen on car's rear window this afternoon: 'I love my country, but I'm terrified of my government'.

It would be hard to express the sentiment more succinctly: a combination of the God-fearing, the feminist, the nasty old Queen, the naive baggage and the deluded.

13th January 2009

tertiary alzheimers: some tips

If you have a parent or close relative with this illness, prepare yourself for the strong likelihood that - before the victim sinks into cabbage-mode forever - he or she will enter a violent stage caused by nobody knows what but I'd suspect it's mainly frustration, as Alzheimers tends to hit the brighter folks.

The violence will be accompanied by paranoid delusions and obdurate refusal to wash, shave, get out of bed or....pretty much anything, really.

This means you'll have to move the person to a sealed unit so they can be legally sedated until all meaningful response to anything this side of a 200 megaton thermo-nuclear bomb blast ceases.

It is the Government's responsibility to cough up for this SRN treatment, but they will do anything and everything in their power to avoid doing so.

It is also the social services' responsibility to effect the transfer smoothly and promptly, but you would be entirely insane to entrust this to them, as (a) they don't give a shit and (b) they'll place the patient in the cheapest institution they can find - the sort of institution that would make Bedlam look like the Gold Club in Barbados.

Please do take this advice, otherwise you will regret it. And if this piece sounds angry, good.

sex education: new shocker revealed

On my way down to the gym this afternoon, I found myself behind two teenage schoolgirls discussing a biology test.

"Yerr wul, I failed that test dinneye?" said one, in that interrogatory way young people have.

"You nevva" said the other girl, "'ow's that then?"

"Ahh, iss that conception - contraception fing innit?" she replied without a trace of irony, "I keep gettin' um mixed up".

God forgive me, I laughed out loud. As I'm saying more and more these days, 'If only I was joking'.

 

failsafe rainmaking technique

1. Ring logs supplier and request large load on account of not being able to afford to put ch on

2. Agree delivery for next day at 10.30 am

3. Watch God start to urinate on home at 10.26 until six in the evening.

 

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11th January 2009

gobbledegook found alive

EU....vicious circle

In a sensational development, the dying species gobbledegucis birtspekenium has been discovered alive and well in a large moneypit somewhere of an EU nature as yet unspecified. Going forward, the only fragment of hieroglyphics as yet decoded on an ongoing thus far basis is as follows:

Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction

Introduction

With ordinary interface devices (e.g. keyboard, mouse, touch screen and ultrasonic pen), the interaction of humans with computers is restricted to a particular device at a certain location within a small movement area. A challenge in human computer interaction research is to create tangible interfaces that will make the interaction possible via augmented physical surfaces, graspable objects and ambient media (e.g. wall, tabletop and air), as well as making the interaction natural without the need for a hand held device.

Yes of course it's amusing that cretins write this shit, but it's also bloody annoying that we're all paying for the vast aircraft-carrier of EU bollocks to keep steaming forward over all our rights, liberties and taxes.

I think I restrained myself rather well there, on the whole. Cull an EU idiot today: you know it makes sense.

 

10th January 2009

why prior warning is better

 

the scandal of robin obesity

After guests at Fort Yesterday have been with us but a few minutes, they tend to look out of the kitchen window and remark, "Aren't your robins fat?"

I'm not sure I like this possessive article in relation to them: they're not our robins after all, they're greedy and rather agrressive birds who are so plump they can't balance on our bird-feeders, so they hop around on the ground below picking up the stuff that falls down during the meals enjoyed by the other lucky winged things.

But our friends are right about their peculiarly chubby nature. And what they eventually grasp is that my wife cannot stand to see a single animal going hungry. Jan doesn't think, 'Ah the robins are so gross they can barely bloody fly let alone balance on the bird-feeders, I'll put them on a diet', but rather, 'Oh dear, they're missing out poor things - I'll scatter some organic pumpkin seeds for them'. If they'd eat lumpfish roe, Mrs W would put that down too.

The wonderful by-product of her generosity is that we get the most remarkable selection of avian beauty here. Crested, green and spotted woodpeckers, wrens, every size and shape of tit, greenfinches, kingfishers, chaffinches, sparrows, blackbirds and even the odd nuthatch - a breed whose population is in serious decline, because they can read you see. They read the packets that say 'Warning: contains nuts', imagine there must be something awful about eating nuts - and starve to death, poor dears.

You see, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. As indeed is Health & Safety.

 

how times change

 

9th January 2009

MUSING WITH MR P

 

 

18th December 2008

SO LET'S ALL ROW TOGETHER

 

Desperate at one time to have the police do her bidding, Jacqui Spliff has suddenly worked out that Mayors might wind up having more control over them than her. So Big J has retreated because she 'understands' police concerns about being politicised. I just bet she does.

Junior post office Minister Jim McGovern resigns over plans to rip the Community role out of Royal Mail's remit. Belatedly, Mr McGovern has realised that Lord Maninbum doesn't give a crap about communities.

MEPs ignored Gordon Brown's plea (on behalf of Maninbum) to retain the EU working hours opt-out. Here too, some of the rank and file have sniffed the wind direction - and spotted that people prefer life balance to being chained to a desk.

Methinks a Party rigidly controlled for far too long is starting to rebel....and even one or two of the freaks at the top have in turn sniffed a growing indiscipline. Sources tell me that Ms Stiff is already looking to life after Gordon and government. And growing tired of all the poo perpetually heading in her direction.

 

LIES, DAMNED LIES AND....

Hot on the heels of selectively released pro-Government statistics last week, this week's ONS retail figures show a sector up by 1.4%, while the British Retail Consortium (and everyone else's eyes) show it down by 2.6%. Cynics will of course point the finger at an amoral Government desperate to show the 2.5% VAT cut has worked; but here at Fort Yesterday, we merely point out the vague flim-flam answer Harriet Harman gave to the House yesterday about the 'reform' of the ONS. We point out the 'crime is falling' figures which suddenly showed it going down. We point to the Jowell 'figures' which showed no differences in crime and A&E admissions after the passing of new Drink licensing laws....not borne out by later data - aka, contradicted by them.

Information is power. But the ability to tamper with statistics is absolute power. Nby is going to keep on pressing this point home until enough people wake up.

 

LAVATORIAL HUMOUR

The American car industry may have screeched to a halt and the banking system be insolvent, but the makers of vitreous china for the bathroom keep on pushing back the boundaries of invention.

We've just installed one of those fab-mod-gear oil-damped top closing bog things where the cover ambles down back over the seat in a slow and stylish manner. They're absolutely terrific, until you use another loo that doesn't have this feature, and forget. Now all over our house is the sound of lavvy covers smashing down onto seats.

This of course breaks the old loos, and thus requires further consumption. It is the capitalist model of life, and we should applaud it.

 

16th December 2008

IN THE WAITING ROOM

The winter air is fully of cold, clinging mist in the Old People's Republic of Dorvon at the moment. Rotting leaves make the walkways slippy, but at least the black ice of recent days has retreated for the time being from the roads. When it's like this, one has to force the body out through the front door, but today it was case of necessity. Jan is having problems with her aesophagus, and so after the statutory NHS primary care period of 'monitoring' the condition, today we were off to Dorchester Hospital to get her an endoscopy.

We underwent the traditional experience of everyone who arrives at a hospital by car. If you built a car park five miles wide round hospitals, there still wouldn't be any room. It's like the law of building new roads: if you build it, cars will come - and if you build them wide, even more cars will come. I have this theory that 55% of all cars in the UK are stored in garages, only being used when someone comes home and says 'There's a new car park in Bridport', at which point they dash off to fill it.

Round and round we went. 'There's one, no it isn't, is she coming or going? Are you...oh, you're not? Alright then, damn....there's one over there. Quick, smash through the hedge or we'll be here all day....never mind the woman in the wheelchair THERE'S A FUCKING SPACE OVER THERE!'

In the end, Jan went in to register and I continued my impression of the Flying Peugeot, doomed to roam the Seven Car Parks in eternity. At last, a tiny couple with a very tiny kid in a miniscule push-chair appeared and opened the biggest V-12 Megajeep I've ever seen outside of a war zone. They opened all the doors one by one, until the vehicle looked like two Prince Charles head to head. While DiddyDad worked methodically at Tinytot's various straps, MiniMum moved things out of the back, into the front and then into the huge space inside the back tailgate.

Three, five, seven minutes passed, the only thing recording time being my flashing lights click-clicking away, and a right arm perpetually waving people past. With each one doing so, I imagined a confrontation: 'Just try and get that space, go on - just you try. I dare you punk, make my fucking day'. But everyone just drifted by with glazed eyes and disturbingly old number plates: how long had these people been here?

Daddy was still undoing things. Who was this kid, Harry Houdini? Mum was reaching over to reach stuff, realising she couldn't reach it and so walking very slowly round to the other side. She seemed to need a lot of room for something. It's only a kid, not Godzilla Missus - get on with it.

You could tell this was a modern, egalitarian marriage, because apart from both parents being exactly five inches tall, they discussed everything - and I mean, every minutiae of movement or decision involved in the process of opening a car, putting a kid in it and driving away. Should we put junior on the right or the left? On the roof? In the fuel-tank maybe? And the buggy? Boot? Front? Should it go wheels first or handles first? Is it worth folding the buggy right up, given we're driving ten minutes and then going through this epic again? Yes? No? I dunno, let's have a think.

We've all experienced this: The Folks Who Won't be Rushed. More haste, less speed. And if you're like me, the only thing stopping you from getting out to shout 'HOW FUCKING DIFFICULT CAN THIS BE?' is to wonder things about them. Things like Imagine the negotiations that must've gone on before they could get around to creating Junior. Or I wonder how she sees over the dashboard?

I don't recall how long it was before Hubby scaled the North Face of the driver's side, put his seat-belt on, checked it, and then radioed Houston for a full command-console instrument check. They pulled out as if Junior was a ton of nitroglycerine past its sell-by date, and then tootled off. All I can tell you is that, as I entered Entrance One (North), it was twenty to eleven. Nine and a half minutes to exit a parking space.

Inside the automatic sliding doors (Warning: Doors Slide Automatically) were two bright yellow hand-washing machines. Above them were even brighter red notices, with white-out lettering that bellowed 'WASH YOUR HANDS HERE!' Just myself and another guy with obsessive compulsive disorder used them while I was there observing things. Above our heads boomed a tannoy yelling 'WASH YOUR HANDS HERE!' All around us, consultants, ambulance staff, cleaners and Ladies Off To Meetings walked past, their busy minds having blanked out the imperatives weeks before.

I was in Entrance One (North) but Endoscopy turned out to be near Entrance One (South). I'd been walking for half a county before it occurred to me that I'd merely covered the same ground inside as I had outside walking from the car. 'Endoscopy this way' said the signs, dozens of them, until I expected the next one to say 'Not long to go now to Endoscopy' and the one after that 'You are entering the outskirts of Endoscopy now'. Please have your passport to hand and belt undone.

I went to the loo, idly wondering where Entrance Two (West) might be, and whether there was an Entrance Three (East). But Dorchester Hospital is a two-dimensional Universe in which there are only Ones and Norths and Souths. And eighty-seven thousand notices. The ones in the lavatory over the sink said 'Warning - Hot Water' and the other one said this:

WATER

SOAP

RUB HANDS

RINSE

USE PAPER TOWEL

POLITICIANS AND FEATHER BEDS

You know things are really bad when even bullion dealers are putting this sort of stuff on their websites:

28th November 2008

A FEMINIST WRITES

Yet again nby's editor is being pursued by a WUT* in relation to the reality/delusion line. Two weeks ago we sent an anodyne email to a site called liberalconspiracy.org - a title designed to be ironic, on the grounds of it being a soi-disant part of the liberal-left alliance which will (naturally) be the very thing to release us from the far Right misogynist fascist America-loving State which is disguised as the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. (Pause for intake of breath)

Bear in mind that the email was sent to info@: we had no idea who was at info@liberalconspiracy.org. If only we had known.

The recipient turned out to be a woman whose identity we feel the need to disguise - partly from a sense of fairness, and partly for her own protection. Suffice to say that a brief exchange culminated in the following hilarious email from Ms info@:

'Your understanding of 1, feminism and 2, neuroplasticity is woeful, and basing the various assumptions you have on such is dodgy at best. I don't think that feminists "hold the denial of wiring view", no. I think that people who insist on biological determinism are severely out of date with how our wiring works and need to read up on current scientific thought j ust because I have a vagina doesn't mean I have no familiarity with testosterone either.

I realise that it's not a single issue site, btw, it's just that the bit that is clearly aimed at pissing me off jumped out from your statement of philosophy. Also, your very patronising "I am going to be good mannered even though you're a screaming harpie" schtick is incredibly sexist. Do you think my feeble female brain will melt if you let yourself rip?

Still, if you're hoping to convince me to link to you from the netcast, do carry on patronising me; it's amusing.'

*WUT = Wishful Unthinking Tendency

LITTLE GREEN MEN

Our Damian in a spot of bother

One of the most irritating aspects of having a member of the Opposition running the Capital is that they have to be told stuff - particularly when it involves the police, as the Met comes under his jurisdiction. In the Damian Green affair, this has had far wider ramifications than is usual, because the Mayor's statement about it suggests that the Cabinet has collectively lied.

Boris Johnson was happy to admit (as of course he would be) that he knew of the police intention in advance. So if he did, it must be extremely worrying for the Prime and Home Office ministers that they didn't.

The answer anyone with a scintilla of common sense will reach is that they must have known - but are being first two-faced and then bare-faced in claiming they had no prior knowledge of the operation. (While I accept that the ghastly crypto-liberal Ian Blair's hand may well have been involved in stirring this pot, it seems still more odd that an outgoing half-baked bitter copper would leave the Tories smelling of roses while not telling the liberal elite who were his biggest erstwhile fans).

People have been telling me for over five years that fears for liberty and our rapid descent into totalitarianism are 'risible'. Well, governments use national security as the means of doing two things: defending the State against anti-libertarian forces; and covering up their mistakes. This is so clearly a case of the latter - with absolutely no national security issue involved, involving the actual arrest of a Shadow Immigration minister - that the Government's pathetic attempt to distance itself from it merely confirms this to have been a Plumbing operation which backfired.

Lest we forget, this is the same hopelessly naive Home Secretary who wanted 42 day detention to become law, and has to nby's certain knowledge obtained sign-off to a £12 billion GCHQ carte blanche designed to monitor our every mobile call, website visit and dispatched email.

The Government line that this GCHQ Big Brother facility is 'still under discussion' is a blatant lie. Nby knows this because of leaking. The only guarantee of liberty left after eleven years of New Labour vandalism is a free press with access to what the Government doesn't want us to know. That much of this media set is distracted by trivia (and irresponsibly invasive) is no sort of argument against its continued freedom. Anyone who thinks this new power of near-universal surveillance won't be used to monitor leaking really must have been born yesterday. That it will be used to monitor the content and contacts of sites like this one is equally obvious.

Lord Foulkes asks that the police be allowed to complete their investigation without political interference from the Conservatives. This is high cant: the Shadow immigration minister should be allowed to do his job without fear of arrest by political police.

 

27th November 2008

REST AFTER WATCHING

If they do nothing else, the Cohen brothers make highly intelligent movies. Burn after Reading is no exception. With two big stars involved - both cast against type - and an extremely dark type of humour at the heart of it, the film could very easily have fallen flat on its face. It doesn't do that, but it does stumble quite a bit along the way.

The casting is one problem. With every movie he makes, it becomes more and more clear that George Clooney is an amazing person with a good acting range - but that his best role by far is the smiling, intelligent rogue. In this movie he plays a lecherous but dumb jerk. It's OK but it's not him. Brad Pitt as an even dumber, gay gym instructor was never going to be right, and is in fact all wrong.

The supposition of the film is another weakness - that you can have well-cut tension and appropriate, something-of-the-night music, but a funny script: and by the way, for most of the second hour, it's a very funny script. This is the issue: as always with the Cohens, these elements are superbly done - but they sit uneasily alongside each other.

Finally, the plot is so bizarre that it has to build slowly. The first half of the movie is mostly very subtle and observational satire which - after an hour or so - starts to get almost depressing. When the whole descends into black farce towards the end, it isn't so much a relief as yet another uncomfortable jolt. There is a very real guilt element to one's laughter.

This was probably what both the producers and Clooney had in mind. For at the highest level, Burn after Reading is a disturbing metaphor for life in the West. It is a piece about self-absorption, losing the plot and inappropriate anger. Be it hypochondria, plastic surgery obsessions, concern for status or addiction to fitness, the film's main point is that we are all out of control, and ultimately this will have consequences for everyone: not only will there be tragedy, but there will be utter confusion as to how and why it happened in the first place. It is this last element that makes the movie laugh-out-loud funny in the last twenty minutes.

As the plain Jewish woman searching for bodily perfection, Frances McDormand is the best of the lead actors. The neurosis is wonderfully played - at the level of Woody Allen rather than Barbra Streisand - and is thus sympathetic rather than wacky. Most of the other characters evoke zero empathy in the audience (Clooney's sad git gets a bit here and there) which is as you'd expect in a film silently ripping western hypocrisy apart. And John Malkovitch is being John Malkovitch: an angry nut who says 'fuck' every third word.

But for me the film was stolen by J K Simmons as the CIA director. The combination of bewilderment, panic and casual sociopathy was superbly played.

So - a curate's egg? It's far too good for that. I'd say an omelette employing an edgy ingredient: doesn't quite make it to historic, but still very memorable.

 

STRAWS, BACKS, HOUSES, CARDS, SAND etc etc

Things are near the end for Labour (New or Old) when that cosy home of the Soft Left The Guardian devotes virtually the whole of its news section to attacking both the Emergency Budget proposals and the obvious mendacity surounding it.

Perhaps the first thing to say about Wednesday's Grauniad is just how vastly superior it was to last Sunday's Independent (See Mediocrity). Brilliant investigation of the numbers, challenges to the logic, and a call for the guilty to be charged without any chest-prodding. Love it or loathe it, over the last few years the paper has once again become the title we can't ignore.

The litany of dichotomy was relentless: how could 18.5% have been an option when it seemed to have been an and rather than an or? How can Britain's debt be OK when objective observers are describing UK Government Bonds as 'among the riskiest in the world'? Where is the NHS going in a world where Think-Tanks suggest all public service bets are off? (See Lookouts ibid) How would spending more solve an existing record personal debt problem? How will VAT cuts help given that they won't be felt until after Christmas, and retail price cuts are already ten times bigger?

The Prime Minister's instinct in the face of such overwhelming evidence of directionless incompetence is to form nouns and adjectives into an infinite grid of meaningless assertion. Himself a fan of management consultancy, he has retreated into the form used by this, the last bastion of the scoundrel.

His plan, he told us at PMQs last Wednesday, was to help hard-working families. He also planned to look in a kindly fashion upon ordinary and real families. As for lazy, extraordinary and surreal families, they could whistle Dixie in their underwear for all he cared.

Sadly for Mr Brown, a survey by the BBC of real, down and dirty coal-face families suggests very strongly that they think the Chancellor's stimulation package is a bit of a sick joke. In fact for once, The Guardian's writers seemed to be in concert with the beat of the street.

TOO MUCH TO DRINK, AND THE STRANGE CASE OF RBS

The above is a shot taken at a recent rock concert sponsored by RBS. As a metaphor for global banking right now, it would be hard to beat: sloshed young people out of control and partying on in the certainty of a coming Gotterdammerung.

For those who might think this a shallow dig at the already shell-shocked financial fraternity, let me relate a small anecdote. Regular readers of Lookout will know that I've taken the plunge into gold investment. I have done this through a structured note with RBS, the downside of which is 10%, and the upside (if gold gains anything at all over the next two years) is 230%.

This is a bank that you and I own. A bank which is, very clearly, absolutely desperate for deposits. Because to be honest with you, if RBS can win on this deal between now and November 2010, then I am that man on a 1959 Sturmey Archer bicycle about to set off for the planet Saturn.

26th November 2008

 

PUPPY LOVE

At six months, Tiggy is glad to be out of the high-chair

To the endearing practice of chewing shoes and hiding laces, youngest dog Tiggy has now taken up the sport of wood logistics. The practice is simple, and consists of stealing all the fire kindling bit by bit, breaking it down into sizes suitable for garden bark mulch and then guarding the resultant detritus fiercely - whether it be in bedroom, sitting room, hall or kitchen. It's important to remember this, because her little piles are now to be found in all of those places. Shoes go in kitchen cupboards and their laces under sofas, but chewed wood goes everywhere.

When Foxie was a pup, there was none of this transporting and hiding and stealing nonsense. She was always rather more genteel - albeit just as greedy. Mrs Tiggywinkle is fashioned from a different mould, which hopefully has now been broken.

She has at least stopped the practice of holding her wee while on walks, the better to save it for pouring onto doormats and carpets. But this is chiefly a by-product of excitement - for our Norfolk puppy has discovered squirrels.

Squirrels have a key advantage over toys, wood and shoes in that they run away. This cuts out the tiresome need to keep moving things into more exciting positions - one has something to chase. And the chase is the thing: so many trees, so many nuts on the ground, so many squirrels, so many near misses. Her look once the rodents zip up towards the safety of branches is priceless: 'I say c'mon - that's not fair. Lie down and be torn to shreds you big fat grey cheat'.

We can't wait for her to discover geckos.

Home

 

23rd November 2008

WHAT WE MUST DO IS STIMULATE THE FISCAL

Lord Birt undergoing fiscal stimulation

Our Schleswig-Holstein deviancy correspondent Dieter von Ausgang has written to say that fiscal stimulation is the new borrowing. Echoes of yesterday's newsletter*, and also a sure sign that the authorities have things under control. They were out of control, but new stocks arrived last Friday, so now we will have too much control. This is high finance, and far too complex for the average mind. I try not to think about it, but it's hard given that politicians say 'fiscal stimulation' at the moment as if they all have that Rain Man disease.

Like Herr Ausgang, I suspect that MPs lack a talent for improv, and thus have to go into television studios armed with the latest gob-weapon designed to bludgeon interviewers to death. Seven years ago it was weapons of mass destruction, five years ago multicultural society, three years ago market forces and ten months ago temporary public ownership.

It would be amusing to invent a new one, and then see how quickly Hazel Blears and Keith Vaz could be cajoled into saying it. I thought perhaps something like The Debit Lunch, or early malnutrition poverty. Uber-prime bending sounds plausible. As does financial tourettes syndrome.

*To receive the newsletter, go here

 

THE JEAN GENIE

Of all the pairs of chinos and jeans I own, there are only two I care about. They simply fit better and sit differently on me compared to all the others. There is no discernible difference in size or cut that I can spot, but if I arrive at the cupboard and they're in the wash, it ruins my day.

'Then wash them yourself you idle git' I hear you think, but there are demarcation rules in our house and it doesn't do to break them. I do fires, casseroles, spring chicken, soups, salad dressings, training the dogs to sit, reading the papers, cleaning the downstairs areas, clearing out the gutters, speaking French, most of the gags and all the articles. Jan does washing, ironing, the bedrooms, financial admin, chilli con carne, salmon, watching the telly, and renewing stuff. Food shopping, dog-walking and gardening are the only things we share: it is the secret of a happy marriage.

Now look what you've made me do, I've digressed again. So why is it that all trousers are meant to be the same size, but clearly aren't? Is it because cutters get bored and change a few things here and there? Or are there Friday afternoon Red Rock jeans the same as there used to be Friday afternoon cars? Answers on a postal order please to the usual address.

SKY'S THE LIMIT

This from the man allegedly in charge of Sky's media relations department - in response to my query for a piece I'm writing at the minute:

'I cannot think of a way that we could calculate how much income Sky made from UK soccer in 2007-8'.

I bet Rupert knows it every which way, chum. And I bet you do too.

Stonewalling when the media call with an awkward question is reasonably efficient, but not in the same league as software manufactures and mobile phone service providers. This is because sometimes those with publicity departments really do want to talk to the press, whereas those in charge of service complaints, subscription cancellation and technical help never want to talk to anyone.

Not a single computer software brand, digital supplier, mobile phone service provider or ISP search engine has a telephone number on their sites. To talk to Setanta's press boys, you have to write them a letter. Setanta in particular are gaining an appalling reputation for going la-la-la-la-la when customers want to unsubscribe.

This is fraudulent avoidance, and should be illegal. I've already written to all three parties offering it as the new fiscal stimulus,and shall keep you posted.

 

22nd November 2008

VOYEURS FROM SPACE

Ever since the human race began larging it, the list of things visible from space has been getting longer every year. Arabian fireworks are the latest addition, joining The Great Wall of China, various South American volcanoes, Australian New Year celebrations, the early evening lights of New York and Christian Ronaldo's ego as things that can be seen with the naked eye from above the ozone layer.

However, I am obliged to point out that there aren't any eyes out there as such, naked or otherwise. As is the way with surveillance these days, there are thousands of cameras - but they don't count: the Pentagon has orbiting lenses these days that can spot sex on the ground between severely inhibited fleas.

The only folks likely to see anything from space are the occasional, frequently-changed astronauts and billionaires unfortunate enough to be shot into space atop Russian and American rockets. I've been listening on and off to astronaut/Earth communications for nearly half a century, and I can't recall anyone remarking upon the Sydney Bridge lights. They tend to go on about the more spectacular stuff like weather fronts, sunrises, the Moon and so forth.

It is predictably human that our species thinks things we make, build and emit might be of the remotest interest to whoever or whatever is out there. In the 1970s, there was a fashion in space launches for sending messages and signals into deep space. In a thousand years time, one of these may fall into the hands of an advanced species: the mind boggles at what they might make of Mud singing Hair of the Dog.

Home

 

20th November 2008

FOLDS, CREASES AND PLEATS

Germany 1 England 2

In the latest chapter of Mi Sono Parliamo Pleat, ITV's most ridiculed soccer commentator introduced an impressive range of new phrases for footie viewers to digest. While a game between England and Germany is always good for rhetorical hyperbole, such occasions would still be dull affairs without David Pleat's uniquely surreal contribution.

There now follows a painstakingly accurate summary of Pleaty's analysis during the game's first fourteen minutes.

"Yes, and England are looking for upfront holding roles and ascendancies.....we need to keep it nice and lively, progressing in the wide positions - England mustn't freeze up or they will be frozen out. What we're looking for is a nice feel to the shape while keeping a high line, and it's good to see that so far Carrick has interesting feet."

This four-dimensional syntax showed signs of Pleat having made a close study of Bryan Sewell talking about art; but ignoring his impenetrable commentary entirely, the first quarter-hour had England clearly dominating play - a dominance which, for once, we converted into a lead via Upson's scrambled goal.

David Pleat declared this "a great opportunity for England to relax, pass easily, play with fluidity and be tight. I see good movement among the bodies, but we need to get in behind them and slip the quick players further up the field". If ever the Nation tires of such piffle, a secure career in management consultancy beckons for this eccentrically plausible man.

It is a feature of English commentary upon England soccer games that the opposing side are of only tangential interest. Opponents are depicted merely as a collective nuisance in the way of us winning every game 91-0. So to be objective for a sentence or two, the Germans had good ideas but lacked the technical skill to make them work. With England, it was more a case of having upped the skill level without as yet having garnered any creative ideas with which to lift things beyond competent defending and methodical attacking.

To be fair, we were without half a dozen leading players and the German side was the sort of experimental team they tend to put out between World Cups. This being the reality, the pundits' half-time verdict was disturbingly triumphant: we were 'in control', and the Germans showed 'no immediate fret'. Even the previously dodgey English goalkeeping substitute Carson was described as 'solid'. England captain John Terry was 'a rock'.

The German equalising goal soon after half-time thus came as no surprise. The solid keeper Carson got involved in a misunderstanding with the Terry the Rock, and the obscure young striker Helmes was left with the formality of a tap-in.

The one genuinely encouraging thing about England's display from here on was the admirably workmanlike way in which the side shrugged off this setback, buckling down to the heavy task of boring Germany to death. In this respect, the influence of a disciplined Italian coach was very obvious. So on balance, when Terry headed the winner from a free kick with ten minutes left, it was no less than England deserved. Predictably, Pleat hailed the goal as penatrive.

In summary, while the England squad will have learned a great deal from this game, even the intelligent soccer viewer took nothing from it whatsoever. Cynical as this report may seem, the jury is still out as to whether Capello's reign will produce an England side that can win things, or one that can compete at the highest level with a degree of elan, or one that can avoid disgracing itself without exciting anyone. Ultimately, we will not produce a stylish, winning England side until more money goes back down to the game's roots, and is converted into self-belief. In the meantime, we must give Capello credit for putting together competent performances.

 

19th November 2008

 

GOOD MEN DOING SOMETHING

An nbyer in Tolworth (Surrey) has sent the following new episode on slithery things:

'Tesco has promised to completely remodel Tolworth roundabout and will build a five-storey community centre, if plans to be officially unveiled this weekend get the nod.

The supermarket giant has released the first artists’ impression of the controversial new Tesco supermarket and flats, which the company hopes to build in Tolworth by 2013. The designs are being previewed at a special exhibition this weekend, to give residents the chance to have their say before Tesco submits a planning application next month.

The supermarket chain withdrew its last planning application in February 2007 after a fierce backlash from residents.

Bosses now hope the revised plan will win public support.'

So much for "but it's not gonna make any difference...."

CALLING FOR SECONDS

I think it's time we brought back duelling. If nothing else, it will take some pressure off the judicial system, and help wipe out undesirables. Above all, it will put so many lawyers out of work, the day of the Bill's passage will be forever treated as a day for rejoicing - and perhaps even a public holiday.

We have come a long way from "Have a care sir or I shall have to inform my seconds" to "Wharrafuck are you lookin' at?". Ever since the 1832 Reform Act regrettably forced the Courts to treat everyone equally, the natural recourse of those lower orders involved in a punch-up has been to the Law - either voluntarily or otherwise.

However, not only is the legal system far too invasive in our lives already, it also has much more important things to do. One thinks of snaring homophobes, suing trees, deciding the precise level of male impoverishment in divorce cases and so forth. A bullet's decision is speedier, and carries a greater degree of finality.

Not to be ignored, of course, is the gargoyle-elimination dimension of duelling. Had for instance Mr El H'arrod simply been called out by the Duke of Edinburgh for his disgraceful remarks on the subject of conspiracy to drive white Fiats in Parisian tunnels, Philip would have sent this unpleasant MP-briber on to the virginal delights of Islamic Heaven and doubled the Windsors' standing in the opinion polls with one deft squeeze of a hair-trigger.

For the sporting enthusiast, soccer would be transformed - and entirely for the better - by the reintroduction of duelling. An unseemly brawl between Wayne Scowl and Dudier Gobbler might be replaced by the sort of shoot-out to make penalties after extra time seem tame by comparison. The commercial opportunities afforded by instant betting on such contests are too obvious to require any expansion here - and the savings on football club wage bills enormous.

Drawing a discreet veil over the delicious prospect of political duelling, the broader ramifications for society as a whole are enough to quicken the heart of even the coldest engineer. Gender balancing is all well and good, but brain-capacity balancing could revolutionise our culture in a matter of months. The feckless yob with no thought for tomorrow might turn up at dawn with a hangover and wave his Colt Magnum around wildly: but the calmly insignificant and quietly prepared opponent from the Waterstones biography section would surely dispatch him with one round from a Webley & Scott.

There are those who might say the whole scheme could be spoiled by the emergence of champions - yeomanry whose job was to appear on behalf of their employers at duelling contests. I cannot see anything but good in this: it would ensure the survival of vital artistic genes owned by the creatively fey cadres - but equally certainly mean the destruction of those Oxbridge twits who feel themselves omnipotent, and thus above any help from our more practical petit-bourgeois stock.

It goes without saying that all men - or women - winning a duel resulting in the death of the other shall be absolved of all guilt. Looking at the 2007 statistics for murder - and the remarkable fact that murderers and their victims are almost always known to each other - I think it self-evident that the time spent by bored Beaks listening to the clearly mendacious pleading of defence barristers would be decimated. Instead of being the bleeding-heart land where everyone is a victim, if my idea is adopted, in future Britain will become a land of three clearly delineated social groups: valiant heroes, deserved victims and black-hearted winners destined to be challenged and destroyed by the valiant heroes. There can be only one Darwinian result from that, and I look forward to it.

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18th November 2008

 

THE NEXT AUSSIE OUTBACK CHALLENGE: A DOORMAT

Zucker....bazoomas

'The local council owner of a block of flats has banned doormat use by its residents, on the orders of Health & Safety.' (Daily Mirror)

The producers of I'm washed up let me stay in here have at last found a challenge unlikely to make WAG-woman Carly blub: the Doormat Test. The task (should Carly choose to accept it) is to step onto a horse-hair mat, wipe her feet, and then walk on without breaking any limbs.

Said soccer-star boyfriend Joe Cole "I been lined up to do the commentary right, an I reckon my girl won't let me down cos like underneaf all them tears an shit right, seefingizzlike she's got bottle an we're in love innit".

I can't wait for the post-replay analysis by Cole:

"An yes she's seen the mat an she's on it and there look she's wiped 'er feet an then she's off again an' she's in the kitchen. Brirrant."

From what I hear, Carly is a bit of a doormat herself.

 

A SEER'S LOT IS NOT A HAPPY ONE

'He who says "I told you so" should expect no bouquets' my great aunt Lizzie used to say - often immediately before saying "I told you so".

I've never understood the wisdom of that aphorism: it seems by definition to have been invented by the grasshoppers of life rather than the squirrels. Just because one is angry that winter has indeed arrived and those Bermuda shorts no longer seem quite so practical, there is no reason on God's earth to tell those with foresight to shut up - other than petulance.

In case folks hadn't considered this, the syndrome is also pretty damned annoying for we of the soothsaying tendency. In fact, the I-told-you-so words tend to spill out when the fourteenth twit that day has said "I've lost a third of my wealth - how did that happen?"

There are various responses to that rhetorical enquiry - "You were too busy making more, you pillock", "You have all the grounded common sense of a depressed lemming", "Because you're a jerk" - but the more usual line tends to be, "Well, I did tell you this would happen".

The next bit can be very hard to bear if you're as much of an intolerant know-all as me. And it tends to go like this:

"Oh right, yeh - well, it's easy to be wise after the event innit?"

An acquaintance of roughly half my age said almost exactly this to me a couple of months ago. This was after three years of telling me I was a grumpy old man and why couldn't I lighten up. Only the intervention of a third party much larger than either of us stopped the exchange turning rather ugly.

It's a funny old thing, your life: ever since 2004 and nby's predictions of a house crash, market crash, national insolvency, Brown as human disaster area and the plummetting Pound, just the two mates who differed from my view have said. "Yup, you were right all along". But then, we're all like that - because we're all human.

And equally, no friends have pointed out that my certainty of a Martian invasion before September 2006 was a little off-beam.

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17th November 2008

 

THANK GOD FOR THE G20

IMF...yes we Strauss-Kahn

In the light of the momentous and entirely confusing output from the G20, markets around the world showed their enthusiasm for species togetherness by heading further south yet again.

Perhaps they were worried about the pledge to quickly and gradually produce local stimulus packages not coorodinated internationally. Or puzzled by the sight of so many Friedman worshippers shouting 'hear, um, I think' as State injections were announced by most people and then rejected by the Americans. Possibly, they took one look at the whole over-hyped, carbon Bigfoot shambles and thought "Ooooohhh deeeaaaarrrr...."

But luckily, a secret weapon appeared over the horizon. Arise Sir Osborne, slayer of dragons and propper-up of things without legs or engines. For no sooner had Georgie-Porgie pulled out a plum at the weekend than Sterling bounced back up by 2%. And as the Americans discovered who he was, the Dow jumped 200 points after midday New York time.

And so our global staregy is clear: we wheel the Shadow Chancellor around the world to say rude things about Chinese overheating, Japanese deflation, American dollar disaster and Russian infection collapsing the EU. Then wait for the inevitable recovery.

More amusingly serious was the laughable attempt by Lord Munchingbum on Radio Four's Today this morning to lumber The Osborne Child (see Opinion) with responsibility for Sterling's demise. This is akin to blaming Rory Bremner for the Glencoe massacre.

And talking of Bremner, if you haven't been watching his special four-parter Silly Money, then you've been missing a well-informed treat. Final episode Tuesday evening, 18.11.08

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

My wife had a urinary infection last week, and after flushing out with Cranberry juice for three days, she gave up and got some antibiotics from the GP - Cyprofloxicyn.

They gave her six tablets - three days supply. This is the guideline for Cypro these days - in the UK's flourishing better-than-ever NHS. Everywhere else in the world it's four days. It's just the dead hand of accountancy again - the same cadaverous extremity which nearly did for me entirely fifteen years ago.

If not enough antibiotic is prescribed, one or two things happen: the infection comes back - having this time developend an immunity; and often, the infection spreads to other more important organs like the bladder or the prostate. This will then result in a far higher cost of medication - plus in many cases a consultant's fee. In my case, it resulted in eighteen months of misery.

But this is minor stuff, is it not? True - now read this.

A close friend's brother died the week before last. He died because a second MRI scan to see if the cancer had spread to his bowel was deemed 'unnecessary'. Great call by the folks with big hair.

The rise and rise of the management accountant in our economic culture is one of the major causes of overworked people with life imbalance, stupid cuts that are this year's solution and next year's problem, dishonest reporting of results - and above all, risk aversion in favour of shareholder return. It's such an obvious syndrome I'm amazed I have to keep boffing on about it.

I've nothing against accountants - in their place. And that place is behind the scoreboard, not at the crease.

 

OFF THE BUSES

Reg Varney - the man who held the world record for Brylcreem usership - shuffled off the coil at the weekend. I was astonished to read that he was 92.

Although most folks remember him chiefly as Stan the clippie from On the Buses, Varney's first big TV hit was in the late 1950s as the head of cutting in The Rag Trade. Very much a product of its time, and a bit sub-Boulting Brothers, The Rage Trade starred Miriam Karlin as the shop steward ("Everybody out!") and Peter Jones as Mr Fenner the Jewish ownerof Gamma Garments. As a comedy, it hinged around trade union cliches, Jewishness, and the relative rarity in those days of a workplace where there was just one man and lots of women.

It was also a major breakthrough for Barbara Windsor - and the adorable Sheila Hancock, with a bit part as one of the cutting girls. She later married John Thaw - and of course went on to bigger things. One of the great British character actresses, Hancock remains an underrated national treasure.

Karlin, Jones and Hancock

16th November 2008

HIGHLY PAID AND COMPLETELY WRONG

Capital Economics opined this weekend in the Sundry Mimes that Gold will fall in value, as we are heading for a mega-deflationary era.

This is a classic case of over-educated twits missing two key paragraphs from Page One: that fear is what makes gold rise in price - and we are all feared up right now; and the next era will inevitably be one of inflation in some areas (fuel) and deflation in others (motor-drive olive-stoners).

Gold will explode in price once the Fort Knox dampeners are removed (See Gold).

But if you're in any doubt, cast back to some of CE's other firm predictions:

BBC October 2003 - House prices are set to fall by 20% in the next 18 months, a leading economics firm predicts. - Capital Economics argues that central banks in both the US and UK have fuelled the housing bubble by keeping interest rates deliberately low, and house prices are now at "dangerously high levels." It predicts that average house prices will fall from £135,000 in 2004 to below £110,000 in 2007, before beginning a more gradual recovery. WRONG!

BBC April 2007 - Capital Economics Turns Bullish ? - Capital Economics, which in 2003 famously predicted that the UK was headed for house price falls of up to 20%, broadly agrees with Mr Boulger's upbeat analysis. "It gets to a stage when you can't keep saying a crash will happen while prices keep on rising," Ed Stansfield, analyst at Capital Economics, admits. WRONG!

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15th November 2008

ON THEIR BEST BEHAVIOUR

HBOS shareholders were warned last Friday that resisting free taxpayer money in the shape of a heavily-subsidised LloydsTSB takeover would result in the bank being nationalised. In short, stick that where monkeys stick their nuts.

Lord Massagemebum meanwhile is forced once again to warn banks that pulling the rug out from the few entrepreneurs trying to turn a decent profit will cause him to introduce those bankers to somewhat insistent Turkish proctologists of his acquaintance.

And interbank lending rates remain high despite 700 billion quid of our money being applied as some kind of laxative.

My apologies for the anal theme to all this, but it does seem to me appropriate for a sector of capitalism seemingly occupied entirely by shits.

These people will never get it. Protected for thirty years by a framed debate able to smear anyone with a better idea as a dangerous Commie, they fail to see that not only has the gravy train been derailed - there's no replacement train on the way.

TESCO SLITHERS INTO LYME REGIS

Woolworths has closed down on Lyme's historic Broad Street - with its unique view of the Channel at the bottom, listed buildings, cosy pubs, art deco cinema and delightful selection of mainly independent retailers as yet unsullied by the likes of Coffee Banana Brasserie Republic or some other such bollocks.

Woolworths is the last remaining example of hopelessly erratic and disorganised retailing typified by the variety store of 1955 Britain. All its stores should have an A-Star Grade I listing on them, up to and including the staff: especially the staff.

But such is not the way in Cool Bankruptia. So just twenty yards from a more than adequate Coop convenience store, the appalling Tesco people are moving in with their Finest and their fake Value brands and their Stepford Wife till girls. And they shall not rest until their perfect shiny apples or ambient Chinese meals and line-caught gently farmed pre-gutted Sea Bass have knackered every other food business in town.

Who can know what genus of plant-life allowed this planning permission through? Who can tell what number of tenners or numbered Swiss accounts oiled the wheels of this economic steamroller? Who knows how the Devil any deliveries will take place to the store in a seaside town already choking with cars? Who knows what madness overcame the Trouser Snake and persuaded him to appoint the yogurt Hazel Blears as Culture Secretary?

OLD FOLKS ALSO HAD CRAP DRESS SENSE IN THE 1970s

What everyone should do on rainy Sunday afternoons (when lunch has been digested and the papers have been scanned for evidence of remaining British IQ) is get out family photos and look at what the older generation were doing during Glam Rock.

This will reveal the following:

1. People over fifty had sideburns

2. They had hair over their ears

3. They wore flared trousers

4. Their shoe heels - while not Cuban or Stacks - nevertheless showed evidence of what the Americans call lifts.

What the shots will not show, natch, is that at one and the same time they were all wittering on about about how they couldn't tell the boys from the girls these days.

And for what it's worth, their sons now sport trendy bald heads, and their daughters have hair cut in Posh Beckham gamine style.

Plus ca change.

 

FREE TRADE & REGULATION....OR PERHAPS MORE OF THE SAME, WITH JUST A PINCH OF PROTECTIONISM

As the Great Gordo breezes into the USA, his message is clear: you've gotta do what I've done. Otherwise, a dire outcome can be the only result....especially for me.

Sadly for Gordonzola Cheese ("I'm sure the House will join with me in paying tribute to our gallant etc etc") there are noises off.

The biggest of these are the Weebles of Wall Street, who as we all know can wobble but must not be allowed to fall down. Like a prizefighter talking a good game into that CBS microphone a minute after the ref stops the fight, the neo-liberalist alliance (led by Dubya in a Hitlerite scorched-earth blow up some bridges pre-G20 speech) continue and amplify the mantra of There Is No Alternative to the MericanWayee.

Smaller but louder, at the other end of the spectrum sits the unlikely form of Sarko - the man who was created to turn France into Singapore, and sweep away all those scum with their inconvenient road-blocks and banlieue riots. The Good European who thought he could do business with the Vlads - and discovered they were even more Machiavellian than him - now thinks the way to be a good European is to say 'France first and everyone else last'. Imagine what the bugger will do when he's no longer a revolving Euro-President.

After a short 'G20 Effect' rally last Thursday, the media were replete with 'leaked' stories just desperate to manage down expectations of the meeting.

Hang on chaps, the idea is to get people's hopes up. Calling Franklin Delano Roosevelt....Franklin Delano Roosevelt?.......

14th November 2008

BOLSHOI CHAIRS

This is a former Communist Party game only two can play. In fact, only people called Medvedev and Putin can play.

Mr Putin gives Mr Medvedev his job to mind for four years, during which time he takes the minor post of Prime Minister. Then Mr Medvedev asks the Duma to extend the Presidential term from four to six years with the reassurance that he will not seek that office. Then Mr Putin stands for two terms as President.

Then we did have jelly and cheesy wotsits and we were all very sick and invaded Poland.

G20 ROULETTE

This is a game billions of people must play, whether they like it or not. The rules are very simple so long as you pay attention.

Twenty severely damaged greasy pole climbers ('the jokers') meet in the capital of the land which has caused most of the world's financial trauma despite being unsure where anywhere else in that world is.

Although these jokers have nothing to offer in the way of solutions, the sight of arriving limousines excites the players and they put all their money on UP.

Everyone then goes to sleep, and the next day nothing has changed so all the players put their money on DOWN.

The game continues through BLACK, RED, FORWARD, BACK, IN and OUT until everyone is both exhausted and broke.

Then everyone borrows some more and the game starts again.

12th November 2008

THE REGAL TWIRL

Royals do not spin, they twirl in a timelessly stylish fashion. However, as Charles hits the Big Six-Oh, the twirl has become more of a whirl: somewhere in the recesses of Fort Chuck, a dervish is working overtime to continue reshaping our heir to the throne.

We've had an up-and-down relationship over the years, Charles and I. In the 1950s I remember being forced to put my money into savings stamps with his chubby face on. This was entered in my life-ledger as cash that would've been far better employed buying Standard tuppenny cannon fireworks. By the mid 1960s, this resentment had hardened into the view of him as a bit of a twerp (plastered hair and ghastly parting); but then I heard him being interviewed by Jack de Manio on his 21st birthday in 1969, and decided he was amusing. As he plunged into and out of the waves on various Aussie beaches and didn't show the slightest interest in getting married, he rose further in my estimation: for a brief period, he seemed to be almost a hunk....a demihunk, perhaps.

On my arrival in London during 1971, I fell into a circle which - by chance - was quite well informed about what fun Princess Anne was, and what a prig Charles seemed to be. Equally however, I heard so many anecdotes about what a complete arse Prince Philip is, some sympathy for the future Charles III returned. Not too long afterwards, the next in line met the woman who was to become a style icon until her collision with a Parisian rampart in 1997.

Recently, I've observed that young Harry is being touted by endless wannabe Royal suit suppliers as a style icon. I have a simple view about style icons: they tend to be quite abnormally messed up. Also thick, and ineluctably attention seeking. Wills takes after his Dad and Mum in all their best traits; Harry seems to have inherited the residue.

But rewinding to Paris, Charles behaved impeccably. While the chatterers were chucking gladioli at the funeral car, he took charge, comforted his sons and - on one occasion - told his father to 'fuck off' when he moaned about how the British were responding to Diana's demise. He's never been so high in my esteem. When some gobby employee gave him a hard time (and a rude memo from him about it was leaked) I wrote to him saying fear not Old Top, the real people are right with you.

And then the see-it-coming-a-mile-off stuff to move Camilla from pariah to princess got going, and the Heir went down a snake again. By the time the Ritz bunfight occurred, I'd written him off as just another celeb whose only point of difference was a tendency to dress like my grandad.

Now, the Royal Wow-He's-Sixty Machine has gone into overdrive. The Monarch herself has blessed his succession, and everywhere one looks there is Prince's Trust this and Duchy products that. But on balance, Charles remains a curate's egg. His architectural taste is leaden, his views on many subjects naive, his desire to mend broken lives genuine and never-ending, his distrust of agrobusiness entirely commendable.

 

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10th November 2008

O'BAMA

A big YouTube hit at the moment is an Irish band singing There's no one as Irish as Barack Obama. I would've thought there were lots of folks more Irish than the President-elect, but it certainly is true that his great-grandfather came from the Emerald Isle. However, I have this theory that Homo sapiens did not actually kick off in Africa at all, but in Eire.

With the contemporary interest in genealogy, the first port of call for hacks when somebody becomes famous or reaches the top is to trace that person's ancestry. And I'm telling you, every single time they wind up having at least partially originated in Ireland.

I have it on good authority, for example, that Putin's original family name was Poteen. And Glam Rock began first in Ireland as Shamrock. Straight up.

 

AN UNCOMMON COLD

Every year there is a new cold virus, and every year it seems somehow to be more eclectically fiendish than last year's model.

The one Jan and I have at the moment isn't flu. It isn't even what Hilary Strident would call man-flu. And it certainly isn't a common cold: this is a highly refined and well-read cold that displays a creativity far beyond the abilities of anything vulgar. And it is ghastly.

Why, I wonder, do we call it a cold? I suppose originally it was the shivering thing, but as much of the time one's face feels hot, one's throat feels like the sands of the desert and the nose is on fire, 'cold' is not the soubriquet one would instinctively choose in a psychometric test.

As for the 2008 version, I'd probably plump immediately for something like Black Death. Granted, there are no pustules (yet) but the varietal symptomology is bewildering. The stages are as follows:

1. Sore throat. No, that doesn't do it: a throat within which a hyperactive goblin has been scraping away with a Brillo pad and hydrochloric acid for six months.

2. Sensation in the cranium similar to that experienced by those unfortunate enough to have undergone a rabid dog implant.

3. Expulsion of enough liquid from the nasal area to obviate a World Snot Shortage, should this ever occur.

4. A desire to sleep, and tell any interfering Prince keen on the waking-kissing solution to fuck off.

5. Taste in the tonsil region to beat the worst olfactory experience of even the most committed consumer of sea urchin excrement.

6. Evacuation of all food and liquid infected by appalling phlegm at 5.

7. Irritatingly, the ability after Day Two to function perfectly normally and therefore be denied crucified-pilgrim-meets-burned-martyr status

 

FOXHOLE IN CAIRO

 

It transpires that part of the reason for high security during our recent stay in Sharm el Sheikh was the presence of Anthony Blair QC at the nearby conference centre. Moral Tone was busy managing the expectations of everyone from Hamas to Rupert Murdoch, which is as we all know his abiding skill.

I know this because the Legacy Man was interviewed Sunday evening on the BBCNews channel. Here is a brief resume of what Blurrrrghhr said: Well, hey, look - what I think we've managed to do is get the Palestinians and lots of other folks with beards and guns plus also the Israelis to understand that a viable Palestinian State and a defensible State of Israel are central to the whole peace thing.

Thank God we've cleared that up. Let us now move on from all talk of a German Protectorate in Rommelland and the resurgent OAS in French Algeria towards consideration of what the likely effects of Italy's bombing of Abysinnia might mean for the League of Nations.

MARKET RESEARCH

Here's a thought: instead of spending oodles of dosh on a sort of random money-throwing contest to find out exactly what the banker persons seek, why not conduct some market research among these movers and shakers in a last-ditch attempt to arrive at a package of which - you never know - they could bring themselves to approve?

I'm not suggesting this will move us forward, but I do think it might at least justify the mass slaughter which would inevitably follow their demands. So if nothing else, when some future War Crimes Commission wonders why Internment Camps sprouted all over the UK, we can say "Well, we asked the buggers what they wanted, and it was so daft we decided to section them".

 

BACK NOT FORWARD

Now that GCHQ has been given carte blanche (via its vast new surveillance budget) to monitor every mobile phone call, text and website visit any and all of us make, it is becoming increasingly clear how the Resistance will take shape in the coming years. Revolutionaries comme moi will simply revert to that old favourite which never got spammed out, or sent to an unrecognised address: the letter.

While the British seem happy to have their every communication invaded by Jacquie Spliff and her Thought Police, anyone over the age of forty would balk at their letters being opened. And to be honest, even MI6 don't have the personpower to steam open billions of letters each year. Add to this a simple code via which apparent banality hides murderous intentions, and hey presto - an entirely undetectable medium of communication.

If Crozier starts steaming the bloody things open, then we'll move on to carrier pigeons, the pony express, morse code, sign language, sky writing or whatever else it takes.

The Government target is for everyone to be employed in GCHQ by 2020, by the way.

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9th November 2008

ARABIC TAPS

Now here's something with which to amaze your friends at parties: Arab mixer taps work the other way round to ours. After a week in Egypt during which I got scalded or frozen without meaning to more than once, close examination revealed that their maximum heat is on the left, while ours is on the right. I know that with separate taps this doesn't apply, but shut up and let me get on with it.

Why should this be? My best guess is that your Arab, being dyslexic, writes from right to left. He (and let's be clear on this, it's hardly ever 'she' in Abdul's World) therefore works on the principle of starting at 0 (right) and going up to 100 (left).

But we need to keep this contrarian tendency under control. The Chinese write from top to bottom, and various South American tribes don't write at all. I think we need an international standard before someone gets seriously hurt.

I wonder how Peter Madforbum's taps work.

COOKING FOR BOYS

Wandering around Lyme Regis the 0ther day, I popped into the bloke who sells fish under a grubby arch just by the Cobb. He's an interesting guy in that he likes 1920s/3os Anglo-American Jazz - a genre I tend to call bow-tie or Ritz. My wife has always wished she was young in that era (she's an avid Wodehouse reader and collector) and so we talked about Al Bowley and Bix Beiderbecke and then the price of locally caught Sea Bass. He didn't have any, and even the farmed stuff was a silly price. So he said "What about pollack?"

Pollack is a member of the cod family and about a quarter the price of bass. My mum used to buy it for the cat, and while I knew a bit about it I'd never cooked it before. As he offered me a whopping fish for just over five quid, I decided to give it a go.

This meant going to quite a few culinary websites, and in the course of doing so I came upon this gem:

'Take large canvas and drizzle paint meaninglessly all over it...hang on a minute, that's Jackson Pollock'

Clearly a top bloke, and therefore immediately offered a life membership of Not Born Yesterday.

Here's the heads-up: you need some intense flavour with it. And this fish has a backbone to make Sir Steve Redgrave's look wimpy. Finally, the skin tastes like shit. This is what I did.

Chop off the head and tail. Bung it in a small pan with water and wine to create a stock. Take the remaining gutted trunk and wrap it in foil, adding a generous amount of olive oil, lemon and salt to the parcel. Cook at 2ooC for about fifteen minutes per half-pound.

Put some small new potatoes in a pan and boil them to taste.

While this is going on, finely chop a medium onion and fry it briefly in butter, after which you can add an orange pepper, a dozen stoned black olives, some capers (or chopped gherkins) and then some double-concentrate tomato puree. Bit of garlic if you fancy it. Leave the whole on a low light and let it reduce.

Drain the ghastly head and tail melange and (obviously) retain the liqueur. I mean you can throw the bloody stuff away if you like but that seems a bit random to me. Add a veggie stock cube (or bouillon powder) to it, heat on a low light for a few minutes, then remove from heat and add a large knob of butter. If you've any fresh thyme to hand, wack that in too. Five minutes before the fish is likely to be ready, turn the heat right up under this sauce and reduce it. It thickens quite nicely without adding anything artificial.

Take out the foil parcel, open and check that the pollack flesh is white and flakey. If it is, the stupid fish will fall into a million bits as soon as you try and put it on a plate. Get over this and place the reduced Mediterranean mixture next to the fish-mess on the plate. Add the spuds, pour over the sauce and eat. It's not bad at all.

 

7th November 2008

THE POINT OF PERSONAL STYLISTS

Ooooh....that dress

I should imagine Michelle Obama is one tough cookie and not a little ambitious.....but she has already won a place in my heart. This is not only because she doesn't give a monkey's for what the minceurs say about her not entirely well-chosen red and black number on Election night; above all, it's because she doesn't have a personal stylist - for (as she says) "I don't need one". And she's right: I mean - I wouldn't kick her out of bed, would you?

There may indeed be a future for an Obama/Ward liaison, for I too do not have a personal stylist: indeed, I even cut my own hair. This means that my 'look' can change without warning from Russell Brand to Richard Plantaganet - and not always on purpose - but variety is the spice of life. This week I will be mainly looking like the thin bloke from Fun Boy Three.

Unfortunately, Michelle obviously prefers short-haired chaps, but there are two other reasons why I do not need an affair with the First Lady. One, she's not as sexy as my wife; and two, Mrs Ward would rip my heart out if there was any hanky-panky. Which is exactly as it should be.

6th November 2008

 

THE ONGOING PUPPY/SHOE DILEMMA

Ladies at rest

Our house at the moment has a weird look to it. It's not just the untidiness (our house is always untidy) but the specific nature of the mess. For it is dominated by shoes.

New puppy Tiggy (foreground above) has Squirrel Kleptomania Syndrome. The overall problem with SKS is that the obsessive desire to walk off with stuff in her mouth is equalled by the young girl's cunning when hiding the booty. But shoes are the worst - although for her of course, the best - because there are two of them and they have laces.

Once Miss Tiggywinkle settled in here and got going, the living room downstairs looked like a shoe shop for one-legged people: a beach where all the flotsam had been removed, and only jetsam remained. Now we've intervened to stop the mayhem, everywhere has the air of an exhibit at the Saatchi, but this time with pairs of footwear on cupboards, shelves, tables and radiators.

This means that the only opportunities available to the young fetishist are in the mornings when she's upstairs while we get dressed. And the really neat thing about Upstairsland is that there are beds and doors everywhere. So Tiggy withdraws the shoelaces and transports one of a kind to the guest bathroom, and the other to Jan's study. Then one shoe is secreted under our bed, and the other taken to a guest bedroom and left - after first being thoroughly chewed - behind a wardrobe door. There have been days recently when going to the gym became irrelevant, given that by nine am I'd already walked five miles looking for everything from brothel creepers to zip-up boots.

When the miraculous Gordon came to transform our downstairs loo and update us on Thai pork belly futures, Tiggy had his chisel in her jaws within seconds. We found it four days later under a bush in the garden. When Mike came to replace the kitchen dimmer switch, she was away with his screwdrivers until apprehended in our shed.

And the thing is, she's not petite like Foxie: when we picked her up from the breeder, we met her mum who is - to say the least of it - very big for the breed. So now I'm waiting for the day she starts pulling at the Aga. At which point, a very serious talking-to will be required.

 

3rd November 2008

MEGABANKS COLLIDE. NOT MANY DEAD

'Lloyds says its merger with HBOS will save it £1.5bn a year, more than expected, which could mean heavy job losses.'

(BBC website)

Alright, alright - I know the sub-ed who penned this nonsense went to a Comprehensive, doesn't understand punctuation and doesn't do irony, but just read that sentence carefully again.

Eric Daniels is going to save even more than he hoped by firing lots of people. And no doubt he got much more taxpayers' money than he'd hoped for in his wildest dreams.

So, let's see - I think I've got this now. You give me tons of money - so I can save my shareholders tons of money by firing you. Right, fair enough - we'll do that then.

We are unbelievably, indescribably mad to be doing this.

Home

 

2nd November 2008

WHAT THEY DONE WHILE I WAS ON MY HOLIDAYS

Hip-hop happening band Bran Dross became the first act to utilise the telephone service for their new single Barcelona Granddaughter. Imagine how hard it was trying to work this story out from Egypt: Manuel, answering machines, naughty words and lots of resignations.

I have three observations in relation to Wossygate: First, the desire for vicarious fame has now reached such levels, people will even phone the BBC in order to get in on the act. I wonder how many of the (eventual) 31,000 complainants actually heard the broadcast? Second, isn't it funny how the buck always stops long before it gets anywhere near Mark Thompson? And finally, I have heard the piece now; if people get offended by this, then they need to get out more.

Of course Jonathon Ross should've primed Sachs for the gag, and of course they shouldn't have used the fuck word. It's the culture, stupid - but either way, I thought it very funny indeed. If Thompson had any spine or decency, he'd have defended the producer - who is, so I'm told, one of the best Auntie has.

But none of it is half as funny as the title of Ross's autobiography, Why do I say these Things?

Alistair Farmyard Keynesling won the pools and announced he was going to spend, spend, spend. The rest of us knew only too well it would not change our lives, but the big-forehead folks immediately started an arid Keynes v Friedman debate about the wisdom or otherwise of this decision.

As usual, the econ0mic elite missed the only point worthy of consideration: for the US to do a U-turn and go all Keynes is fine - they do (allegedly) have $27,ooo trillion in gold against which to borrow should this become necessary. We have just the twelve billion. Or put another way, they have 2,250 times more gold than we do. Our gold would pay off just 1% of our National Debt. Theirs would wipe it out several times and still have lots of change. So Government dissembling about our debt-to-GDP ratio being much lower than America's is meaningless, cynical piffle.

In short, the US is a triple-A borrowing risk, and we are a sort of radioactively insolvent core isotope with a half-life of three million years.

We have neither the money nor the credit score to spend and borrow like this.

 

24th October 2008

Quick intellectual gag before we start today: Thomas Hobbes slurred his words on account of having been a piss-artist. What he actually said was 'Life is Asti, brut an' ish bought....up Tesco'

NOT A SITUATION WE ARE RECOGNISING ON THE GROUND

How delightfully ironic that the very phrase behind which politicos have been hiding since 1991 is now coming back to haunt them.

Take the strange case of the NHS in which everyone will get a GP's appointment within 48 hours.

The week before last, having noticed a disturbing numbness of toes, I made an appointment to see my GP - but not of course using my toes to make the phone call. The only thing on offer was 6.20 pm five working days later - doctors in primary medicine no longer working in the same manner as people getting ill, two days a week are non-working - for which inconvenience the adorable Patricia Blewitt gave them a 25% pay rise.

I told my chap the symptoms - raised blood pressure and tingling extremities - and his immediate thoughts were underactive thyroid or diabetes. Not heart then? No, he opined - having listened to the ticker - nothing wrong there.

So I had the blood tests and they both came up negative. I rang again, and chummy had cut down his surgeries still further.....in fact, given that fact plus his annual leave, I was going to be lucky to see him before Christmas.

So two other doctors I don't know were suggested, but neither could see me for over a fortnight. Eventually we settled on a lady who can see me a week next Thursday, but only works a three-day week. This for a bloke complaining of cold feet, numb toes and raised blood pressure.

Now answer me this: in real commerce, imagine a client ringing up and being told (a) you can't have a meeting with us for ten working days and (b) we've just taken your account executive off the business without bothering to inform you of this cavalier act. What would your response be? I rest my case.

These chaps are swinging the lead. And what's worse, we have allowed the NHS to be taken over by women with big hair who think they know about business; whereas it is quite clear they cannot tell business from putty. Grrrrr.

Or what about gold prices? (See the updated investigation here) How barmy can life get when the price of a commodity is falling, but once one walks into a retailer and asks to buy some of the stuff, the response is "I can give you fifty quid's worth squire, but at a 20% premium over the quote price"?

To which the answer is, not much more barmy than that. But you see, the market must decide.

23rd October 2008

PITY POOR MANDY

Scramble & Fondlebum....'partners'

We are asking all loyal nby readers this week to contribute to the charity supporting Conceptual Dyslexia (CD), the appalling spinal disease from which Lord Mendacious-One suffers. Tragically, it has become clear that this poor man cannot tell the difference between a fact and a smear. Thank goodness he did not become a gynaecologist - although as he is an amateur proctologist, there are still disturbing ramifications. Sailing close to the wind is one thing, but bottom-feeding in the current economic environment is perhaps not entirely wise for a Minister for Business. For a chap whose CD means he finds it hard to tell back from front, that fine electoral slogan Forward not Back surely applies.

FULL AHEAD BOTH

Unborn & Manybum.....'mutual friends'

Following the Prime Minister's interesting experiment in holding Cabinet meetings outside London, it's good to see that both Parties are expanding this tradition to include yachts. Lord Fondlebum is of course no stranger to sailors, but George Osbornyesterday is an equally likely guest on the Gin Palace circular. He is after all a chap whose subtlety allows him to discuss donations without soliciting them, an important requirement for all politicians aspiring to run the nation's finances.

Meanwhile, there were further revelations today in relation to the relationship between the Earl of Roughchild and Chinese trade minister Yu Fuk Mi Moon. Allegedly the improper liaison occurred on Ocks Bridge, close to the small but infamous Bullingdon Cottage.

 

20th October 2008

TIME OFF FOR BAD BEHAVIOUR

As I write, the FTSE is going up and down like a seismograph on Vesuvius - or possibly acid. Anyway, I'm taking a holiday from the madness. To keep you amused during the restoration and redecoration break, there is some delightfully bitter stuff about BBCNews (and amused RitchieWatching) at Mediocrity, some intriguing thoughts on gold prices if you haven't already been there, and an essay about the dreadful Fondlebum which will probably just make you angry.

Hang loose and buy long. There's not much long in the world, and the price is bound to sky-rocket.

GOOD GAME, GOOD GAME

No longer in charge

I'm sure that, like me, your weekend was ruined by the news of Bruce Forsyth's decision to quit Strictly Come Dancing. His role in this quite remarkable success story seems to have been bumping into the other people involved, or looking this way and that for cameras, contestants and cue-boards. So his absence will definitely change the show substantially, but as with the world's finances at the minute, nobody is as yet sure how, or indeed who might be involved.

Strictly Come Dancing is another Argos for me - I just don't get it. I know it's me, I really do know it's me- but if an indie had come to me five years ago and said let's revive the 'Sarah is wearing a delightfully sequined tent trimmed with emerald taffeta to match Cyril's wig' routine, I'd have thought them suitable sectioning material.

Of course, the format's as much to do with people out of their depth as anything else - and the viewers do like a bit of schadenfreude. But they also like celebrities doing something surprisingly well - and in the absence of any other public figure performing this task at the moment, in some ways I can understand the nation being in thrall to all this nonsense.

The problem for some time (so a prodbod on the show tells me) is that Brucey thinks he's in Beat the Generation Game Clock, and nobody can convince him otherwise.

Anyway, it's harmless. If only one could say the same for Forsyth.

 

19th October 2008

EVERYTHING NOT TOO BAD REALLY

Former LloydsTSB Chairman Bryan Pitman offered Beeb viewers his considered opinion today that things are much, much better than they were in the 1970s. His two reasons for reaching this profound conclusion were first, we don't have a three-day week; and second, the IMF isn't knocking on our door.

I hate to rain on Bryan's parade here, but the reason we don't have the three-day work schedule is that we lack both the Arthur Scargills and coal mines to achieve such a result. But more to the point, the IMF is so distracted by its Chairman's bonking favouritism, it has no time to deal with peripheral matters such as Small Mad European Offshore Islands.

THE SCHAMA ENIGMA

I only hope Simon Schama's account of America's future is better written than his account of France's past. It is one of life's odd truisms that people who are highly entertaining and erudite in personal appearances (and speech generally) are sometimes complete duds in writing. Mr Schama is one of these.

His book Revolution! - an account of the French head-chopping thing during and after 1789 - is easily the most badly written history book I've ever read. As if composed for the enjoyment of anorak five year-olds, this effort from thirty years ago sits on my bookshelves still. It is amazing how many visitors zero in on it and say "Ah - Schama - that'll be good".

The following morning at breakfast, the scene is always the same. Bloke comes to table (a slightly puzzled expression on his face) and I ask "Enjoy the French Revolution?" The response involves harrumphs and looking at the tablecloth....until I say "Crap isn't it?" Only then do the eyes light up. The head nods. "Absolutely" the visitor says.

 

18th October 2008

WHO ARE THOSE GUYS?

Whoopee....another day, another dollar

As if working on the New York stock exchange might be fun, each and every morning and evening the NYSE bell rings, and another group of folks applaud from the rostrum. Of late, in a desperate show of solidarity, the chosen guest stars have gone beyond clapping: they now wave too.

At times they look like the contestants on Millionaire, which would be apt if it wasn't so tragic at the moment. Some days I crack up, because there's a little jostling for camera position - and this plus the fixed smiles always puts me in mind of that 1980s television spoof, Soap. 'Confused? You will be, after this episode of....'

But who are they? Well, I've no idea how they get chosen, but the fickle finger of fate points in some odd directions. Last month we had Navy seals. Earlier this year, Gay Men's Health Crisis readied the mood for another day of counting backwards. And on 28th August, Harley Davidson workers 'remotely rang' the morning bell from Milwaukee, preferring to do this than boldly go to the Exchange itself. This was a good call, as apparently it was a terrible day.

I'd turn it down, myself. Imagine your main claim to fame being that you rang the NYSE bell the day the Fed ran out of gold. You'd have a self-esteem problem forever.

MANDYBOO DE BUM-BUM

Fonduebum....running up a jumper

While the media are busy congratulating themselves on having seemingly KO'd Fondlebum in the first round, the truth is that catching Mandy with various parts in various places they shouldn't be is really shooting duckies in a barrel.

From the day he left these shores, Guacomole Man simply set up shop in another place and carried on as before. Only a few enterprising people at the Sunday Times continued to watch his career with interest. Well, them and Not Born Yesterday.

In fact, nby's discovery of naughtiness on the Rough Trade Commission was one of those bizarre accidents that occasionally occur in the era of forty billion websites. Up popped a Hungarian satire website (in English, for some reason) making one or two accusations about nice boys, knitting and the Trade Commissioner. So I emailed them to ask what else they knew, and then it all got rather silly.

Please forget we ever said it, they answered. Please don't write to us again. We're closing down now and joining a monastery in Czvvryyhnastvvrhy.

But further discreet digging revealed the lifestyle of a Hungarian delegate on the Commission, the very same man given the unwelcome oxygen of publicity by the novice monks. And a short gambol through contemporary meetings and speeches relating to Fondlebum quickly revealed a remarkably coincidental correlation between intensive knitting and preferential Hungarian trade quotas.

I can say no more: my lips are sealed. Anyway, it's old news now - because the media were too busy shoving fireworks through celeb letterboxes to pick it up. And at that time, the Credit Crunch hadn't been invented.

 

16th October 2008

LIFE GOES ON

 

My niece and Godchild so unceremoniously dumped by Lehmans in SFO a month prior to her wedding has been rehired by the new owners Barcap. This news prompted me to get on with choosing something from the wedding list. As we all know, in 2008 this is a breeze because we have websites and pcs.

Williams Sonoma is the name of the San Franciscan store, and it's a very elegant site. Unfortunately, the checkout process was designed by a gay, who personally composed all the responses. Well bless me, Percy Checkout wanted the right Zip sweetie and a ten digit phone number dear. And if you wanna order from overseas, well you'll just have to ring the store and talk to ME. Then we can exchange numbers and Judy Garland CDs.

The inflexibility was irritating, but the syntax hysterically funny. With each mistake I made, it was 'Now look what you've done'.

The original Rocky Horror Show on the stage gave a line to the gay professor Frank N. Stein. He asks Brad "Whaddya think of this man I just made?" Brad looks at the monster and replies "Not much". The professor pouts and replies "I didn't make him for you dear". It was easily the funniest line in the show. If you want the experience online, go to the Williams Sonama website.

 

Last night I went off to Firmly-Wolfsitall's Canteen in Axminster. One sort of expects the entrance to be like an abattoir, but the emporium (which is also a shop dedicated to local produce) is actually very nice in a rough-and-ready stylish way. I've been once before for lunch: the service was chaotic to surreal and the food ghastly. This was the Second Leg: friends kept saying 'you had a bad experience, try it again'. So chum Richard and I did.

Duck confit terrine thingy

It was very good in a number of ways. There was a complimentary glass of English red (chum was sniffy about it, I liked it) with the meal. The first proper bottle that arrived was a 2003 Cotes de Roussillon organic red. Good wine, very good year. It was fizzy. Richard spotted it by eye because he knows about this stuff, I felt the petillance on the overworn tongue. After a minute or two's hesitation, I got the sommeliere over.

The lady was brilliant: knowledgeable with the right attitude. She tasted it, pulled a face and brought another bottle - bit better but not much - and eventually we changed to a 2005 Chateau Beausejour, also organic. Fulsome apologies, and the new offering was pretty damn good. Genuine thanks to us for pointing it out.

This was a wet Wednesday in October, but by 8pm the place was fairly busy. It's very woody in the Canteen, but in a natural rather than Ski Chalet circa 1973 way. And there's none of that shrill ambience one gets in neurotic London brasseries. Chalk on a blackboard announced the menu: it was presented very much in cafe ouvrier manner, with minimal choice and zero bullshit. This is exactly how it should be for such a meal. Iced tap water arrived without us asking. The order was taken nicely and quickly.

We both had the duck confit terrine-and-pickle creation for starters. It was terrific. Not fancy, just really, really good. Richard had pigeon to follow ("this chap did not die in vain" he opined) and I had slow-roast pork with mash and greens. If it says 'slow roast' on a menu and doesn't refer to broccoli, I usually choose it. It was my best decision of the day. Like a good book, I found myself eking the dish out. All very tasty and professionally done.

We shared a plate of local cheeses with nice wholemeal oatcake thingies to finish. Again, just the right amount and excellent quality - especially the brie. In fact it was the best brie I've tasted this year.

The bill was sixty quid for two. That's a lot of money in Axminster, but still very good value for well-cooked, fresh and satisfying food in near-perfect surroundings. This is a highly professional operation, and while Fearnley-Whittingstall has been the butt of many jokes (often mine) over the years, basically he is a good egg. Yes, he's making lots of money and yes, most everything is all about Hugh - but there's more to the brand than podgy tv chef. The bloke is trying to do the right thing by everyone, and as the barmy old zeitgeist splutters towards collapse, what he's offering in total is perfectly poised on top of the wave.

That's enough about Hugh, let's talk about me, ha-ha. Seriously though folks - if you're in town, give it a go. (In the evenings, it looks closed, but isn't.)

A dog's life goes on too, although our veteran terrier Daisy passed away six weeks ago. I haven't been able to write about it until now.

I met Daisy a few days after I met my second wife. She came as a banded-pack offer with Jan, and it is a measure of our love that (a) Jan accepted Daisy's banishment from the bedroom and (b) I didn't insist on her banishment from the country. Pretty soon after that I realised this young Sporting Lucas terrier was more intelligent than some of my friends.

If I begin to tell you how amazing Daisy was, it'll never end. So instead, a few highlights.

For many years before we met, I was a Sunday is For Newspapers sort of bloke. Daisy ended this obsession by jumping on my Sunday Times at 10.30 am (time for walk) and again at 4.43 pm (time for Bakers Complete). Gradually, the mists cleared and it dawned on me that walks with our dog and homo-canine afternoon tea had more to offer in almost every way than a publication owned and ruined by a deranged Australian.

Because she was so acute, Daisy knew every word in the English language remotely connected to either food or exercise. We devised a system of talking about such things in French, but she cracked the code within weeks. In the following years, we moved on through German, Afrikaans and Spanish before giving up with Latin. By the time she was ten, our terrier could've been gainfully employed as an interpreter in Brussels. You could say 'nos habebit humus' to her and she'd nod her head, as if thinking 'post jecundum juventutum'.

Her last year was marred by several strokes, but given quality by a homeopathic vet whose remedies were nothing short of miraculous. As her limb/brain coordination became increasingly informal, watching the old girl go downhill became an entertainment - which was infinitely preferable to thinking of it as a tragedy. Her bottom overtook her head until by the time she reached level ground, she was upside down. Daisy would right herself, give one of those all-over doggy shakes and then continue with an elegant defiance. In a credit-crunch, she'd have been more use - and more dignified - than an army of human beings.

I miss her every day. I don't miss her more every day, because it would be impossible to exceed the desolation I felt the day after she died. As for Jan's emotions, multiply that by two hundred, imagine a US banker facing nationalisation - and you're halfway there.

We've got three smashing dogs left. But first love never dies: when it comes to Daisy, while in the midst of life we are in death, the remembered contribution to a life cannot but make me smile. I will always be grateful for that.

 

15th October 2008

6th October 2008

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE SPEAKING

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.'
Thomas Jefferson 1802

What an endlessly wise man was Thomas Jefferson - wiser even than Benjamin Franklin, although Benny had the edge when it came to gags.

Quote courtesy of the Von Ausland Institute of Universal Wisdom

 

5th October 2008

DEPRESSION IN GWYNNED

In Wales for family reasons (see yesterday's piece) Mrs W and I were wandering round the back field of her ancestral seat with the dogs (I say ‘field’: those of us born lower down the social scale would call it a small county). Apropos of not very much, Jan remarked, “Over there is where our goat hung himself”. I thought ‘Blimey, I knew the weather was crap up here, but that’s appalling’.

Turned out that the goat topped himself by mistake on a bit of barbed wire. Well I wasn't to know, was I?

EU CONCERTED ACTION IN TATTERS SENSATION

'We'll go that way, then'

'The EU is only a wobbling toddler as supra-national states go: local politics still dominate, while the obvious waste, corruption and unreal lifestyle of the Brussels bureaucracy remains bitterly resented almost everywhere in the Union.'

(nby, March 2008)

Surely not? You don't mean that President Bling's wheeze to evade the credit crisis ended in disorganised inaction on the part of twenty-seven disparate countries?

Yes, it's true: strange as it may seem, the hurriedly welded together front-half Renault-Fiat territories and the rear Lada-Polski regions of the Pantomime Union inexplicably veered off in twenty-seven different directions last Friday, leaving Sarko to wonder why he bothers with the foreign policy shtick. You'd think he'd have had enough after South Ossetia and the strange case of the Russian wave/particle tanks, but no: never say die, that's Nico's motto. Still, a noseful of powder helps the medicine go down, and all that.

When nby first predicted in 2006 that the EU would struggle to survive the coming Damocles sharp thingy, I got an email from a French-Canadian convinced that she could speak English. One of the more comprehensible bits averred "How wrong you would be. The Unionist Europe will prove the necessary barricade over American ambition. Surely anyone can watch this is true?"

Bien sur, madame. And I am that man watching Brussels going from launching the Euro to taking the urine. German bankers have been briefing against the Euro since its first wobble six months again, and Merkel was also first out of the blocks to guarantee 100% of all retail deposits. Having spotted soon afterwards (perhaps with the help of a French ear-flea) that this would cause everyone in Europe to switch their accounts to AnythingcalledDeutsche Bank, Geli scuttled back into her blocks again. At the time of writing it was underwater rugby without the ball.

So much for This Great European Project of Ours.

When eras change, the truly unexpected occurs: and right up to the last moment, those using the rear view mirror rather than the windscreen are surprised when things disappear. Within five years, the EU will be a Free Trade area again - if that.

 

4th October 2008

HOME AGAIN TO WALES

It's £5.30 to cross the Severn Bridge these days. Five pounds thirty. I suppose Brown has to get the money from somewhere, but that's a bit steep. In France, you can go from Cherbourg to Bordeaux for £5.30; in Cool Britannia, it gets you across a river.

I feel like going to the Environment ministry and saying "Just give me the Severn takings for five years and I'll build you a new one." With a couple of 1956 Junior III Meccano sets, I could knock one up in no time.

Mrs W being of mixed Welsh and German blood, we'd decided it would be nice to eschew the motorway madness for once and drive up through South Wales and up to Dongellau, before taking Snowdon from behind - which my friends in the knitting circle tell me is not unusual. (Being rude about Royals and gays is not the way to a knighthood, but if it offends lots of generally awful people all at once, then it serves some kind of social purpose).

Wales always was a stunning country, and when the sun's shining, the valleeees are unlike anywhere else in the world. Soft fields of lush green, gnarled oak and ash like casual observers at the roadside, the roads windey enough to render Clarkson tumescent, and an astonishing backcloth of grey-blue mountains to cap it all off. At one point, an autumn waterfall tumbled off the peaks, splashing carelessly onto the startled sheep below. And as Snowdonia came into view, two forbiddingly enormous clouds in the distance dumped rain with almost clinical precision onto one little village chapel. Either side of this celestial power-shower were two bright sunbeams. I've known virtual editing fail to achieve this effect after several weeks of swearing: it was proof positive yet again that God went digital long before the rest of us.

Back in the Kammerling homestead to celebrate a 50th, the surprise party at Saturday lunchtime had to be organised by those of us lodged in the ancestral home. It turned out to be another object lesson in why, when such helter-skelter organisation is going on, the safe route for blokes is to ask "What can I do?" This is vaguely acknowledged in a tone silently demanding 'what took you so long to ask then....?' The tasks one is given will be utterly pointless, but in such circumstances, silent and obedient survival is the name of the game.

For myself, I took out the placemats which were predicted to be in the Hall dresser but turned out to be in the sitting-room sideboard. The theory was that some of the catering would be hot. Having laid the mats out, they were instantly moved to another table for reasons which escape me still, but before I could think that hard about it, a counter-hypothesis said the food was all cold, and so I was asked to put them back in the Hall Dresser.

I wandered about muttering more what-can-I-dos, and was handed various things which were almost immediately taken from me again. I felt like a trainee kleptomaniac during a removal. In the background someone with his head in the sitting-room sideboard asked "Where are the placemats for crying out loud?" and I said I knew where they were and got them out again. The food might well be cold, it seemed, but several people had voted for warm flans and sausage rolls. So the placemats were out, but in reserve and not on tables just yet.

When the caterers arrived, flans, rolls, pies, cheesy potates and frankly just about everything except the bloody salad was hot, so my next mission involved shifting things around on the tables and putting all the mats on the surfaces thus freed. Dishes then came in steaming dangerously, and every last mat I'd put out was felt to be inappropriately positioned.

Then the guest of honour arrived and we all got drunk.

As I wrote several paragraphs ago, my role was utterly pointless, but the day was as always very good crack.

Home

 

2nd October 2008

 

L IS FOR LIES

Ken cuddles up to pro-Putin chum

One thing we always know with dear old Red Ken Leninspart is that he will offer his version of The Truth to anyone regardless of race, religion, culture, nationality or political persuasion. But when it comes to the real truth, the recipients of his wisdom are permanently rationed. And it's hard for reality to survive on 0% rations.

Livingstone's take on the firing of Ian Blair is that it's a political sacking. Correct. But, dear Kenneth, you too have a long history of political sackings: starting with the elected GLC Leader you deposed three weeks after a democratic election had voted for him, as opposed to, er, you. And the post of London Mayor is a political position: one from which one must feel able to sack those who would (quite clearly) oppose one's plans.

Big Blond Bo has been equally specious in his description of Blair's departure. But then, Blair will go largely unmourned. Let's wait and see who replaces him.

 

1st October 2008

GREATNESS THRUST UPON HIM?

One thing tumbles on top of another at the moment. Last night I thought 'If I hear bloody Brown witter on about 'doing whatever it takes' once more, I may emigrate'. This morning I watched shocked as more dumb bank shareholders put their own personal greed before bigger concerns. Shortly after lunch, American sources began suggesting that even the revised Paulson package might fail. I went to the gym in an effort to calm down.

To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to more rhetoric from the Macaroon, but once again he surprised me. The bloke really does seem to be growing into the job; I'm tempted to suggest that the worse things get, the more relaxed and yet determined (and the less glib) he seems to get. Somehow, the tragedy now unfolding has forced the Toff to cut the gags and get properly down to business.

He would have to do something spectacularly dumb now to blow this chance.

 

WELL OF COURSE, YOU KNOW....

When my now 26 year-old daughter was ten, she saw (between endless videos about gloworms, locomotives and postmen) a short news piece upon which Tony Benn featured. With his silver hair and pipe and brown corduroys - and general air of a kindly University lecturer - he as always gave a strong impression of plausibility.

"What a nice man" said Anne-Marie. And just this one comment from my daughter made me understand the need to stop smirking at the old Silver Spoon Socialist - and remember that this silly old twit had been spectacularly wrong all his life. (Later, he was also one of the achitects of social democracy's decline and fall in Britain)

Benn retains a warm place in the hearts of the radical chique everywhere. But he is as dissembling as the worst of contemporary politicians, with just the one vital difference: he is much much better at rewriting history than they are.

In pursuit of this goal, Wedgie-Benn as was developed a clever technique - some time after deciding to switch from being white hot technocrat to red hot Leftie in the late 1960s. This was (and is), "Well of course, you know....."

The intro (and the avuncular delivery tone) suggest that what we're about to hear is both self-evident and true. So for the gullible middle-class intellectual, he's got it all.

He was at it again last week on The Daily Politics, along with that other arch-berk of the 1980s, Norman Fowler. I've met Fowler on several occasions professionally. Apart from being extraordinarily tall, he also has that cunning often enjoyed by rather dim people. Perhaps it's to do with oxygen starvation all that way up there in his head.

Ripple-dissolve back to the present. We are (of course) in crunch meltdown analysis session yet again.

Fowler opened the batting by asserting that there was no bipartisan approach to the crisis, nor did he expect one - a prediction whose spectacular inaccuracy was revealed within twenty-four hours. He then stopped talking - both mercifully and unaccountably. And this gave The Benn his chance to shine.

"Well of course, you know...." he began. Without pausing for breath, he summarised the last thirty-five years with remarkable erudition, although not much brevity. But it was impressive, and as the lightweight anchorlady had nothing to contribute (and Fowler's oxygen deficiency was really taking hold now) Tony went on and on about Wall Street and capitalism and big business and bankers bayonetting babies for several minutes.

It was, from start to finish, the most one-eyed, archaic, propagandist, misleading load of old patrician socialist tosh. But for me, it was - just like my daughter's remark all those years ago - another wake-up call.

When all this nonsense is over, versions of history will be written from the various perspectives involved. Twas ever thus, but what the bankers' profligacy, Brown's latterly stern tones, and Congress's measured consideration of the issues have created already are the mirrors behind which the culprits can hide as the smoke slowly clears.

We've had Tony Benn's naive and meddlesome anti-American command economy drivel; and we've had Margaret Thatcher's equally naive and heartless let the weak fall by the wayside eugenic economics. Now is the time for something with four vital facets: better, based on learning, just, and different.

The very last thing we need right now is the Old Right and the Old Left slugging it out. Marx and Friedman were wrong and are dead. New ideas go here, please.

 

30th September 2008

THE NUMBERS RACKET

Charmouth Outdoor Market

The financial system wasn't going to go completely round the S-bend just because I fancied a morning off, so being in need of a few household bits, I got in the faithful Peugot 406 and tootled down the road to a local Bits Market.

Bits Markets are one of the few things for which we should thank the Chinese. They may have given the disgusting Merdeschlock 100% access to their telly-viewing populace, and they may be busy enslaving Africa in order to extract raw materials the better to pollute the planet, but they produce everything from fag papers to those bendy things with a hook at each end used to fix suitcases onto the top of cars. And they make most of it for not much more than a grain of rice.

The bits I bought were half a dozen Calvin Klein boxers, three pairs of reading glasses, two pairs of reading sunglasses (unaccountably rare in Europe) a pair of kitchen scissors and 500 freezer bags. The whole cost me twelve quid which was - as the accountants would say - good numbers.

On my return to the Barn, other good numbers had me foxed. Somewhere somebody had won some money (my memory is a finely-honed computer on such matters) for finding a 13-digit prime number. You'd think they'd all been found by now; I mean God doesn't just slip in an extra one when nobody's looking does he? When you put thirty billion six hundred million and fifty-blunk in between the four and five on either side, chances are someone's going to sigh and say "I see God was bored again today".

But apparently not. Because somebody has found one, and as a result maths anoraks are in Heaven. My assumption was that you could download as many as you need from a site on Google, but I was wrong.

Another big-numbers conundrum (but these are bad rather than good) is the one involving deaths at Sikh festivals. I've been reading about these for over half a century, but they just keep on happening year in year out until you think they should put health warnings up.

My Dad was posted to India during the War, and he said that if there was a crowd anywhere about anything, people died. Walls collapsed and folks got trampled: if the authorities were involved, people got shot. And if the subject was religion, people shot each other.

A lot of Asia is like this. It is a cliche to say that a lower value is put on human life there, but that governments often don't blame themselves for such laxity is as true today as it was in 1943. Building regs are flouted, police look the other way (or run away) and some politicians whip things up in the hope that deaths will give them something to be publicly outraged about. We may moan about corruption and conditions in the West, but on the whole we don't know we're born.

However, at this point I switched on the dear old telly. And there is was. Banks on brink as Wall St blinks and Paulson draws blank.....

DAVY CAMERON AND THE TEMPLE OF MAMMON

"Sssh....don't mention the backers"

Acutely aware that the new crisis had knocked them off the front pages in Conference Week, the Tories decided to give Cameron a special slot at 11 am the following day, while America was still asleep. Someone should've told Cammers there was no need to bother, as Rosh Hashana had already ensured that nothing would happen until Thursday; but he went ahead - and as you'd expect, it was something of a curate's egg.

The good news is that, for the first time, the Macaroon actually looked like a Prime Minister. In reality, politicians influence little and achieve even less (outside wars) but sounding like you won't bottle it is jolly important for troop morale. In this sense, Dave scored eleve out of ten compared to the Brownshirt's minus thirty-six in Manchester last week. The rhetoric/serious balance was near perfect; for a bloke as thick as Cameron, it was a bloody miracle.

The one thing he and Brown have in common, of course, is the Red Indian thing. "How! How? How!!??!!"

"The bankers must pay"

"We must protect the taxpayer and stabilise the system".

"We must show that the system is durable....that democracy can be tested and not found wanting".

Absolutely Dave, the 'must' point is well-made. And one day, we must banish greed, lassoo the moon, and ensure a gold tap in every tasteless bathroom. The goal thing I like Davy my boy: we just seem to be a Vidic short of a Rooney here.

And another thing: what's with all this Manchester and Birmingham gritty shitty venue nonsense? Damn those spin doctors and their 'we must be seen to be serious' piffle. I miss my Harold Wilson open-necked shirt and Neil Kinnock prat-fall on the beach fix. I want it back, or else.

PS Why not make the Paulson plan conditional on Wall St not selling any shares at all until the plan has passed Congress?

 

29th September 2008

WHERE'S ALL THE MONEY GONE?

Salvador Darling had the temerity today to suggest that the taxpayer will not pick up any of the bill for B&B's failure. He really has reached the tertiary stages of stupidity. How exactly can the taxpayer not wind up paying, if Santander has graciously walked off with the risk-free savings business, but we have been left with the smelly bad debts? Who is paying, then? Mary Poppins?

As we say in Opinion at the moment, it is time for the dissembling to end, time for government to stop dribbling about 'doing whatever it takes', time for an end to excusing the inexcusable.

Only two questions remain: will world governments have the spine to rein in these lunatics - to tax them, punish them and regulate them? And where has all this bad debt money gone?

The latter sounds like a naive question, but when the world's financial system is being run by ignorant, unrepentant conmen, the Page One questions are well worth asking.

It is estimated that the banking system at the moment is down by £3 trillion. At close of play yesterday, the Dow shares had lost a further £1 trillion. All this, we are told, is bad debt.

But in this environment, other banks have gained. J P Morgan is buying anything it can get its hands on. So too is Santander. Lloyds has swallowed HBOS to create a massive and mega-powerful group. None of these predators has paid the market value (or anywhere near it) for their carpetbagging acquisitions: why should they hang on to this freebie when Mr and Mrs Average are about to cough up from their hard-earned wages - and then be asked for yet more from surviving leviathan banks in fees and mortgage costs? One doesn't have to be left-wing to find this obscenely unfair: all you have to be is a Republican.

Further, the bad debts being 'written off': they aren't really, are they? Are we being asked to believe that the owners of trailers in Memphis and crappy Victorian slum houses in Barnsley are simply going to be mortgage-free as of tomorrow? I think not.

As always, the bankers are lying. And one thing any system will need in future is a bank funded pot out of which should come any and all losses shouldered by customers as a result of financial institution business 'strategies'. Currently, they have it every which way, with the cream in good times and parachutes in bad times. If they want an all-out laissez-faire system with no safety net, then that must apply to everyone.

 

NEVER AGAIN, US-STYLE

While most of us on this island have a tendency to be sniffy about Americans (and I'm as bad as anyone) we would all do well to note what is happening in the United States at the minute. The Americans enjoy two distinct advantages over us when it comes to Government. First, a political crook will - if spotted - be punished; and second, the voters will - if pushed too hard - turn round and give Washington and Wall Street a reality check.

You see, for all that we snigger at them for this, the American people lack radicalism, but they do not in an way lack a sense of civic duty. Also, they do actually believe the US system will see the Triumph of Good in the end.

Like many of us, I've travelled a reasonable amount in the States, and this has led me to make a huge distinction between the Washington/Corporate/Military loopy-loos on the one hand, and the decent (if insular) small-town citizen on the other. My experience has been that we are very different English-speaking cultures indeed, but that there is no such thing as 'America' or 'Americans'.

Washington processes and committees I have often found to be corrupt, senior US corporates to be heartless and money-obsessed to an extent bordering on psychopathy, and the Military to live on a planet where ill-informed optimism is always the winning formula, however often it may turn into dismal and witless failure. Some Californians strike me as flakey, many New Yorkers as delusional neurotics and a few Southerners terrify the living shit out of me. Urban blacks also, I must confess, on the whole make me feel relieved to be in districts where there aren't too many urban blacks.

I can't listen to Republicans for long without finding them unutterably smug, and most cops - especially small-town cops - are a warning to any parent who thinks their children ought to become cops. The working class American male has a cleaner mouth than his UK equivalent, but his idle sexual chauvinism on occasions has to be seen to be believed.

But the normal hard-working, polite, keen and friendly US citizen is a welcome relief after the abnormal surly, apathetic and ill-mannered Brit. And the Democrat-voting American like this is somebody in whom I hardly ever fail to find empathy. It is these folk - male and female - who are prepared to get out of their prams about monstrosities like Sarah Palin, and feckless behaviour by the slickers on Wall Street. It is these voters who organise huge rallies in Alaska carrying placards like 'I voted for her once - never again', and ring Congressmen in their tens of thousands to say hang on a minute fellas, just run across me again why the jumpin' jeehosaphat we're bailing out these $4000 suited jerks in the financial district.

Since this whole meltdown started to heat up (which is, I suppose, what they always do) Mr polite, non-radical American has been a fiery speaker straight from The Militant Tendency compared to his British counterpart. While we have acquiesced in one overspend, stealth tax, budget lie and City-subsidy after another, whining "Yes, but what can we do?" the US voter has done it. Bush's $700 billion Paulson plan was confidently expected by the Washington smarties to go through on the back of a Patriotic Doody vote without touching the sides. The truth is that the plan was has been shunted into a junction not because of McCainery (an impression Democrat bosses were keen to give in an election year) but because Congressmen on all sides of the debate know full well the depth of anger out there in Middle America.

At the base level, what US citizens enjoy is a far more accountable system than ours - one in which Federal taxes are tolerated at best, and bitterly resented at worst. As bluntly stated elsewhere on the site this week (It's the culture, stupid) the culture drives the level of opposition to government incompetence. In the USA, waste on the scale of Patricia Hewitt's NHS Connecting for Health debacle simply wouldn't be tolerated: a House Committee would have mauled - and then pulled - the plan before it reached the dizzy heights of £14 billion - or in real money as calculated by nby's Treasury moles, £21 billion.

We may not like it over here in good old social democratic England, but if the global banking greediguts are cut down permanently to size, it is far more likely that the US voter will lead the charge: as of this evening, the rescue deal's failure seems to confirm that likelihood.

Such a bloody-minded response would not happen here. You may think that a good thing. With my short-term hat on, I'd tend to agree. But it could also be that Congress has just given Wall St the bloody nose it has been seeking for more than two decades.

Home

 

28th September 2008

PURE SPECULATION

 

Scarcely had the rather tasteless piece from yesterday been posted than the Mail ran with 'CREDIT CRUNCH BANKER KILLS HIMSELF'. The day seemed to be looking up even more when I read that banks would no longer take City bonuses into account for mortgage lending purposes: but of course, the final irony was that this had nothing whatever to do with moral considerations, merely the likelihood of such things being no guide to credit-worthiness any more. Honour amongst thieves and all that, but it's getting to the stage now where we need either a new word for 'banker', or at the very least a segmentation of the term. The bloke who topped himself in Berkshire the other day was clearly just one of the well-paid drones being run ragged by the seriously wongered at the top. These latter should, I fancy, remain as The Hated Bankers; their staff lower down with the nice expenses and moderate bonuses one should term banquets. So be it.

The Bankers have not as yet jumped off any ledges, merely ship. To mix metaphors further, they have baled out (see our special on this at baleout.htm) due to the doubts about being bailed out. Were it up to me, they would go to jail for life without any bail at all, if only because the cantilevered construction of their brass necks would make death by hanging impossible.

To date, for example, not a single banker has come forward to rescue a retail bank: just their investment banking mates, and only then with guarantees. As old Brownnose looked for (to quote the Sunday Times) a 'Spanish bale-out' solution to the twin bowler-hats issue, the chaps in Santander also made it clear (they too being complete bankers) that they'd be delighted to buy the Hats if the Brownshirts underwrite the, um, you know, er, liabilities. It will of course be you and I who underwrite B&B - after which Santander will soak up their business and turn it over time into even more disgusting levels of profit.

By Saturday evening, the flurry of takeovers required your correspondent to start taking notes. For although it was clear that by next February at the latest just one bank would own the United States of Morgania (and the Spanish Inquisition will finally bring the second Elizabeth to heel 430 years on) the other stuff involving Belgians, Wachovia, Morgan Stanley, Washington Mutual and BNP Paribas had become something of a puppy socialisation class, wherein (as dog-owners know only too well) everyone bites and pisses on everyone else in a melee of utter confusion.

Even in the midst of all this, a bloke from B&B pronounced that rumours of their demise were 'pure speculation'. The outrageously silly assertion set my mind running along the line of what a 'pure' speculation might be. The conclusion I reached was that it was the strongest kind of speculation: triple-distilled and far more likely to be correct than mere impure, vulgar speculation based on nothing more than idle gossip. Thus B&B are doomed - and so it has proved - to a fate worse than the Spanish rack: nationalisation.

 

YES, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE HOMEOWNERS?

Although this initial stage of tectonic change will soon be pretty well over, in the meantime every fourth word in our media is (and every second article about) The Homeowner.

Such people are beginning to sound like some kind of illegal minority, or at best folks who deserve more legal recognition and protection. While I suspect the ones who need real protection right now are the 32% of Britons who own a whopping 0.34% of the wealth (but rarely a home) I do of course feel enormous sympathy for all the ordinary young people tempted into joining the now busted housing rush. It's just that - like nightly newsreels of people being blown up to help create Blair's legacy - after a while it becomes a sort of anodyne blur: homeowning homeowner crisis for homeownercrisisowning homeowners etc etc.

As I'm getting into new group nouns at the moment (in a dog-eat-dog world, it's important to coin them before Peter York does) my brain went off on one again and invented the homosexualowner. I think the homosexualowner should become our new social hero, the next noble savage deserving of our support.

Homosexualowners could be somewhat controlling people who have pet homosexuals, or gay owners of a mortgaged domicile. Either way, as the price of guacamole and flowers goes up - and airlines cut back on cabin staff - everyone in the pack is going to find themselves stretched, if that isn't too unfortunate a term. So do give generously.

 

27th September 2008

LET'S NOT BE BEASTLY TO THE BANKERS

A banker recycling centre near Deadbeat Colorado

 

Not all bankers are dumb. Last Thursday on BBCNews, Andrew Neill hosted a Brains Trust of people like Robert Peston from both sides of the Pond. They were analysing why we're all going to be broke for the next thirty years.

"So" said Neill in winding up, "Can we stop this sort of thing happening?"

The wisest man on the programme, a tall gangly American in Asia, replied "Sure we can...until the next time it happens".

His point was not just funny, it was spot on: people are Homo sapiens and ergo, dickheads - especially the blokes.

But once again, nobody in the studio - although there were some half-hearted prompts from the sweaty Caledonian - considered a radical alternative to the Bourse bank and shareholder model of raising money for commerce. I think this is partly because they assume anyone suggesting such a thing will be in favour of taxpayer's money doing this - and therefore a Commie. For example, President Bush. He's a Commie. Straight up: bloke in our pub told me.

The last time I raised this earth-not-flat thought in open conversation ten days ago, two of the other guests raised an eyebrow in that way the wealthy do, when they feel they've spotted an unreconstructed Leftie. The backcloth to this was banks, currencies, investors and stock markets heading for the sewers.

We are a decidedly odd species.

 

September 26th 2008

MUCH ADO ABOUT ALL OR NOTHING

I wrote the following to an old adland friend today, he having vented his anger at contemporary denial:

'It says much about our contemporary world old fruit, that on social policy I increasingly sound like Hitler, and on economic policy like Stalin.'

These thoughts are unhealthy. I must try to have better ones.

Home

 

September 25th 2008

 

NO NOISE PLEASE, I'M BORIS

Bo Peep, likes his sleep

Looking at the facts, it’s hard to escape the odd unkind thought about Mayor Johnson’s opposition to aircraft noise, and his enthusiasm for a Heathrow replacement in the Thames estuary.

Boris has form when it comes to airport-related noise. He is a keen member of HACAN (the anti-airport noise pressure group) and in his final months as an MP - on 7th January and 20th February 2008 – he put questions to the Environment ministry on the subject.

But lest we forget, BoJo was for seven years the MP for Henley-on-Thames. As HACAN points out:

“Areas many miles from Heathrow, such as Blackheath or Henley-on-Thames, now have a big noise problem.”

They do indeed; but then, so does anywhere near an airport. Those living around the Thames estuary – for example, in, um, Blackheath – will get a big new noise problem if Johnson has his way. Distant noise is OK, however: only last week Boris gave the green light to a 50% increase in flights from the City airport.

All this redistribution of noise towards ghastly, uncharted places on the east side of London flies in the face of a commitment made by Johnson during his mayoral campaign. At the Green Alliance’s electoral meeting on 14th February last, he pledged to call a halt to City Airport expansion. (Luckily, Guardian blogger Dave Hill was there, and recorded it)

The point is, noise has to go somewhere. And with Boris Johnson, the principle seems to be ‘not near me, thank you’. Ironically, he recently told music magazine NME:

“It’s great news that Pete Doherty is recording his next effort in Henley. It confirms once again that the town is one of the most cool, jiving, happening places in the south of England.”

The Mayor of London currently resides in the north London district of Holloway.

 

24th September 2008

THE WEAZELS IN THE WILD WEB

This afternoon, Google's news page (albeit briefly) told anyone lucky enough to go there that Ruth Kelly was the youngest woman Cabinet in history. Type in 'electric sausages' to their search engine, and 713,000 sites come up. The first two pages alone contain details of the No 8 E1 Weschenfelder-Mincer Electric Sausage Maker, and a sausage stuffing company in Canada called A. Dick. The online editor I used to screen this week's video madness promised easy uploading of any video file to any site or email address. To date, nobody has got through to see it, neither email test recipient got it, and forty-eight hours in I'm still trying to find how or where to embed the movie on my site. I had to resort to this because Google wouldn't upload the mpeg4 files my newly updated N73 cameraphone is using. I spent from 4.20 pm until 6.08 pm yesterday looking in vain for the way to explain via email a problem to Google that isn't in their Help Centre area. The Orange website does not have a telephone number on it anywhere. Microsoft's has neither email address nor head office address, and nowhere called 'complaints'.

The web and those who control it (a smaller and smaller group of evil, sleazy people every week) is the most extraordinary mixture of subterfuge, mendacity, incompetence, obscurity, auhoritarianism, eccentricity, isolationism and electric sausages ever to be formed in this our three-dimensional world. But you can see why the sad muttering folks sit through every night, soiling their trousers rather than miss a single second of it, because it is utterly addictive. Oh just one more website PLEASE mummy, just le me type in Hitler's nipple and see how many sites come up. (Terrifyingly, the number is just in excess of 344,000)

The famous advertising guru David Ogilvy was wrong when he said that advertising is the best fun you can have with your clothes on: it is merely the best fun you can have with your clothes on and get paid. The best fun with clothes on period is typing surreal word combinations into Google - closely followed by going to the resulting sites and seeing how many lying, cheating, illegal, brainless, illiterate, genocidal, barmy, dissembling and dysfunctional bandits you can rack up in an evening. It beats Would I Lie to You? all ends up.

Among the pleasures one can sample are (in no order of demerit) getting 95% of the way through a 'freeware' movie edit process, and then seeing 'HI! TO UPGRADE FROM FUCKING USELESS BASIC MODEL AND COMPLETE EDIT WHICH MEANS WHOLE WORLD TO YOU, PRESS DOWNLOAD NOW - ONLY $429.99!'; typing 'conference' into the New Labour website and getting '0 results found: tailor your search!'; trying to hide 'ads' (inverted commas thuddingly ironic) which move around faster than a frigid nurse in a sex-addiction clinic; learning that there actually is a real-life band who have recorded the album Hitler's Nipples (on which is a track called Pussy Alcoholocaust); reading the endless fictitious reviews on 'TOTALLY LEGAL!' CD download sites which are quite blatently so illegal, laws just had to passed in order to pinpoint them; and getting emails headed 'noreply@'. Oh for a business where you could send that doozie out and get away with it.

It says more than mountains of cash ever can about the likes of Youtube, Yahoo, Microsoft, Newscorp and Orange that they will breezily allow serial-murderers to trailer their crimes, let pidgin porn merchants peddle their willy stimulants, drive harmlessly deviant people to suicide, allow blatant copyright infringements to go uncharged, claim impotence as spam crashes Tsunami-like onto our laptops each and every morning - and blackmail customers into trading up to higher usage fees....but use chintzy asterisks and bullying 'abuse' threats because one private individual chooses to express disgust for all this through the medium of Anglo-Saxon and Latin vulgarities.

But that's the way of the world, you see: owning something that non-usage of which can cause mild psychosis within twelve hours doth not a philanthropist encourage. I used to work for tobacco clients, so I know that of which I write.

 

23rd September

 

SO LET US THEN TURN OUR BACKS ON BEING OLD

Gordon and close prop

For indeed - as the old sketch has it - why be old when you can be young, short when you can be tall, poor when you can be rich? The Prime Minister brought every impossible promise seemingly within our reach yesterday - and started with a wifey stunt straight out of the Campbell Antibible. The faithful lapped it up: they stood, cheered, stamped, cried, laughed - and then left saying how Gordon was the only man for the job.

They would've done all these things even if the Brownshirt had come on backwards with his underpants over his shirt and pledged to slaughter every firstborn in the country. For New Labour is saddled with two very different and precisely twinned problems: the one-eyed trouser snake isn't going to go quietly, and there's nobody ugly or ballsy enough to push him. In short, after Anybody but Gordon comes Nobody but Gordon.

So, at long last, Brown's Party is united, bound together by enthusiasm for the Top Turkey - the one we can hear, day after day, endlessly squawking globalglobalglobalglobalglobal. And none of it matters a jot, because Labour's problem is no longer how united they might or might not be, but just how comprehensive a drubbing they are going to get some time between now and the end of the decade.

That this is now completely inevitable was made clear in an almost sadistic way by the main terrestrial television media the previous evening. On Newsnight (after a ridiculously supercilious and unsuccessful attempt to unsettle Ed Miliband) Paxo gave the stage to a large Manchester research group. The bottom line of this was that no respondent had the faintest idea what they wanted, but they knew that the last person ever likely to satisfy this enigmatic desire was Gordon Brown.

Hermetically sealed in their Manchester Conference Bubble, the Junketers with the Fringe-Meetings on Top were too busy sounding out MP-electors and getting uselessly, hopelessly, desperately pissed to notice what was going on. BBC1, ITV, Four and C5 devoted an aggregate 150 minutes to explaining why Labour's Gordonzola Cheese & Bean Feast inside GMAC was a complete waste of time and money.

Had they seen The Four Horsemen of the Apoplectic (Panorama, Crunch Time, Let Down by Labour and Fool's Gold) I'd imagine the more resourceful Brown advisors would've been pressing Gordon to go to the country forthwith, on the grounds that leaving it any longer would result in Britain effectively being a One-Party State by 2010. While I can't see Cameron in the role of Mugabe (and even if we adopt Nazi Sharia Law, there's not a chance we'll lose the Olympics) it would nice to think that someone might be around to stop the Tory hordes from privatising Scotland.

Not that this is important right now, but nby's hits went up 24% last week - remarkable given that, after Monday, there was no new copy. At this rate, our readership will exceed those intending to vote Labour next time. Certainly, if the last straw poll of our circulation were to be reflected across the nation, there would be a 73% swing to burning the whole Cabinet publicly at the stake - once every US Lehman director had been used to get the fire going, naturally.

On Crunch Time, the only thing that terrified me (and this is when you should worry, menschen) was that the staggeringly rich but very nice bloke was by far the most pessimistic of the 'experts' on display. Smiling in a really quite engaging manner, he predicted house prices halved, four million unemployed, further FTSE falls - and a long, long wait for recovery. Between the electrified lines of his forecast was a noisily unsaid 'if ever'. Compared to this guy, I am Alan Greenspan on Prozac.

For me, the show was the best of the four, but overall there were very important bits missing across the board. New Labour should be thankful: for what almost every commentator is missing to date - although Mr Doom on Crunch Time alluded to it - is what happens when the Goverment's rock/hard place isthmus becomes so splashy, not even one of Brown's buttocks will fit on it.

The scenario is not hard either to fathom or to follow - it runs like this: Government borrowing increases / the Pound falters further / thus interest rates can't be cut / so recession deepens / taxes need to rise to cut borrowing / but Revenue income falls due to unemployment / which also pushes up welfare benefit costs and requires yet more borrowing /spending cuts are resisted for both political and economic reasons / therefore the tax burden on those in work - and corporations, and indirect taxes on product sales - rises dramatically / which weakens output further and crucifies retailing / which creates more unemployment / and makes interest rate cuts an absolute necessity / which causes a flight out of the Pound / which makes foreign creditors nervous about the UK's ability to maintain repayments.....(now go back to the beginning, and start again until we're bankrupt).

The last paragraph, by the way, assumes no additional retail bank collapses. In this scenario, throw a double minus-six and take the nearest snake. (Another recurrent attitude among all those who took part in this, TV's Night of the Long Dives, was the automatic acceptance of government omnipotence. An anagram of this word is 'no - impotence'.)

Further out into the future than this, while contemporary comment is barely beyond the financial disaster as yet, little or no debate is concerned with serious consideration of a better economic mousetrap - and the change in social ethics which will be required to set it. This is depressing, but predictable: see the 2007 nby essay The Good Life

The conclusion now is the same as then: until the stranglehold on power enjoyed by the current Establishment is ended, we will slide ever more quickly towards disaster.

And so let us leave the Conference Hall today, go back to our constituencies - and prepare for destitute oblivion.

 

22nd September

GIZZARDS OF FERRET

Not all menu items start equal. Say 'haunch of Venison' to most people (excepting of course the vegetarians) and they see visions of enormous Scottish fires, ten Malts from which to choose after a hearty supper, and the strong possibility of haunch of chambermaid in the early hours. Say 'Spaghettini Vongole', and they picture the Amalfi coast, and crisp Italian sauvignon served by restaurateurs with broad, beaming smiles and even broader beams. They can almost smell those cool suppers under a pergola, protected from the reflected heat of baked Positano pavements.

It's not quite the same with loins of cod. Naughty bits of cold slimey stuff. And this is unfair really, because loins of cod are (if marinated in wine, lemon, Rosemary and Thyme - and served with roast potatoes) absolutely delicious.

Part of the problem is that loins of cod don't figure much in James Bond books or the specials at The Ivy. It's a relatively unfamiliar dish: unlike Smoked Salmon, which is - let's face it - sliced up cold slimey stuff left to go a bit manky over a fire in some smelly Scotsman's hut, and then eaten raw. Or the now politically incorrect foie gras - the translation of which is liver fat - itself the result of exploding internal organs of goose.

I've eaten some odd things in my time - bird's nest soup, pig's eye and boiled snail to name but three - and the truth is, it's best either not to know, or be told fibs. I hereby rename loins of cod 'north sea line-caught fresh white fish of the day'.

 

GEOFF HOON, CONFIDENCE TRICKSTER EXTRAORDINAIRE

Buffoon....strictly no confidence

While inspiring little or no confidence himself, Geoff Hoon has chosen 'in confidence' as the latest Zanu-Labour getout from, well, just about everything really. Bored readers will recall that the unlovely Keith Vaz (fingered as a crook here two years ago and busily fulfilling his promise) and Hazel Blears previously latched onto 'not a situation I recognise' as their escape clause. Before that, of course, we had something of the night from Michael Howard ('the report has been read') and Gordon's 'that is not my understanding of what happened'.

Grilled by ageing letch Andrew Neill last night, Goon four times used 'strictly in confidence' (and therefore not for our ears) about everything from what The Leader did or didn't say through to whether Miliband was leaky or not. The ruse continued this morning outside the Labour conference as an obviously pissed-off BBC newsman soaked up another seven strictly no confidences before asking "Is there anything you can tell me then?".

I think we should start a forum about whether Geoff Baboon is more or less smelly than Jack Straw.

 

THE FAT THING

Morgan the Obese Pirate

I suspect we need a new term for those who have benefited from our Reaganomically trickled-down wealth society. By these I mean, of course, the 0.8% who now own upwards of 47% of the wealth in this country. (Excluding property, which is meaningless anyway, as the value of that stuff just 'is' - it has little or nothing to do with the real 'wealth' of a person, because usually it's a main residence - and very few boat salesmen will take bricks in part-exchange.)

We tend to call them Fat Cats, do we not? Butseefingizzlike, they're usually not fat at all: they have personal trainers and drink San Pellegrino water, and the women are OCD dieters. I have not seen a very rich, very fat person for many a long year, the last one I think having been Pavarotti. But one sees blobs de pauvresse of a horrible nature every day: thousands and thousands of the buggers, wobbling about aimlessly and tossing junk-food wrappers into the gutter as they slither along on their way to becoming an NHS cost-centre.

Anyway, fat cats: we need a new term. The McDo maniacs already have the word blob, which does perfectly well. The obscenely rich, by contrast, should be called something like weasels or snakes or some other endearingly objective term.

People do, I know, find my fattism offensive; which is fine because it's a free society (just) and I find the overwhelming majority of blobs offensive too. My critics need to be clear on the terminology here: people with a bona fide eating disorder deserve our sympathy, being as they are just more victims of this culture's bizarre fear of all things mental health. The thing is, there aren't very many people with true bulimia. The NHS National Library says the maximum figure is 5%, the vagueness being caused by definition. Other sources like The Priory reckon the national bulimia level is at 2-3% at any given time, and is often misdiagnosed when actually it's binge eating. Fancy that.

Almost all fatties could do something about it if they chose to. But they don't. They choose instead to leak disgustingly over the aeroplane seat next to mine, block supermarket aisles, stuff their faces with buns in parks (and then throw the bag away) or be interviewed on one of the seven news channels when they finally reach the stage of breaking all their friends' furniture, or requiring winches to move in and out of the house.

A great many of us are a tad on the portly side. But these folks are hugely and obviously blobby. The reason is eating too much and exercising too little. There are no other reasons in over 97% of cases. Too much in means too much on. No running means running to fat. End of.

I'm thinking of starting a Blobwatch feature on nby. It's great taking shots of blobs, because they can't chase after you: their centre of gravity is all wrong, d'yer see. Like, in their eight chins. This means they fall on their faces after a yard or two. Which is excellent, as if they carried on moving they'd have a heart attack - and anyway, when they hit the pavement there is an immediate bounce-back thing called The Belly. Hence the phrase 'Weebles wobble but they don't fall down'.

What this site needs is a forum. Oh blimey, that's my job.

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21st September 2008

 

14th September 2008

 

THOUGHT FOR THE WAY WE LIVE TODAY:

'The culture is in crisis, but the voters are in Dolcis'

 

THE WIND THING

Puerile fart-joke....good for cheap laugh

I know this Blog is beginning to sound obsessive, but I'm afraid we're still down among the hypocrites with Newgordon Labour. The Trouser Snake must surely now be on his seventeenth wind, but still it seems unlikely to do anyone any good. He had the wind in his sails in the early days, but then proved to be windy on the Big Issues. Pretty soon it became clear that he was all piss and wind, and lacked the killer instinct to put the wind up The Cameroons - themselves little more than candles in the wind.

The Chinese have a lovely saying: 'the wind cannot read' - because it blows things all over the place, and thus disobeys human orders about mess while flying in the face of man's conceit. Gordon's problem (probably above all others) is that he's never taken cognisance of the wind: although, in desperation, he will follow whichever way it's blowing, usually it's blowing him. I have heard rumours over the years that this might in some contexts be precisely what GB needs more of, but we should cast such thoughts to the four winds. For he will soon, I fancy, be gone with the wind.

Issued on behalf of the Wind-power Marketing Board

 

STRIKE UP THE MILIBAND....OR NOT

'That's not fair....I wasn't ready"

Horrified that things are running away with the anti-Gordon plot - but mainly that it's not his plot - Sillybrand has come out bravely in favour of the Man Who Will Lead Us Into The Next Election....and slaughtered oblivion. He's a good sort is David: you always know where you are with him - either right behind him, or dead.

Strangely enough, I have a lot of time for this latest group of plotters (what is the collective noun - a schism? a dig? a Brutus?) in that, with the risible exceptions of Hardball Hewitt and Calamity Clarke, they do seem to have Party interests to the fore.

I think their motivation has been well-expressed to date - 'nothing to lose' - but as usual the real truth is to be found in among the non-attributables....politicos being so brave and all. Such mutterings tend also to be very consistent: Gordon is a wanker, we need to avoid a rout, we're going to lose anyway - and above all, the Cabinetists have no spine, so it's up to us.

If ever there was condemnation of leadership from the mouths of NCOs, then this is it. The tail-hanging leadership is (as the legendary Terry-Thomas would've judged) 'an absolute shower'. Like the praetorian guard at the last trump of Rome, it stands idly by, weighing the offers made to it by minnows while the Barbarians stand at the gate.

 

13th September 2008

HE'S GORDON DONE IT AGAIN

If a Brown biographer ever comes up with The Incredible Heaviness of being Gordon, while it may lack the comedic subtlety of Milan Kundera's classic, it will surely make up for this with tragi-comic documentary material on a hitherto unimagined scale. Lincoln once remarked that he'd rather be on God's side than have God on his, but as Mr Brown doesn't have much of a choice in the matter, he must surely wish that he at least had God in the New Labour midfield. Thus far, he clearly doesn't.

As this column pointed out in March 2007, the Prime Minister brought few of the qualities usually required for the job with him. That said, acts of God haven't done him any favours. Disastrous floods, goforit bankers and paranoid Russians have always been with us, but rarely all at once. Further, he didn't really budget for a Leader in search of a legacy, and a Party in search of the rudder. To say he was dealt a bum bragging hand would be to understate the case.

Along the way of course, Gordon Brown has collected opponents with gusto, while keeping the best enemy role for himself. Selling gold and ignoring unusually good Treasury advice were catastrophic blunders. Doing an Edward Heath with the more powerful Party rank and file was a further error he must now regret. And above all, the constant inability to sense when his claims are incredible to the electorate has rendered him the butt of every bar joke in the land. Add to all this the appointment of Bumblee Number One as Chancellor and you sort of have the full set. But for voters in favour of those short of a full deck, we have the added appeal of Harriet Harman as the Gordian Knot's deputy, and Tessa Jowell as Olympic Budget Tsarina. I've no idea if Tess is any good as a fundraiser, but she's bloody brilliant at raising the budget: she's done it three times in two years.

But by far the worst aspect of the Prime Minister is his ability to turn base metal into hubris. No sooner had he redeveloped his swagger in readiness for the Party Conference (and dismissed claims of a leadership attempt as 'utter nonsense') than first one, then two middle-ranking officers said there should be a leadership contest. Then four, then Straw - and as this piece went to bed, the number stood at seven.

This sort of crap doesn't happen by accident - not even in the Labour Party. Chum Paul bet me two months ago 'he'll be gone by Christmas'. For such an obvious Turkey, this would be entirely appropriate.

11th September 2008

THE TIPPING POINT

Somebody sent me a very funny doggerel written by, of all people, old Mary Poppins herself Julie Andrews. It was about the joys of getting old, and having read it I realised that all these appalling conditions I've got are exactly the same as everyone else's appalling conditions.

The physical side of getting on a bit is like the Titanic: everything sinks ever so slowly for ages, and then suddenly it's all end-up and heading for the bottom. There is a tipping point, and while this obviously varies by individual, there is no ordering it to go away. My symptoms are short-term memory loss, backache, cold feet and a spare tyre that refuses to go in the trunk.

This last is bad for those of us who are incurably vain. I have trousers which, five years ago, would've been falling off me at my current weight. Now they just sit there holding in this melting candle where my waist used to be.

'Bloke discovers age applies to him too'. Hold the front page.

 

10th September 2008

CHANGE!

Keira Knightley as The Duchess

Plus ca change, as the French say, but everything still stays the same...or does it? The Duchess is a very good film, but like the best movies, it can be enjoyed on a number of levels. Beautifully shot, directed and costumed, the film covers that part of the Duchess of Devonshire's life most familiar to historians - and for once does so with a degree of accuracy.

It's a love story of course, and until Nelson and Lady Caroline started dating it was about the most infamous one in history. But it was set in a time when the very structure of society was moving from what ineluctably is to what might be. "He is a dreamer like you" says the Duke of his wife's lover Charles Grey, "He dreams of what is not and can never be". Well Dook, you sure was wrong about that one - but nevertheless, it is the seminal line of the movie.

When I say the film has a degree of accuracy, what I mean is it buys hook, line and sinker the Whig view of the Duchess - a woman way ahead of her time who dabbled skilfully in politics, and hoped for her gender to be more than mere chattels. In this sense, it is a hugely sanitised Duchess we see here: that she is coquettish and something of a drunk is made clear - but not that she schemed and whored her way to becoming the head of easily the most powerful political salon in London. And that she was - as the Duke remarked on several occasions - "so damnably wrong sir!"

Ralph Fiennes plays the Duke so well it is breathtaking. Easily depicted as an out and out pig, Fiennes pulls off the astonishing feat of actually making the bloke quite sympathetic - in every sense. An awkward man pulled between his sense of duty and passion - and his love of country pursuits plus enormous intelligence - that the Duke was himself a genuine Whig says a lot about him. But Fiennes' interpretation rightly shows that while yes, Devonshire was an appalling rake who treated almost everyone beneath him like dirt; and yes, the strange menage a trois he set up flagrantly with his mistress (while condemning his wife's dalliance) showed arrogance and double standards - he was entirely and only a man of his time and station.

If you're keen on Knightley's facial bone structure (and most men seem to be) then this is the film for you: we get a lot of the leading lady's boatrace in extreme close-up, and it is a fascinating face in some ways. But for me - coming to this production with a preconception about who and what the Duchess was - Keira Knightley simply isn't right in the role. She is too Princess Di, too vulnerable and too innocent. The best scenes are those with her lover Grey (played adequately by Bumface lookalike Dominic Cooper - another Di reference, perhaps) and when armed with a fluttering fan at social events. As a political mover and shaker, Knightley's odd cross between Queen of Hearts and Tony Blair just doesn't wash.

This is very much a film for our time about timeless issues that have been recently forgotten: is the man who shouts "Change!" really to be trusted? Is there a natural order of things? How much can emotions be let free rein when up against rotten old Duty? Do the Toffs have hypocritical standards, or are they just better able to handle naughtiness than the proles? Walking back up a very steep hill to the car afterwards, I couldn't help sensing that 'all this Diana adoration is a load of old tosh' feeling rising in my gut again.

As all these and other related questions have been exercising my own mind of late, I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Whether you want to think hard about about what 'society' really means - or just want to go and watch a soppy passion/do the right thing tug-of-war - I recommend it.

 

9th September 2008

INTERACTIVE TELEVISION

We have interactive television in our house. To be exact, we've had it for over twenty years. Our version (and we're sticking with it, come HDTV and high water) is very simple, and never breaks down: somebody on the screen says something, and then I say "Oh for goodness sake, what are you talking about?"

Everyone I know talks to their telly. The good news is it doesn't answer back, but the bad news is it never has anything interesting to say either. It says 'fuck' an awful lot these days, but then so do I - and not always at the TV set.

However, the thing I'm left asking myself is 'What's the point of higher definition shit?' Surely the assumption behind this is that a steaming turd will be a more enjoyable thing to look at than a reasonably sharp one; and if so, it is flawed. Better improve the view before you trade up the camera.

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BOMBED

Fun Bomb Three…stoned to death

I don't know about you, but I looked at the bomb conspiracy mugshots yesterday and wondered whether the Thin Blue Line had once again got things a bit arse about face. Charged with (and natch, found guilty of) conspiracy to bomb, the trio of snaps suggest that conspiracy to get completely bombed out of their heads would have been a much easier case to make stick.

I hereby name them (l to r) Ali Mohammered, Tariq V’alium, and Anil Nitrate. Mr Nitrate especially looks as if he threw in some Horlicks while he was at it.

 

BIG BANG, YOU'RE DEAD

Eschatology (you may or may not know) is the religious belief in The End of the World. It's bound to be right in the end of course, but even people like The Jehovah's Witnesses stopped with the predicting some years ago. It's just so humiliating having to come back down the mountain again.

True to its trail-blazing tradition, nby was a very early adopter of the Hadron Collider story - the particle-smasher that will start doing its laps under Switzerland tomorrow. The simple reason for this is that it was hysterically funny to stumble on a science website where the high-foreheads on one side were saying End of World, while the pointyheads on the other smiled benignly before responding with Don't Be Silly. That degree of disagreement is bound to amuse.

Of course, if we're all suddenly vapourised Wednesday it won't be funny at all - although there won't be time to laugh before we're all sucked into an alternative Universe. But the most giggle-inducing thing about the whole performance is that Hadron's Ball will try at some point to simulate Big Bang - a theoretical occurrence that is nothing more than an event post-rationalised from the data. Now the idea that we would end the world trying to simulate something that never happened is very Homo sapiens. Like Iran wanting to flatten Israel to prove their God is a more merciful figment of the imagination than Jehovah.

 

GUN LAW

There was only one thing likely to lower American self-esteem still further after John McCain's 'maverick' choice of A Sharp Nail to be his running mate, and that was if the next opinion poll showed the GOP had gotten some bounce from it. Up popped Gallup yesterday to duly demonstrate a net 5% effect.

So then, what does he do next? After all, an arctic-polluting, trooper-corrupting, gun-toting former beauty queen pictured with a high-power rifle in a bikini (her in the bikini, not the rifle) gets you five - what price revealing that Mrs McCain is really Eva Peron? "Gee - wasn't she in a movie? Say, that's neat - I'll vote for her".

Brown decides to take a leaf out of McCain's book - The Carvery

 

8th September 2008

RECYCLING IS AS RECYCLING DOES

Men at Work

I don't know what's happening to the rubbish in your neck of the woods, but here in Devon East of Java they're segmenting the market. We have been supplied with various bits of shamefully thrown-together bits of Chinese plastic, and told to split up. While this may sound like a dramatic order from CinC Vth commando ("Right chaps, that's the Gerry base blown up, now split up....it's our best chance") all it means is that residents in our unfortunate county must put food in one container, plastic in another, glass and cardboard in yet another, and the residue in a large wheelybin improbably marked 'Landfill'.

My abiding ambition after two months of this bollocks is to fill the land with those who dreamed it up, but in the meantime something has also changed in the manner and form of rubbish collection. For while a mere two moons ago we arose the morning following refuse day to find disgustingly unsorted rubbish strewn in all directions, we now find carefully separated recycling strewn in all directions. The average sensory set has extreme difficulty telling any difference, but that is surely not the point: private commerce has put the world to rights once more, and we should be grateful. Gone are the old days of the dustbin-men leaving the bin rolling lazily about like metallic tumbleweed on our country lane. Arrived are the days to come of Omnivore Inc Recycling for Devon leaving several flimsy plastic bins rolling like lazy polypropolene tumbleweed on our country lane.

The first one cheeky enough to ask for a Christmas gratuity will soon find how little of the Yuletide spirit resides in our Barn.

THE GREAT PISTACHIO SCAM

A not entirely truthful Pistachio nut

I imagine you too wonder now and again how the Pistachio farmers of the world sleep nights. Careful empirical analysis over many years has yielded up the truth that something in the order of 7% of all pistachio nuts cannot be opened without recourse to the kind of molars Homo sapiens hasn't grown since we came out of the trees. If we laid all the closed pistachio nuts end to end, they would feed a Korean family of seven for three million years, and break all their teeth within six months.

It's a bit of a nerve to charge a premium for these nuts which (a) have to be shelled and (b) leave enough mess afterwards to defeat our greatly prized multi-megawatt vacuum cleaner. You don't see macademia nuts covered in granite do you? No hatpins are required to prise open cashews. They strike me (the more I think about them) as a gigantic marketing con. Evidence to support this idea is to be found at the site pistachiofruitfacts.com, which asserts:

'In the early 1900's the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture assembled a collection of Pistacia species and pistachio nut varieties at the Plant Introduction Station in Chico, Calif. Commercial production of pistachio nuts began in the late 1970's.'

Spot that? They introduce the buggers before Teddy Roosevelt gets elected, and don't actually start flogging them until just after Jimmy Carter is done stumbling around the jogging courses of Washington DC. I mean, what was going on in the intervening seven decades?

I'll tell you what: they were searching in vain for a solution to the 7% tight-as-a-fish's-arse problem, that's what. And then they got bored and thought sod it, we'll launch them anyway: kind of, bestow on them an air of playing hard to get.

And you know what? They were absolutely right. As the great Jimmy Durante remarked, "Always leave them wanting more". Which is exactly how I feel at the end of a pack of pistachios.

 

BOVINE TV

I'm not really sure what would best go under this heading really. A moan about there being too many farming programmes on the air lacks credibility, and while there are silly cows running about all over my TV screen most evenings, there are larger numbers of men doing precisely the same thing, the glass ceiling being what it is and all.

It is as you will have grasped a faintly amusing pun on the theme of Bovine TB, a ghastly disease that isn't funny at all - especially if you happen to be bovine. But when it occurred to me - as I was surfacing at 6.18 am today - it struck me as the cleverest, wittiest most rip-roaringly engaging subhead I'd thought of in many a long year.

They say dreams are as ether melting in the morning sun, and it's much the same I find with semi-conscious word-play.

Anyway, what would Bovine TV consist of? A Damien Hirst retrospective? The news for the hard of herding? Here are my starter programme ideas:

1. The Bull Run: stocks and shares for the bovine investor

2. Ten things you never knew about BSE

3. The adventures of Desperate Dan

4. Rawhide (rpt)

5. One thing and Anudder. Chat show with Anne Widdecow

 

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7th September 2008

ITALIAN ALCHEMIST IN BASE METAL SHOCK

Avanti, Mamma Mia Wassamarrayoo?

Surprise surprise, the England soccer team has been remoulded, knocked into shape and made to wear a tie by Signor Capello - and still can't get more than two goals against plucky Andorra. If your geoggers is hazy, Andorreans are few in number and live mainly at an angle of sixty degrees owing to the fact that their tiny principality is but two sides of a mountain. Not good raw materials from which to build an international footie side of renown then, a challenge exacerbated by their population (13.5, not inc goats) against our mere sixty million souls.

By all accounts it was a terrible game, but the point of this piece is not to set forth Sports Voice of the People Des Hackle's backpager 'England defeated by treacherous pitch in Vertigo Horror'. It is to reiterate a point made in relation to the Olympics. Well, three points actually:

1. Fail to invest in the grassroots of soccer, and no matter how big the crowds and magesterial the dribbles of Juan Bigeddio, Juan's salary must in the end produce poor home-grown players, and thereby international humiliation.

2. Whenever given more than the most basic bit of organisation involved with regeneration in sport, government will cock it up (pace the Olympic Show Jumping and Boxing).

3. However, given inspirational coaching and financial backing, and left to break their own barriers, competitors from our sceptred isle can still knock Johnny Foreigner sideways to bring home a genuinely astonishing medal haul.

There is a Point Four - change this ridiculous culture of 'crap is good enough' - but that's Year Two, kid. Nobody is going to give Musso ten years to sort the mess out, and this is what he needs. His task now is the silk purse/sow's ear trick. Perhaps he'll pull it off and get us to the semi in four years time. But without shifting the emphasis of expenditure in our professional game tomorrow, not even the World Cup after next will see us triumph.

As usual of course, my real point is bigger than this: laissez-faire economics have been applied to English football and found wanting. We need Government (or Lottery, or public) money, and we need it now. But listen Rupe - you're the lad for trickle-down economics aren't you? So prove me wrong, you dumbassed Aussie Gargoyle.*

*More than a few readers have pointed out that my use of Gargoyle as a description of the Great and Bad is now bordering on OCD. This is entirely correct, but I offer two points in my defence. First, I'm running out of alternatives - and people objected to my preference for terms such as fuckhead, fuckwit, dickbrain and shitface. Second, I have the negatives and they are convincing:

 

MORE SCENES FROM LILLIPUT

Whatever else one might say about the brief and anarchic reign of Gordon the Limp Laird, it's hard to deny to that new ground is broken practically every week. Whether one should be digging in the ground where once stood the garden khazi is in a way irrelevant: the soil thus discovered is seeing the sky for the first time.

As of the start of September, the poor bloke reached yet another new chapter (books, digging - two paragraphs in and already the metaphors are fighting) in the Greatest Farce of all Time, by which he fails before he's even begun. This is what happens when folks have lost all authority and exist only at the mercy of other's whims. It doesn't really matter what the subject matter is, the Gordian Knot can barely get the words of announcement out before somebody shouts "Rubbish! Gerroff!"

As usual, even where he cannot be blamed, he must be blamed. For only through his obsession with leaking and early content release is much of this misfortune occurring. This weekend it's the humility-please-forgive-me session used three years back by Pressgut, dusted off now and served up for the Labour Conference. The Independent ran a piece saying the PM would deliver an impassioned plea to forgiveness and support, and the following day the Sunday Times op column splashed with 'Too late to say sorry Mr Brown'. That's not fair chaps, he didn't even say it yet.

Two days before Brown had similarly floated his 'people will just have to grin and bear it' line on fuel, countered within a day by Frank Field-of-Dreams as good as saying "speak for yourself chummy, but your people need to speak with my people". On the same day, hardly had the Number Ten Spin colander dribbled out 'no windfall tax' before the orchard was full of scrumpers asking "Where are all the bloody apples then?"

The next stage isn't due to start for a month or so yet, but such is the state of New Labour now, it's already arrived. This is the final act in Bread & Circuses, wherein those in charge have mislaid the radar completely, and thus the People start telling them what to do. This is infinitely more dangerous than the other way round, in that while citizens have hundreds of ways to get round daft laws, spineless governments must jump to every order.

This time it's immigration, the awful bogey man which has undergone a makeover and been rebranded as migrants. As usual, the Elite mindset is still in 1968 on this one. Everyone else has caught on to the fact that we're already full up on the double-decker, and hardly any of those waiting at the bus stops are of a worrying skin colour. Opinion surveys have been showing for over five years that 74% of all Britons in all the social classes and all of the ethnic shades want a firm cap put on inward migration. But when polled in 2006, the word 'control' was not in any MP's vocabulary. Anyway, Wat Field is on hand yet again, putting together a curious alliance of grassroots TUC Labour and far-Right Tories to lead the popular proclamation that Something Must be Done. It is only a matter of time before Jacquie's hated Home Office is stormed, and her dainty wrist forced to sign something.

You may laugh (at least, I hope you do) but in such a manner doth liberty shrivel and die. For inside their crania, the People are a grubby lot. The rocket science required here is government that listens, sifts and then announces a decision based on that and sticks to it until the policy can be assessed. But you see, in this method there is no room for the guru and the management consultant - only common sense.

It's not looking good, but stay tuned.

 

6th September 2008

A LIST OF TEN ITEMS

Before we all became blessed by virtual shopping and downloaded software, phones that ring in the lavatory, and ten thousand choices of silly noise to warn that the infernal thing is ringing, new gadgets had - at most - ten options on offer. Bikes had three gears, cars four, rooms six switches, telly sets five channels and lawnmowers high, medium or low cutting heights. Before the age of forty-five, I cannot remember once thinking that maybe I needed to go and study astrophysics with Hawking (for, ooh, a decade maybe) in order to master a new durable purchase.

During that year ( it was 1993, and I remember it well) my dishwasher died and I went to purchase a new one. There was a rather ritzy looking Siemens in the shop on offer so I bought it. When my new wife and I left the house two years later, I still couldn't switch it on without running away immediately afterwards.

After that it got worse and worse. Video recorders that nobody outside the Mensa Society could set, computer programs that defied sane analysis (remember Multimate Advantage II?) and washing machines with twenty three cycles until we finally got the first truly mobile phones that weren't pocket bricks. My Nokia N73 has - get this - one hundred and thirteen functions. There are still things it does from time to time wherein my only defence is to switch it off as quickly as possible. They talk about this thing under Switzerland that can make black holes, but I reckon my phone is far more dangerous. It radiates 'I want to take over everything' 24/7.

Now the irony in this last example is that all I do with the damn portable is take pictures, because while most people spit noisily on 3.2 megapixcels these days, this degree of clarity means you can later enlarge the millipede that was a mile away on safari, and show all your friends a close-up to make National Geographic jealous. So it's good enough for me. But having been bombed while downloading movie editing software with more gizmos than there are stars in the Milky Way, I now needed to reload my Nokia software in order to shoot that film in the first place. By this snake and ladder means doth the species move forward on its journey to perfection.

Did I say reload? Hah. The very thought. Where have you been? These days we update. Imagine that: you just want what you had back, but no, you must download an update, wonder whether you should run, hide or save, and then configure the new update with the old vestige of what was downloaded previously. The net result, by the way, will be that as you finally switch out the light at 3.17 am, it is clear you no longer understand your phone at all. Wasn't it red before I started?

Now here's the thing: I am in awe of the new Nokia pc suite. It beats any three-piece suite I've ever seen and is a minute fraction of the size. But while you can't transfer data from a mobile to a laptop using a three-piece suite, sitting on it is pretty straightforward. Whereas the thing with awe and the N73 suite is, it means you gape rather than use. You puzzle, frown and scratch. You shout, swear, throw, drink, sulk and then call Mr Pointyhead. And then you get to learn you'll also have to update the media player. In fact, says Herr Geek, it'd work much better on Window Vista. But you'll need a new laptop for that.

I need to make something clear to the hitech sector, because there's a dimension of progress it just isn't getting. New stuff is supposed to work better than old stuff. You know - quicker, easier, more, clearer, sharper....that sort of thing. In short, most people want the gadget to do three things max, with three options each and one left over, which makes ten, right? Make calls, receive calls, take snaps, edit snaps, speed-dial and Bob's your uncle.

Oh, and allow me to rotate the view if I've been loony enough to shoot the footage portrait. Mr Highforehead is with me now. We've been looking for this feature most of the weekend. I will let him go in the end. Just as soon as he finds it. There's plenty of food in the freezer, and enough tins to keep us going until 2011.We should be alright.

 

RAISING MY BP AWARENESS

While up in Lancashire visiting my folks a few weeks back, I was caught on a speed camera. I was thirty-five years old the last time I got a speeding ticket. The last time a car of which I was in charge exceeded the legal speed limit, the Net was something you took fishing, Windows were the light-giving bits in walls, and James Purnell was twelve years old.

Despite all this overwhelming evidence of an attitude to driving good enough to make most people vomit, the DfT sent me (via the good auspices of the Lancashire Constabulary's offer of a sixty quid fine) the chance to go on a speed awareness course.

A Speed Awareness Course will be responsive to my individual needs. I will be allowed to complete it in day. It will look at issues such as why people speed, and how to recognise a speed limit sign. And the instructors will be helpful and responsive to my needs. I know all this because a full-colour leaflet came with the extremely complex fine form, and it told me all these fabulous things.

If there are any questions I still have there is a 24/7 answering service (which people will have to manage) and a website (which more people will have to manage, repair, update etc). The original digital artwork and print reruns over the years will of course be more and more money over time. All this will require a budget. More new jobs at the already overworked (but excellent) National Audit Office.

It's bollocks. The whole stupid, theoretical, dreamed-up-in-a-brainstorm daft concept of being able to re-engineer human nature in a day is unutterable claptrap at which most real people would laugh - not thinking as they do so that this is why their taxes are in the stratosphere while the Government's finances are in the basement.

Such stuff happens. I don't need anyone else to blame - although I was in a hurry to have lunch with my folks in their rest home because I'd been on an overcrowded motorway all morning.....because nobody did the right traffic-weight calculations a quarter of a century ago - the last time I got a speeding ticket. I did 38 mph in a 30 area. It was my fault, and it was stupid. I'll go quietly. There's nothing wrong with my fucking speed awareness. Why can't these wooden posts just realise that - and go off to do something useful like joining the human race?

 

5th September 2008

OLD NEWS FOR YOU

By mistake yesterday I stumbled onto the website for one of those trade mags one sees on Have I got News for You. I'm never that sure some of them really exist, but unbelievably this one was called Call Centre Focus. Trust me, it exists, and it is indeed a magazine for the Undead of Belfast, Newcastle and Delhi who man that last line of defence between us and some kind of service from the bloated felines. This week's top articles included:

 How to... plan to perfection

Matching resources to changing demands can be a challenge for the most seasoned call centre manager. Here Bill Kalyan, the customer contact centre manager at Autoglass, provides advice on how to achieve an effective and efficient solution to peaks in customer calls.

MORE...

Feel free to follow the link, but I will not be held responsible for you falling asleep at your desk. In fact, none of the articles I was expecting were there: - like Never Say Yes, What that Thing in your Ear is and They don't mean it Personally.

Call Centre EXPO is 16th -17th September this year. Be there or be square.

 

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4th September 2008

I know this is childish and tasteless, but I heard on the radio yesterday afternoon that a Belgian D Minor had been blown up in Lebanon. Two thoughts immediately sprang to mind: was this his score in the Avoid being Blown Up exam? and are the Belgians cunningly using musical notes instead of soldiers these days?

A visit to the BBC website confirmed my suspicion that the guy was a de-miner. But here's another riddle: why is a Belgian UN force clearing up after the Israelis who planted the mines in the first place?

 

THE PALIN PRO-LIFE THING

Palins....breeding their own electors

 

Not many of you will have noticed that an anagram of Sarah Palin is A Sharp Nail. After last night's Convention performance, I have a feeling the lady intends to be precisely that. I still think she's a ghastly small-minded bigot, but it's interesting how the lines are being drawn in this election. I reminds me more and more of 1972.

For those not yet getting the winter fuel allowance, Nixon's slogan that year was 'Reelect the President', a line dreamed up by JWT's Haldeman that said it all very neatly: 'a vote against Nixon is unpatriotic'. The McCain camp this time (the scoundrels hiding behind patriotism rarely change) have plumped for 'Country First'. Ms Palin - as one couldn't fail to notice, given the size of her rapidly expanding family - is pro-life. Thus this time, 'a vote for Obama is a vote against America and defenceless babies'. It would also be a vote for Polar bears and the planet,but politics is ultimately about persuasion: the US remains a country deeply divided between the liberals and the traditionalists. This time I fancy Obama's change message will carry the day, but it's not going to be a breeze.

There is also a second thing a lot of people have spotted - but not printed out of a sense of sensitivity. The Governor of Alaska herself had a baby only three months ago: it was born with Downs Syndrome. In 2008, it seems unlikely bordering on impossible that a State Governor about to have such a child didn't know in advance. So to go ahead and have the kid anyway is an act of outmoded, irrational abortion philosophy - or enormous ethical courage, depending on your viewpoint.

McCain's choice of a featherweight gender-balance is so crass and cynical as to suggest (at least to me) that he isn't fit to be President of Zimbabwe let alone the US. But before we all condemn the new mum out of hand, it behoves us to reexamine the 'pro-life' debate yet again.

I loathe the anti-abortion lobby's 'framing' use of the term 'pro-life' for their case - as if suggesting that the rest of us are baby-bayoneting psychos. But the abortion issue remains a difficult area for me. Not that I've ever had one you understand; what I mean is, as with most things I think there has to be ground between the Woman's Right to Choose view, and the No, Never Ever madness at the other extreme.

I've had more arguments with women on this point over the years than every other one put together - including which way to load a dishwasher. Indeed, there was a time at the turn of the 1970s when even raising the issue evoked (literally) feral cat responses of spitting anger. But my view remains unchanged: a woman's right to choose is no more or less weighty than the father's right and the child's right. And her greater right to choose is only given any real weight if she genuinely felt certain