Lesson not Learnt

So Ireland is screwed. Greece is already screwed and next on the list is one of Portugal, Spain or Italy. I'm not entirely sure that we're totally out of the woods either. What I find difficult to understand, amongst many things in this business, is how when we know why this is happening we aren't stopping it.

Greedy people are destabilising countries on purpose to...well I'm not sure why they are doing it beyond the fact they make money from it. And we (ordinary non bastard type people) seem to sit back and wait while they do it and then pour more money into the huge black hole they create. So why aren't every one of these people in jail ? They should be shouldn't they. They are ruining millions of people's lives and we just stand back shrug our shoulders and say that's the market for you. Well fuck that. In the words of Howard Beale It's time to get mad God damn it !

Why can't we let the banks fail. Seriously why can't we. What's the worse that can happen. The argument that is peddled out is 'that would ruin our whole financial system.' quite honestly it looks pretty fucked from here anyway. We've allowed a situation to occur where the majority are held to ransom by a tiny few who make fortunes.

I don't see where this will all end. With blood on the streets is my guess. The speculators will not stop and I can't see how the rest of Europe will stand back while another country is driven to the wall and ordinary people are expected to pick up the tab again.

The Letter

This is the letter I wrote

Every time I read the letters page of your newspaper there is a letter from someone decrying modern life. Well there is a lot to be said for the modern world. We live in a world where most infectious diseases have been wiped out, certainly in Western countries. There used to be fears of too many people congregating for fear of Polio, not any more. We also live in world where people are not left to starve. Of course there are people who abuse the benefits system but that is the price we pay for having a safety net in case ill fortune befalls us.


We live in a world of unparalleled technology. I can carry my entire record collection in an iPod the size of a wallet. I can communicate with anybody in the world from my living room, or on the bus or anywhere. And although we can bemoan the lack of community there is now there are plenty of online communities for people to enjoy. We dismiss this sense of a virtual community at our peril. A close friend made online is still a close friend.

I am not about to dismiss the idea that we have lost a sense of community. We probably have. But this is not through choice. Society has become more mobile and people have had to move around to find work. The same families don’t live on the same street forever anymore. I was 6 in 1977 and I remember with golden fondness the street party we had that day.

That was the last hurrah for that. I had no wish to become political but the fact is two years later Thatcher came to power and brought her there is no such thing as society philosophy with her. Maybe that sense of togetherness would have gone anyway. She certainly accelerated it.

But there is no point in looking back. There are examples everywhere if you seek them of people working together to make life more colourful. I am a member of an Amateur Theatre company, one of many in this area alone. My daughter goes to Rainbows and I see there the work of the guide and scouting movement. There are countless other examples of good young people and their parents trying to make a better tomorrow. By all means let’s look with fondness on our pasts. But let’s do it without decrying the world we live in now.

The Last Hurrah

I have had a letter published in the Halesowen News. I am currently in Halesowen Library so have no access to it but I will put it on here later. What I wanted to talk about here was a part in in where I refer to the Silver Jubilee of 1977.

I was 6 in 1977 and obviously had no idea of what really was going on in the world. I had no idea there was a band called the Sex Pistols or that they had released God Save the Queen. What I do remember very fondly from that time was the street party we had. I lived in a cluster of three streets and ours was the central one. The street was closed for the day and everybody, and I am sure I am hardly exaggerating when I say that, came out and joined in. My brothers and I went to the party as an RNLI crew and my older brother as The Man with no Name (Clint Eastwood).

In the morning and afternoon there were loads of kids games and we all sat down together and eat. And then all the adults got drunk and danced on the evening. And  I stayed up till 11 o'clock. It truly was a golden day. And I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that just thinking about it makes me a bit wobbly and brings tears to my eyes.

Its very easy to get sentimental about the past. The 70's were not a perfect decade by any means. But it does seem to me that it was the last days of what we, certainly the white working class, could call community. Its easy to blame Thatcher for this. She certainly went out of her way to destroy any sense of community that did exist by selling off council homes and destroying our industrial base. But I guess these things may have come to pass anyway. I'll never forgive her the callous way in which she did it and will be lighting a cigar the day the old bitch finally croaks it. Not an admirable thought or one that does me credit but its the way I feel.

What we have lost is that sense of community that we had that day. As I said in the letter communities are out there. Look at the Guide and Scouting movement, football clubs or any of the other community activities that are out there. But that sense of everybody dropping things and coming together to spontaneously to just celebrate has been lost.

Unless we win the World Cup of course..(hysterical laughter).

Bye Bye Big Brother

Well Big Brother has come to an end and I know in a few weeks I will have forgotten all about it. But at the moment it is pretty raw. People who don’t watch the show will be raising their eyebrows. Those who love the show will understand. So I thought I would do my retrospective now.

Favourite Housemate

No competition here. It was the Slickman Victor. I loved him before Ultimate Big Brother and I was glad that they put him in as recognition of the devotion he has amongst BB fanatics. I loved him because he was the first person who really was up front about it being a game and saying he was here to ‘take these suckers out.’

A word for the Ultimate BB winner Brian. I like the guy. He is funny and charming and really impossible to dislike. His only flaw for me was he made the shows he was in too predictable. Because nobody stood a chance against him. That’s not his fault but as a viewer I found it more difficult to enjoy series when we knew who would win a week in. I found it difficult to enjoy Pete (BB7) for exactly the same reason.

Honourable mentions go to Alex (BB3), The Tickle (BB4), Kitten (BB5), Makosi (BB6), Aisleyne & Glyn (BB7), Rex (BB9), Freddy, Marcus, Noirin (BB10) and Ben (BB11)

Favourite Series

I liked all the series but for my favourite the list begins and ends with one series. It has to be BB5. It was the one that saved the programme after the sedate (not boring) BB4. It had three of the true heavyweight housemates in Nadia, Victor and Michelle. And it had Kitten, Ahmed, Marco and Emma besides. This was when the BB producers really began to get the idea of how to manipulate the housemates more cannily. Whenever they began to get along they threw something else in to stir them up. My only beef with it was that it became clear fairly quickly that Nadia was going to win.

I also loved BB10. It had a great set of storylines that ran through it. Mainly around two housemates. Freddy and Noirin. Everyone fell out with Freddy, everybody fell in love with Noirin. The Freddy storyline encapsulated one of my favourite BB trends. Where somebody is disliked by the cool crowd; they put him up week after week and then he picks them off as the cool kids realise he is popular. The tension was sustained throughout the series and it was really only in the last week where it was obvious that Sophie was going to win.

I have a great affection for BB1 and liked the fact that BB6 was really the only time I genuinely did not know who was going to win it when Davina called out the winners name.

Worse Housemate

There were lots of housemates I really disliked at times but it must be said in almost all these cases that ended the second they left the house. The reason I disliked them was mainly because they were opposed to housemates I liked.

The housemate I truly loathed was Siavash. He showed some promise but about 7 weeks in he turned into a complete prick. Refusing to nominate and making out he was some kind of fucking martyr for doing so. I have never been able to tolerate housemates who complain they hate nominating. That is why they are there. For crying out loud, and Siavash was the worse culprit ever at this.

Honourable mentions: Bea (BB10), Dale, Jennifer, Becca (BB9), Lea, Sezar, Mikey (BB7), Maxwell, Saskia (BB6), Emma (BB5), Jonny, PJ (BB3) Stuart and Elizabeth (BB2) and Darren (for changing his noms when Mel overheard them) (BB1)

Forces of Nature

Many housemates tell us all the stuff they are going to do on their VTs then disappear without trace when they get in the house (see Bubble BB2, Bonnie BB7 or Jo ‘the cougar’ BB11). Then there are the wildcards. People who genuinely are a little unusual/unhinged.

The undisputed King of this genre was Nikki (BB7). I can remember watching her and thinking this is an act. But as the show continued it became clear it wasn’t. She is actually like that. Then we had Makosi (BB6). A woman so conniving that she was prepared to suggest she did not realise a man had his fingers and not his penis inside her. We also had Science (BB6) the proverbial man who could start an argument with a mirror. Marcus (BB10) a man of such breathtaking self confidence/delusion he probably believes he could shit gold if he wanted to.

Romance

I don’t care that they split up there has only been one romance in the BB house and that was the first. Helen and Paul. Nuff said.

Davina

There were times I wished I had a volume control but I always forgived her because I knew she was a fan.

Beefs

My final part is just a chance for me to offload about some of the things that have aggravated me about Big Brother over the years.

Nadia and the fags - I realise that they had to give her the fags to stop her walking and Nadia was the star attraction that year, but as a purist it skewed the competition and I thought it was unfair on other housemates who were missing things as well.

BB7 and evicted housemates - It shouldn't have happened simple as that. They were voted out. Your fault you put somebody unbeatable like Pete in. Spice it up some other way.

BB11 and the final few days - What were the producers thinking have a vote to evict after giving Josie a pass to the final. If Sam and Corin had stayed we would have had an actual fight for the winner not a procession.

Books

I thought I should take five minutes and write about the books I have been reading recently. What I have enjoyed and...well I was going to say what I haven't. But the truth is I am really sort of past the days when I plow onto the bitter end of a book I am not enjoying any longer.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher - Kate Summerscale

I am going to immediately break the rule I just set myself immediately. I didn't really enjoy this book. It came with some really good recommendations from people who I respect. But I just felt it never really got going. It involves the horrible murder of a toddler and looks at the work of the new breed of detectives and the social mileu in which they operated.

It was one of those books which made me feel a little bit of an intellectual weakling. Because there was clearly something in it which I was missing. I just wanted to know who killed the kid and if the author could shove a good twist in there all the better. It just left me unsatisfied.

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones - Alexander McAll  Smith

This is the fourth ofr fifth book in Alexander McAll Smith's book about the residents and former residents of 44 Scotland Street. These books are enjoyable and undemanding. I mean that entirely as a compliment. I was rather pleased that in this book he has dropped Pat, who I thought the dullest of the characters and that the narcissist Bruce is finally havig some personal growth as a human and is becoming likeable. Even if it means I now have to miss the most enjoyble chapters on him being delusional about his place in the world.

My only gripe is that with each book Mr. Smith is complaining a bot more about the thuggery of basic day to day life. the courseness and how people are with one another. I think there is truth to what he says. I could just do without being reminded of it every fifth chapter. But I think with all the pleasure he has given me with the residents of Scotland Street, Mma Ramotswe and Isabel Dalhouse he has earned the right to his gripes.

Meltdown - Ben Elton

Now this was a book I really enjoyed. I used to love Ben Elton. I got his first book autographed at Hudsons in Birmingham. However since then there was a parting of the ways as I realised that his first books were not that well written. then there were the musicals and I rather began to dislike him.

However throughout this time my mom continued to buy his books for me at birthdays. I did little with them. Then while at a loose end for a book to read I read High Society and really enjoyed it. Then I slowly went through his back catalogue and realised how much better he had become at writing. He had ditched the long extensions of his stand up routine and concentarted more on telling a story. And he is quite the storyteller.

Meltdown is the story of a group of peopl who caught the wave of money that appeared from nowhere, and went back there eventually. They are by and large a pretty dislikeable bunch. And there is a certain ammount of schadenfreude when it all goes tits up in the collapse. Except that is for the main character Jimmy who is clearly a man who knows he has been very lucky and excepts his downfall with humility. Its a very prescient book which captures the jolt to that generation of go-getters perfectly. But most of all it is a rollicking good story.

Engleby - Sebastien Faulks

I loved this book. Its about a psychopath and how he is made by his experiences. It chronicles his life in first person narration. How he is plucked from Comprehensive school and shoved into a private school where he is systematically bullied for several years until it is his turn to become the bully in his final year. I won't state what he goes on to do.

What is fantastic about the book is in the final chapters (once he is caught) and we get to hear him talk about his crimes. It perfectly captures the mind of a psychopath. Or at least it captures what I imagine to be the lack of empathy and narcissism that you would find in such a person. Anyway it is just brilliant.

Benefit Cheats

I couldn't think of anything to write yesterday and then helpfully Mr. Cameron pops up and gives me something to put pen to paper for. The issue of cracking down on benefit cheats.

Now I am going to be charitable and say maybe the conservative Government have come up with something that will work. However history suggests that it will not. What all these crackdowns do is put off and catch the people in the middle. Not those who do not claim, not those who really are cheats. It catches the people who have genuine needs but are not as brazen as the actual cheats.

Its all very well stating the case firmly that people should work. We all know that. But the truth is in my job I have been to families where we are now in the third generation of people who have never worked. Not only does nobody in their family work but nobody else they know does. How do you start in a situation like that ? I don't know.

My suspicion is that what we actually do is pay these families just enough to live on so they will not cause too much of a nuisance to the rest of us. Pay them too little and the crime rate goes up and social workers and other people can't deal with the people they really need to help because they are too busy with the chaos they cause.

The benefits system was meant as a safety net and to a certain extent it still does that job but for some it has become a cultural lifestyle they are unwilling or unable to escape. A depressing post but there you are. We have an agreement and it more or less works, even if it doesn't. Take your money and stop bothering us.

Nowt

I genuinely have nothing to say this week other than I saw Inception and The A-Team which was a fun film and I have a bit of gum ache.

There is something pretty major going on in my life but I cannot talk about it at the moment so I will spill in due course.

Toy Story 3

Since my daughter came along I have seen some real stinker movies. Space Chimps 2 stands out as does Underdog which I managed to dislike even when it had Patrick 'Puddy' Warburton in it. Then there are Pixar films and then there are Toy Story films.

I loved the first two but this one takes me into a whole new level of the stratosphere in admiration. It is so perfectly pitched it seriously makes me want to cry. Not because it is sad or touching. It is definitely touching. There is a scene where all the characters hold hads which...I genuinely think is about as perfect as cinema can get. And I include the heavyweights in that like John Wayne walking out the shack at the end of The Searchers or Michael Corleone discovering Fredo's betrayal in that assertion.

There's little else to say. Just if you haven't seen it, what in all of holy hell are you waiting for. Go now. Seriously look up the times and go. NOW !!!

Moving Day

The reason these posts are late is that i have moved house. Its a bloody slog and I hate it. but it is nice to be in a new house with all that entails, fresh beginnings etc.

We are currently shifting the last set of boxes from our old garage whicgh are no doubt destined to rest in this garage for the next four or five years till we move again. Garage refugees, the clutter equivalent of the Littlest Hobo. Talking of which...



Any excuse

Stoopid People

Part of the government's new policing policy involves the election of police commisioners. The idea is, I imagine, to allow people to hold police commisioners to account for what they see as the shortcomings of the way Law and Order are dealt with in the area.

There is a big flaw in this argument and it is one that not many people want to face up to and that is that people are arseholes of the first order. An individual person is fine. Put a group of persons together and you have an idiot. We have known this for many years, Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds was published in 1841. It documented through several examples how people bandied together become an irrational mob. My favourite quote of the book is 'Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one'

What happens when you have such a mob electing somebody to office to deal with crime ? Do you think it is possible that anybody who will be prepared to stand on a public platform and try to defend rational policing that actually reduces crime. Of course not. We are going to have people competing to be the most populist. So we will have more irrational policing like putting policemen on the beat when it has been proved beyond measure how ineffective this is. We will have them promising to further criminalise young people and bring them into the criminal justice system when it has beeen proven that if that is where you place young people that is where they remain.

Having said that if they can lock up the little shit who stole my I-Pod and Sat Nav from my car two years ago then they'll get my vote.

Oh and talking of stupid people if you haven't heard this you've missed a treat

Team Mitchell or Team Linehan

There was an interesting debate yesterday on Twitter regarding the burqa. David Mitchell’s piece is here. I tend to agree with him. He says that its fine for us to disagree with everything that the burqa stands for but agree that people have the right to make stupid choices. And we can tell people so providing we don’t become rude or abusive.

Graham Linehan’s response was to argue from the alternative viewpoint that the burqa subjugates women and places them as second class citizens. I also agree with this viewpoint. My understanding is that Islam claims the burqa is connected with modesty. This seems pretty slim to me. Why was it that women had to be modest. Why not, as I heard on the Danny Baker show once, make ugly men wear burqas to? Graham’s argument seems to be that if you do ban the burqa then you free up a lot of Muslim women to break free from this oppressive tenet of their religion.

What is striking about this discussion is that it contains two genuine arguments which both come from a liberal or left of centre standpoint. David argues that it is illiberal to tell people what they can and cannot wear. Graham’s argument counters that women do not always have a choice to wear a burqa. They feel obligated to. My dilemma is that I find myself in agreement with both arguments. But eventually I have to side with David.

I don’t like the idea of the government telling people what they can and cannot wear. Furthermore I find the argument from the female emancipation viewpoint a touch paternalistic. There is a mention in the article about a 62% majority being in favour of the ban. If I could feel that this was because people felt that women were oppressed by it I would be encouraged. However I don’t think that it is. I think it’s based on Islamophobia.

I also think that banning the burqa is only going to exacerbate the problem of Muslim disaffection that we have in this country. However there is a lot to be said for the argument that this ship has really sailed since we illegally invaded Iraq. I am aware that this post is a touch rambling but I think this a subject that provokes just that reaction as the different liberal arguments collide in my head.

Spitting mad

I am currently fuming that a bunch of people on a TV show did not pick someone I like, to go and join them on that TV show. My life couldn't get any more trivial.

Oh and my mouse is playing up. if there's a better reason to get angry I'd like to know it.

I will write something more substantial next week but am in the middle of moving. In the meantime here is one of my favourite Onion links

I wrote something I did

I have for the past six weeks been busy writing a panto for the theatre company I work with. It has been very hard work. But it has been good to have a deadline otherwise I would have spent an extra six months or possibly eternity finishing the bloody thing. I was reminded of a couple of quotes while completing the writing.

The first one concerned the editing process. I had feared that when the script was subjected to the scrutiny of the small group responsible for helping me make it presentable that I would be excessively sensitive and sulk about their suggestions.

Bill Bryson wrote about this in relation to Thomas Jefferson and The Declaration of Independence. He said that 'Like most writers Jefferson sulked about the editing process and thought what congress presented back to him was inferior, and like all writers he was wrong.' Now before we get to my grandiosity I can accept that perhaps my panto is not quite the same work of literature as the Declaration of Independence (although my jokes are funnier). The point is I need not have worried about the jokes being diluted because in every case where a change was made I can see the script has improved with the advice of my colleagues.

The second quote I saw on a Charlie Brooker special about writers (look it up on Youtube, its fantastic). On the programme Tony Jordan says 'I love having wrote something, I hate fucking writing'.That's about the way I feel about writing. I had really had to drag myself to my computer to finish this piece of work. The last scene was such a phenominal pain in the arse I signed off typing 'Thank Fuck That's finished'. Then on Thursday we had a reading. And hearing a cast reading it and laughing as they did so (both edited and unedited bits) it reminded me that the first part of Tony Jordan's quote always trumps the second part of it.

Eclipse

Saw the third film in the Twilight series. I have to say that it is getting better. I am still team Edward but Jacob grew on me a bit in this instalment. I am not going to enter into any analysis of the film. Just to say that below is possibly the best Onion clip ever which is saying something. The moment where the Al-Quaida spokes man says 'wow!' is simply as perfect as comedy gets, anywhere ever.

Topical !

So I am trying to right this blog weekly. And therefore if it is weekly it should be topical. And if it is topical then there is really only one story. Raoul Moat. To those of you reading in the future Raoul Moat is an ex nightclub bouncer who became a bit unhinged after coming out of prison, shot and wounded his ex partner and killed her current partner and the following day shot a policeman who was sat by the side of the road.

He then went missing for about a week. Rather helpfully he left a couple of notes to help the media ramp up their hysteria levels from ‘Crikey’ to ‘Armageddon’. It eventually all finished last night when Moat killed himself, infuriatingly just off camera for the news outlets.

I didn’t need to watch a great deal of the coverage but enough to gather the tone of it. Lots of interviews from handwriting experts and forensic psychologists and ex-firearms officers. All of them doing the same thing. Speculating and therefore filling valuable airtime.

In the good old days before 24 hours news coverage when there were sieges we had to dutifully wait for the allotted hours that our news was delivered. This freed us up to actually get on with the business of living our lives. The news bulletins because they were only half an hour stuck to reporting what was actually happening.

Media experts will tell you that this was highbound and moribund and an affront to democratic right of us to consume our news when we like. Well I don’t need to point out to you what snake oil selling cocks Media experts are. They spend their lives studying trends in media, as if that isn’t what we all do. Get a real fucking job.

If anything serious really happened we used to have the news interrupting the main programmes. And what a thrill it was when that happened, wondering in the feverish few seconds between ‘we interrupt this programme to go over to the BBC Newsdesk’ and being told what actually had happened.

Compare that with ridiculous BREAKING NEWS tickertape that runs across both Sky and BBC News channels. This can be used from everything from ‘David Cameron to meet the Queen to Become Prime Minister’ to ‘BA and Unite talks break down’



I realise how hopelessly luddite all this sounds. 24 hours news cannot be put back in the box. And I would also point out that the true joy of 24 hours news is that it gives them more time to screw things up, get caught out by members of the public as beautifully demonstrated in the above clip. Also with out 24 hours news we probably wouldn’t have Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe. I am just lamenting that the crowning achievement of 24 hours news is not an increase in democracy in the way people receive their news, but an increase of the amount of bullshit in the world.

Since I started to write this the media is doing its best to elevate Raoul Moat to the status of folk hero. Which reminded me of the below clip. No lessons ever learned.



Raoul Moat happened about a month after Derek Bird's rampage.

Thugs

I seem to be the only football fan in the world who thinks The Netherlands were ok in the way they played the world cup final last night. They were playing a team everybody agreed were the best passing team in the world. So rather than ry to play the same game and inevitably get thrashed they decided to rough Spain up. And it worked. They were punished when they went to far and were very lucky not to have one player sent off in the first half but that's the price you pay for playing that style.

In the end it all worked out when Spain scored and the best player on the park Iniesta scored it. But good God to hear the BBC commentators go on you would have thought Holland played no football at all.You would also have thought that Spain never ran up to the ref branding imaginary cards every time that a dutch player did a foul. That didn't fit with the narrative they wated to tell. Even in football we need a good guy and a bad guy.

The pundits seem to em to be completely out of touch. they don't understand that football is not a popularity contest or a beauty pageant. its a game in which both teams try to win and stop the other team winning the best they can. And if they win ugly big deal. its down to the better footballing team to show why they are the best. Oh and Alan Hansen's a wanker and seriously they could pick any bloke from a pub and he'd give more insight than Alan Shearer. The guy, well he just defies words. I just hope the Beeb can see sense and sweep away these complacent smug tossers and relaunch Match of the Day. It makes Question of Sport look current and cutting edge.

The Problem With Me

I have a problem. Well I have many problems but this is a major one. Is as much as it sums up in so many way why it ain’t easy being me. I’m a pretty gregarious person. I’m comfortable with my own company but I like being around people. Except people I don’t know that well. Once I know them I am fine.

I have what the psychologist I work with might call a mild anxiety disorder. I just think I am clumsy and socially inept. I have lost count of the amount of times I have inadvertently offended people, mainly women. I used to beat myself up about this but have come to accept it as just being who I am. I don’t blame myself for being no good at football. I’m just not. And its much the same for social niceties. I am crap at them.

My particular little problem at the minute is the problem of which parents to say hello to in the schoolyard when dropping my daughter off. There are three categories. Those who I ignore, not in an ignorant fashion you understand. Just I don’t know them and my daughter doesn’t know their child so we have nothing to say hello about. Then there are the group of about 15 who I always say hello to. These are people whose kids my daughter knows and I have met at parties.

Then there is the troublesome class. These are the parents who I sort of know. My daughter may occasionally mention them and we have had the odd conversation. Do I say hello to them. Sometimes their kid is playing up a bit and they don’t want to say hello and if I blunder in with my hello it’s the last thing they need. But if I don’t and we catch eyes at the last minute it looks like I’ve ignored them until they said hello.

Then there is the dad who I had one conversation with once and we are stuck in a constant daily nodding and helloing that quite frankly we both could do without. When I see him approaching my heart sinks and I can tell his does to. But we’re both English and well mannered and neither of us could bare the thought of not saying hello. Because what kind of sociopath does that.

So we keep saying hello and alright mate every morning and every day death comes a bit closer and I am stuck in this circular hell that I can’t get out of without moving my daughter to a new school.

Like I say. Not easy being me…or anybody I guess.

Team Edward

I am referring to the Twilight Movies of course. When the films came out I sent a text to the Simon Mayo show saying that they were something I had feared for a time. A phenomena which, to me, seems to spring from nowhere has a huge young following and I don't know the first thing about it.

Two years on I borrowed the DVDs from a friend and sat back to watch them and...they're very good. I can absolutely see why they are so big with teen girls but there was plenty there to amuse and entertain. The humour is particularly good. I laughed out loud several times. Looking forward to Eclipse now.

The Easiest Job In The World


One of the main themes of this world cup, until the weekend, has been the form of South American teams. They were represented in all four of the quarter finals. Yards of column space were devoted to why it is that South American teams were succeeding at the expense of their European counterparts. Was it the greater hunger, the fact that European children play more on their X-boxes than on the streets etc. etc. Two days and four games later the theme has changed. Only one of the South American teams came through and they only got through after some dubious goalkeeping by their centre forward.

All of a sudden the theme has changed. Now the column inches are being devoted to the reason European teams have succeeded. It is like the scene in 1984 where the mob suddenly switches from hating Eurasia to Eastasia. And this happens all the time. And we are not supposed to notice how consistently they get things 100% wrong or do massive u-turns.

This would not be so bad were it not for how hysterical they as journalists get when a player or coach states something with the merest whiff of inconsistency. When Fabio Capello hemmed and hawed a little after we had been thumped about whether he would still be in a job they chased him down like a hunted rabbit. And these were people, many of them I am sure, who were predicting an England win 48 hours earlier.

Sports Journalism ? Easiest job in the world.

The Beautiful Game

Well we're out, spectacularly out. I mean amazingly out. Mainly as the result of some defending that at the most charitable could be described as amateurish. The main talking point through the game was about the blatant goal that England were denied. Now this should not totally distract from England's woefulness. However it was clearly a turning point. Had we come back from 2-0 to 2-2 in two minutes then we truly would have been sailing with the wind full behind us and I think we could certainly have gone on to win the game.

The inevitable talking point after the game surrounds the further introduction of technology. I am certainly in favour of goal-line technology. However the difficulty this brings is that ionce introduced for goalline technology pandora's box is openned. As I type Argentina are leading in a game where their first goal came from a laughably offside position. Lineker et al are discussing how they could use technology for that. And therein lies the problem. So I'm inclined to think stuff it. Don't bother with any of it and just let the officials do their job. As a white midle class male I have little to kvetch about. It may as well be about that instead of immigrants nicking my job or women being confident in themselves getting me into a lather.

As for England. There is something rotten in the state of our football and I think it is all about money. We have few brilliant up and coming players and those that are up and coming cannot play in the premier league because our teams are 75% made of foreign players. We are told that we have the best league in the world. But what this means, and lets be clear it is Sky and The Premier league who say this, is it is the richest league in the world.

Except that it is bankrupt. Half the clubs are heavily indebted. Meanwhile we have lost to a young German side. I can't help but think it is significant that German teams have a rule about so many young German players being in every matchday squad. This can never fly in this country because it may harm their chances in the Champions' league which would adversely effect their ability to service their debts. How I pray for the day when English club football's bubble eventually bursts. Its coming I know. One of the bigger teams will collapse and there will be nothing the premier league can do about it. The only losers will be the money men. The fans will survive.

More Greatness of The Wire

Haven't done this for a while

Black Death

Went to see this on a whim last week after a tweet from Andy Nyman. It's a good old hokumy tale about the Black Death plague of the 14th century. It features Sean Bean a bloke who reminds me of Jim Dale, an incredibly weak male lead and the wonderful, aforementioned, Andy Nyman.

I am giving it the benefit of the doubt and hoping that it was not meant to be entirely serious as I found it pretty funny. There was a serious point about the utter futility of fundamentalist beliefs and how they destroy any society they touch. But there was also lots of pensive shots of Sean Bean before he tells his comrades to 'prepare, because God has left the horizon' and other silly things.

I enjoyed it tremendously except for the last two minutes which were two of the crappest minutes in cinema I ever hope to sit through.

In praise of Luther...sort of

Just got around to finishing Luther on BBC. It was a fantastic series. Its only slight problem was that it had Idris Elba in. This is not a problem in itself as he is a very good actor. The problem was that anything with him in is inevitably going to remind me of The Wire.

The Wire is unique amongst television dramas in the way that it did not bother conforming to the regular way of TV shows where everything had to be packaged and wound up in a neat one hour package. By doing that The Wire was able to let stories build naturally and not make the kind of shortcuts that shows like Luther, however brilliant they are, have to make.

Still I loved the show and I'm hopeful there will be a second series. As long as his gruesome female sidekick is with him. She delivered the two best lines of dialogue in the series. In one of her occasionally wearisome philosiphical discussions about the nature of love, she says 'The universe is not cruel John, it's just indiffferent.' To a fan of natural selection and the apparent cruelty of nature that is beautiful to me.

Secondly she said that there are three common delusions people suffer from. Which are:

1. We overstate our good parts (I am English and Catholic so come with self loathing already installed so this one does not count).
2. We overestimate the ammount of control we have over our lives
3. We persist in the veiw that our lives will change radically for the better in spite of all available evidence to the contrary.

Which I personally found pretty fucking sobering.

World Cup Woe

England truly have set a new benchmark for averageness at this tournament thus far. It really is mystifying. Anybody who sees Rooney, Lampard and Gerrard play for their club sides knows that these are class players so why is it they cannot do it for England.

This is ordinarily the bit when I offer some kind of bon mot or pithy reason why. But the truth is I don't know the reason why. And judging by the varying bewildered looks on the faces of messrs Capello, Errikson and Maclaren to name but the most recent three it seems the England managers are in the dark as well.

4.3.2.1

Saw this the other night. A great feelgood movie. Closest we've come to true girl power since the heady days of The Spice Girls. And that's not mean ironically.

Nuclear Elephants and World Cup Fever

In the hopes of trying to restore this blog to some kind of regularly used blog I am going to try and write this in a regular weekly fashion.

Nuclear Elephant

There has been a great deal of talk over the last few months regarding the deficit. We all know it is big and that we need to tackle it. I work in the public sector and we are the public enemy number one it seems. It is our inflationary wages that our causing us all to be in hock. Now the right way to handle this I might suggest would be to say to everybody ‘look we’re in a bit of a hole here. We’re all going to have to sacrifice a bit for this. Which means public sector worker’s money will be frozen. But so will benefits. And taxes on the really well off will go up to so nobody feels picked on.’

Unfortunately this kind of plain speaking seems beyond British politicians at least. So what we have is a sustained attack on public sector workers. Who, if little else, do actually get up, go to work, pay taxes and spend money and do all the other things that make an economy work. The cause of this one track attack I think lies with our press who do like their easy hate figures. If you want proof look at the last two years as they have moved from Ross and brand to bankers to Social Workers to MPs to Gordon Brown…repeat.

And while this goes on we have the other story of Iran. Who may or may not be developing nuclear weapons. I have always thought that it is more than a little hypocritical of the rest of the world to lecture Iran while holding nuclear weapons themselves. I have heard various politicians and commentators try to justify this. But at heart it is simple hypocrisy. I have these arguments with my daughter who regularly points out what a hypocrite I am (although she is 6 and does not know the word hypocrite). I am left floundering and end up just feeling I have a right to be a hypocrite because I am an adult and that’s what 99% of us are. However I do realise how facile this argument. It is no less facile when it is elevated from an argument with a six year old to an argument between sovereign states.

Then we come to the elephant of the title. With all this talk of the deficit wouldn’t it make sense to scrap Trident. Even some of the generals, hardly wet lefties, have questioned their usefulness. So why keep it ? The money would ease the deficit, even if half of it was spent on the equipment our soldiers are lacking and would actually give us some moral authority when negotiating with Iran. Trident is the elephant in the room which could help solve so many problems.

World Cup Fever

Well we’re all going a bit silly over here again about England. With half the country declaring we will win and the other half saying we can’t win. The truth is both of those points of view are wrong. England are at best a quarter final team. However once we are there…who knows.

The Case For Honesty

Nicky Campbell has directed us football fans to here to apparently fume about Simon Heffer's egregious insult.

I actually like the guy's style. I like the fact that he is open about his snobbery. I'll have that over the jumped up faux affrontary of hacks generally. Who are trying to convince us they are morally offended while rubbing their hands with glee at the spectacle.

Incidentally this is what I like most about Twitter. The links that I get from it. I also like the fact that I get to dump celebs who don't cut the mustard. I will keep Nicky though. I like the fact he replies to my occasional angry e-mails to Breakfast.

A sense of perspective

This diagram blows my mind not sure about you. To imagine how massive our sun is comapred to us is mind boggling. But to then compare how miniscule the sun is in comparison to it's bigger cousins.

Loving Hugh is Easy Cos Your Beautiful

I really like Hugh Grant. Really like him. I think he is an effortlessly charming man and a wonderful if extremely lazy comedic actor.

This love was pushed to the limit this week when I saw 'Did You Hear About the Morgans ?' Which is a comedy so light if it were put into a balloon it would float away. And even though it is awful it is enlivened by his presence.

I'm really pissed off that having checked Youtube there are basically no decent videos to post. Oh well. Headline is I like Hugh Grant.

Oh yeah

Its a new year, I'm going to post more yadda, yadda, yadda...

Spinning plates

This week The UK, US and French Governments have closed their Embassies in Yemen. This is as a result or possibly response is the better word (knee jerk maybe), to the attempted bombing of an American plane by an extremist it is alleged was recruited and trained there.

Following that the governments are also making noise about something being done to combat extremism and Al-Quaida's influence there.

It just seems to me that we are increasingly being shown that this is a battle we simply cannot win with conventional Western bullying of small nations. It is no surprise that Employment and a hardline, allegedly corrupt government exist in this country. It is easy to see why Al-Quaida choose it is a place to ferment disaffection.

So what can be done ? We are barely holding a peace in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pakistan is becoming more unstable by the week. That's before we get to how fragile the grip on Iraq still is.

I don't know where to start with this. I would have thought it was obvious to anyone that we cannot keep all these plates spinning forever and eventually will have to admit that we cannot run the whole of the Middle East and Central Asia and eventually re-negotiate a way of dealing with that part of the world.

What the fuck that involves I don't know. I don't have answers. I can just see this ain't working.