Smooth operators

How odd. I went into Starbucks with no. 2 son. I had a relaxing Latte, he wanted something with fruit. On the blackboard was advertised some form of special that seemed to involve apples and mangoes. He asked if it was a smoothie. The assistant told us "we're not allowed to call it a smoothie" but then went on to inform us in a conspiratorial aside that "but it is a smoothie". Has someone patented the word "smoothie"? I wonder if next time I ask for a coffee after lunch in a restaurant I'll be told "we're not allowed to call it coffee" because of a retaliatory strike by Starbuck's legal team. But, as always, truth is stranger than idle speculation in a snide aside. It turns out that Starbucks has already been trying to trademark particular coffee bean types!

Starbucks, the giant US coffee chain, has used its muscle to block an attempt by Ethiopia's farmers to copyright their most famous coffee bean types, denying them potential earnings of up to £47m a year, said Oxfam.

[From Starbucks, the coffee beans and the copyright row that cost Ethiopia £47m | World news | The Guardian]

I'm bored of saying it, but you can't make this stuff up.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

It's all about the kiddies

In the strange, looking-glass world of modern Britain, most stories in the daily newspapers are already beyond parody. For instance: I read in my newspaper (at least, I read in the newspaper of the man sitting next to me on the Tube) of an 82 year-old of woman who was stopped from taking photographs of an empty paddling pool in a public park because a council official was worried that she might be a paediatrician.

So it's true. Anyone out with a camera in a public place is now, officially, either a terrorist or a pervert (perhaps even both). How did this happen?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Terror at 39,000 feet

How angry would you be if this happened to you!!

I was on a red-eye flight to the East Coast when nature called. I shut down my laptop and placed it in the seat pocket. On returning to my seat, I discovered it was missing. Surveying the surrounding area, I found a pre-teen boy nearby using my laptop. When I confronted the kid, his parent said the boy was bored and that I should share my computer with him. I refused and rang for the flight attendant, only to find out that she was the one who’d given the kid my laptop.

[From Macworld | The Portable Office: Travel Terrors]

I don't care how bored someone else's kid is, or who stupid the flight attendant is, I would go beserk.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Commercial break

The Great She Elephant has set up a T-shirt shop and has already created one of the definitive ideas for our age -- on her first day. T-shirts with meta-slogans. I've ordered one already, and so should you. Run, don't walk, over to Meta Tees.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Moving story

Well, today I had the most exciting train ride I've had for a long time. The guy sitting in the seat in front of me, in person a rather ordinary (in fact, rather dull-looking) middle-aged man in a grey suit -- I hope he's not reading this -- was reading his text messages on a Nokia smartphone of some description. I was seating in the seat behind, trying to get some work done. I could see over his shoulder through the gap in the seats, so out of sheer boredom I glanced at this screen. It was sensational! I couldn't see what he was typing because he held the phone down to his lap to type, but I could see the messages he was getting back when he held them up to read them. They were from a woman. I deduced that they worked together and that one of her friends had recently left her husband and that she might do that same. Most of the messages concerned speculation as to their joint activities when next along. Probably the only one that I can remember that is fit to describe in a family blog said that she was wearing a T-shirt under her work dress and that when they got behind the door (I'm not sure what that meant) she was going to strip off the dress so that he could... well, you get the picture. (I don't, by the way, as I'm unable to picture any especially stimulating T-shirts.) This sort of thing doesn't happen every day, so thanks for brightening up the morning, Mr. Grey and Mrs. Scarlet.

P.S. I would never send messages like this on a mobile phone. The danger of hitting SEND to the wrong person is just so overwhelming... and what are the chances you'd remember to delete the messages when it comes time to give the phone back to the IT department and pick up your new one...

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Rail, rain, ran

Picked a stupid day for my first attempt at riding my government-subsidised bicycle to work. I rode it to Woking in the rain, when I was late, locked it up in the town centre (where I saw a CCTV camera, so I assumed that was the best place to leave it) and then ran (well, jogged) up to the station to get on a train into London. I didn't realise that the good people of South West Trains have thoughtfully provided a bike rack inside the station itself, so next time I'll bring the bike in and lock it up there. Once again, I couldn't help noticing that it was less effort than I had been imagining: Taxpayer's money is clearly powering my pedalling.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Take a butcher's

A lovely meal -- very meat-centric -- out at the Butcher's Shop Grill in Nelson Mandela Square in Johannesburg.

Everyone is complaining about how high the prices are here, but that's probably because they haven't been to London recently. I noticed there's a lot of construction going in, including a new train line from the airport, through the townships and Johannesburg and on to Pretoria, which I guess must be related to the impending World Cup. If England don't make it down to South Africa in 2010, I will swear off of football for good. Mind you, my taxi driver was more pessimistic about the host's chances than I was about England's.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Miles and less

While sitting in a coffee shop in Singapore, I picked up a local business magazine that was reporting on some survey of airline passengers. It made the news because Singapore Airlines came top of the poll in most categories (as it usually does) and Changi airport came top of the airport poll in most categories (as it usually does). But I couldn't help noticing that our national flag bearer wasn't doing too well. It came second bottom (to Garuda) in amenities, which is pretty spectacular, and came rock bottom in frequent flier programmes. I think this is an accurate result. BA Miles is a rubbish scheme, which no longer serves as any form of incentive. I have thousands upon thousands of BA Miles and find it impossible to redeem them. Want to take the kids to the States? No chance: there's not a single BA Miles seat to San Francisco in the school holiday. Want to visit friends in India at Christmas? No chance: no seats to Mumbai or Delhi. The only places you can get to with BA Miles are places that you don't want to visit at times when you can't go. As soon as my BA Executive Gold card arrives in a couple of weeks, I'm going to complain -- I figure it will carry more weight once I've got the gold card -- and then start looking for airlines with better frequent flier miles. Any suggestions?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Surveillance and stupidity

Searching for something else, I came across Camilla Cavendish, writing on Times Online. She is right to say that

The latest proposal by Home Office officials, to hold every telephone call and e-mail in the UK, described as a “crucial tool” for protecting national security and preventing crime, is wholly disproportionate.

[From We're a nation of interfering traffic wardens | Camilla Cavendish - Times Online]

But it's more than merely disproportionate: Delivering that kind of power to petty bureaucrats, especially British petty bureaucrats, actually stimulates, encourages and invites the kind of distressing behaviour that we imagine to be the torment of the hapless inhabitants of Burma or North Korea. Just as the Regulation of Invesitgatory Powers Act (RIPA) ended up being used by councils -- at great expense -- to stop parents from sneaking their children into State Education Camp No.913 when they should be going to State Education Camp No. 914, I firmly expect the government's great e-mail database to be utterly useless in finding Osama bin Laden but invaluable to Woking Borough Council when investigating important cases of people not shutting their rubbish bins properly. By matching the e-mail trail to the DNA database to the CCTV photos, they'll have you bang to rights if you put too much in your bin (too much being now defined as more than a binman, sorry binperson, can easily move with two fingers.

I know which way my two fingers are pointing. One of the reasons why I'm beginning to think it unlikely that my children will ever decide to stay and seek their fortune in this green and pleasant land is that the steady erosion of fundamental liberties -- for no good purpose -- is becoming so commonplace that it is scarcely remarked on.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

The world's least favourite credit card scheme

I was in the Far East and I needed a software package on my Mac because I wanted to muck about with some graphics for a presentation. I logged on to the (UK) software company and attempted to purchase. Both of my Visa cards were declined and the store doesn't take American Express (or anything else useful such as PayPal). Aaarrgh! How crap is this. Presumably, Barclays' systems were rejecting the transaction because it's CNP coming in from outside the UK and presumably the store doesn't really want any business from international travellers with Amex cards. So stuff them: I will buy the software from somewhere on the street next time I'm in Hong Kong and, frankly, I hope it's a bootleg since I'd done everything I might reasonably do to pay them when I needed the software. Wait a moment, there's always PirateBay...

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Fuel for thought

I'm very torn on the whole fuel tax / car duty thing. On the one hand, I resent paying a penny to the government since they will almost certainly waste it on something dumb, but on the other hand, if you're going to tax things then it may as well be fuel. No-one can avoid the tax -- unless they are farmers -- and it's easy to collect. In fact, I'm sure that car tax should be scrapped and rolled into fuel duty as well. I think that car discs should display insurance, not car tax.

If the current trend continues, however, and travel by car becomes too expensive for ordinary people, then the total tax take will surely start to fall, won't it? Fortunately, now that I've joined the ridiculous government "let poor taxpayers fund a nice bike for middle class people" scheme, I'm hoping to reduce the government's tax take even further by leaving the car at home once or twice a week. Let's see how it goes...

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

This is the life

French air traffic control are on strike, so I'm stuck on the tarmac, sitting in airless 737 with a bunch of other tired, bored, angry people who want to go home as much as I do. British Airways don't tell us there's going to be at least an hour delay, naturally, until we're all sitting on the plane. Since I'm being forced to traveller cattle-class by a mean and joyless conference producer, there's nothing to eat or drink either. What a total waste of time, especially when I have so much to do. I can just about type, with my laptop jammed up against the seat in front, but it's at an angle that is making my wrist ache: I can feel the pins and needles starting already, so I'm not going to get much work done. If I were a veal calf, aggrieved campaigners such as Carla "it's the people who are the problem" Lane would be waiting to for me at Gatwick.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Longest night

I was woken up in the middle of the night by howling wind, rain lashing against the windows and water splashing from a broken gutter on to the driveway. At first I was puzzled, since I didn't think that there was monsoon season in Britain any more, but then I remembered: it's nothing to do with global warming, it's the strange cosmic impact of Wimbledon, which starts tomorrow. Better get the raincoat for work tomorrow.

When I was woken, I was dreaming that the government had come up with a mental scheme to pay for comfortably-off middle class people like me to buy really fancy bikes and have them funded by the taxes of those on minimum wage. But when I woke up it turned out to be true, so like everyone else at work I've bought an expensive bike. I fully intend to attempt to ride it to work at some point in the future.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Next stop Valhalla

I'm pretty sure I heard the station announcer at Waterloo refer to a train to Isengard and Chertsey. This would seem to be a fairly unusual rerouting, even for South West Trains. Perhaps there are engineering works at Asgard.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Oranges and total lemons

I'm so jealous of the Dutch. The useless English football team failed to qualify for the European Championship, so they've all gone off to somewhere in Italy for Wayne Rooney's wedding. Meanwhile, proper footballers are fighting it out in Austria and Switzerland. I was in Amsterdam last Monday night, when the Dutch beat (in fact, battered) the current world champions, Italy. It was 3-0, and the Italians were lucky to get 0. Everywhere you looked in Amsterdam there was bright orange, carousing in the streets, happy drunken people (with none of the menace that would be associated with same in the U.K.) and flag-bedecked bicycles and mopeds going up and down the road. Brilliant, but tinged with bitter envy from the Brits in the bar.

I noticed an interesting sartorial difference between our two great nations when in thrall to international football competitions. In Eng-ger-land, everyone goes to the pub to watch a big match wearing the national team shirt. In Holland, everyone goes to the pub dressed in orange: orange dresses for the ladies (or jeans, T-shirts and hi-visibility jackets with bright orange stripes), orange shirts and pants for the men, but relatively few team shirts. Wearing the colours is paramount, wearing the official Nike £50 team shirt isn't.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Don't be Vague

Don't be Vague
Originally uploaded by Citizen_Dave

I'm somewhere in The Hague. Round the corner from the Museum of Communication, in fact. And how pleasant is The Hague on a day like today, with the sun shining and the Dutch team steaming through the European Championships.

Many years I ago I used to live here, on the coast right next to the Kuurhaus. What a mistake it was to chose an apartment in the summer, when it's all jazz festivals and dinner overlooking the beach. Come autumn, the wind comes sweeping in from the North Sea and it's like living on Jupiter.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

One up the Khyber

Surely I can't be the only one. If I hear on the news about Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, in my head I picture noted English actor Kenneth Williams. That’s because he starred as the Khazi of Khalibar, the head of the Pashtun (I assume) opponents of the British Raj in the greatest film of the Carry On series (in fact one of the greatest English films of all time) Carry On up the Khyber. It’s a natural mistake to make: The Khyber Pass (the geographical feature, not the restaurant in Woking) which is central to the story, is indeed on the border of modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, so the confusion – a result of my brain’s limited capacity – is understandable.

I won't direct the delicate to a dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang to point out what "Khyber Pass" means in the East End vernacular, and therefore the double entendre in "up the Khyber". That would be indelicate."

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Iced, iced, baby

You think your job is tough? I suspect the head of PR for the Icelandic Tourist Board would be happy to swap with the Corporate Social Responsibility guy at Al Qaeda right now. As you may now, they (together with the Norwegians) have been going out a limb (well, fin) a little with their sea-farming:

The United States on Tuesday urged Iceland and Norway to cease exporting whale meat to Japan, which they have resumed for the first time since the early 1990s despite a United Nations ban.

[From US urges Norway, Iceland to end whale meat exports | Reuters]

Oh no, what now! Well, not long after they outraged just about everyone -- except the Japanese -- by starting to kill whales again, the hardy folk of that beautiful, remote, volcanic world found the first polar bear seen in Iceland for 20 years. And shot it. Way to go sagadudes! Take my advice and put the kitten-throwing competition on hold for a while...

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Super, super Cannes

In all these years, I'd never been to Sophia Antipolis before, so I was quite looking forward to my first visit. Unfortunately, the visit was spoiled because as I stepped out of taxi and looked around, I suddenly found the landscape both familiar -- despite never having been there -- and strangely sinister. For a moment I was genuinely disconnected, and then I realised that it was because of J. G. Ballard. One of the greatest of all English novelists, his Super Cannes, which I read some years ago. Ballard's descriptions of the buildings, the executive cars lined up out side them, the trees partly hiding the landscape, are so perfect that my brain slipped out of gear for a moment as it tried to come to terms with the fact that I hadn't actually been there before. Although I'd forgotten about the book up until this moment, the sense of lurking amorality washed over me as soon as I breathed the air there.

It actually is quite an odd place, in that while it's in beautiful hills and no more than an expensive taxi ride away from Nice, there is a pervading artificiality that is slightly jarring. If you're driving around the Cambridge Science Park, say, then it is openly artificial, a medium-is-the-message artefact of the times, and so it's not odd. But you don't get that feeling here. Maybe it's because it's just new. Fortunately, none of the people I met looked as if they might be murdering immigrants in their spare time, but you can never really tell, can you?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Unfair!

Isn't there some sort of EU rule about unfair competition from governments? If so, surely British satirists will have to launch an action, because they simply cannot compete with the U.K.'s elected representatives (at every level). In today's newspaper I read that a local council wants to send out detailed -- and intrusive -- questionnaires in order to establish who the legal guardians of rubbish bins might be. This is, naturally, so that they can prosecute people for putting too much rubbish in the bins (or the wrong kind of rubbish). They blame it on Brussels -- reasonable I suppose -- but I doubt even North Koreans have to register their bins with the commissars. I don't really understand the thinking behind this, except that a general policy of creating crimes that it's hard to arrest and prosecute people for (eg, not shutting a rubbish bin properly) will improve the crime statistics, because these statistics are currently made up of crimes (eg, murder) that it's difficult to arrest and prosecute people for. Householder, particularly homeowners, are much better bet. Such people often try to get their children into good schools as well, it appears.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

News and olds

Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't be a little tougher on the use of the word "news". There must be some way that Google or someone can apply some rudimentary information theory so that news feeds could actually be restricted to news. The definition of news must include so element of surprise: something that you know already isn't news. There would be no point sending out a news bulletin saying that the sun has risen or that a government IT project is late and massively overbudget. We already know these things: it's only if they don't happen that we need to be told. The problems come at the margins, of course. I was thinking about this the other day, when this article turned up in a news feed:

Internet consultant firm Gartner claims that only 1 in 10 commercial virtual worlds succeeds, and most fail within 18 months

[From Slashdot | Most Business-Launched Virtual Worlds Fail]

As soon as I read this I thought, hold on, don't only 1 in 10 of all new restaurants succeed and don't most fail within 18 months? In fact, don't only 1 in 10 of all new businesses succeed and don't most fail within 18 months? So shouldn't the headline have been that "commercial virtual worlds are exactly the same as commercial anything else". Is that news?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

On the waterfront

When summer finally arrived, I was told the weather in England was unbelievable, but I was in Stockholm, where the weather was unbelievable.

The Stockholm waterfront was wonderful. As the sun went down, we strolled to a fabulous fish restauraunt.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Litter lout

Bill Bryson, who is the head of the Campaign for Rural England, has been complaining about the amount of litter everywhere in the UK. I hate to sound unpatriotic, but he's right: England is a dump.

I spend a lot of time working in different countries at the moment, and I can vouchsafe that nowhere is as filthy as home. You don't see garbage all over the place when walking around New York and as soon as you return to Woking you can't help but notice rubbish in the hedgerows, on the verges, beside the road. Compared to Singapore, living in Woking is like living in a landfill. It really does begin to affect you after a while, because you want to feel proud of your homeland, but it's becoming increasingly more difficult. With St. George's day still fresh in my mind, I'm trying to find -- cling on to -- a few things to be proud about, but all I've come up with so far is Radio Four.

Unfortunately, when I picked up the newspaper are after arriving back in merrie England, the first stories I saw were about a criminal being let out of jail to go on a golfing holiday, the police taking over four hours to respond to a 999 call about a murder and a guy being fined (and getting a criminal record) for putting too much rubbish in his bin (oh, and a convicted terrorist is being let out of jail because he can't be deported as it will violate his human rights). Still, great to have a decent cup of Yorkshire Gold tea again.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Protect and survive

Having been up and down to London a lot recently, I've been experimenting to try and find the optimum iPod playlist for surviving extended use of South West Trains facilities. As an alternative to driving my car into the ticket office and then setting fire to myself on track (when I go, I want to cause the maximum disruption possible, so it's either that or start an internet rumour that there's a secret hoard of Illuminati treasure buried under Clapham Junction), I've iterated to a pretty set. Let me know what you think...

As you as the train is visible, hit play and go into Run DMC vs. Jason Nevins "It's Like That". It pumps you up ready for experiment in natural selection that is any morning train to Waterloo. The pounding beat gets your circulation up so that you can bundle old ladies out of the way and trample schoolchildren to get to one of six remaining seats for the 121 people getting on.

The full-length "vinyl" mix of DJ Tiesto's Adaggio for Strings provides insulating techno-backdrop as the train eases through the Surrey countryside. Plenty of nice variation to help you keep concentration despite the heat and lack of oxygen from the jammed carriages but an excellent trace underlay that allows you to focus on the copy of Metro you grabbed going through the station.

Now that you've finished the copy of Metro and haven't even got to Surbiton, it's time for Peter Rauhofer's "Doomsday" club remix of the old Frankie classic "Relax". I find this to be an excellent track for many public transport situations, especially when you want to turn things up a bit because the person sitting next to you is an management consultant trying to talk to a colleague on a mobile phone, as happened to me last time. What a conversation: "is the synergies presentation ready yet... what... no, synergies... in the switch to multi-model corporate work-life balance education..."

Now we're moving through Clapham Junction it's time to move on to the Blue Man Group version of the KLF groove "Last Train to Transcentral". I saw them do this in New York fifteen years ago, and having taken no.1 son to the show back in New York a couple of weeks ago -- ah, the cycle of life -- I've found it good for managing rising stress levels and the body begins to anticipate shifting to the Underground at Waterloo.

The transfer from South West Trains to Red Ken Rail (I guess I should get used to calling it Boris' Borehole from now on) needs a slightly slower, but still driving effort, so on recent trips I've moved the Canibus with Biz Markie cover of the old Johnny Paycheck favourite "Take This Job and Shove It" up the running order. This takes you through the crowds of commuters and down into the Stygian, airless depths of The Drain, where you shuffle en masse down the steps and into the carriage.

If you're on time, the Chemical Brothers live from Glastonbury "Out of Control" is ideal accompaniment through to Bank and up into The City, where the traffic, filth, beggars, crowds and weather welcome you to the beating financial heart of the British economy.

If you're walking to an office from Bank, I find that the Boy George and Culture Club extended club version of "Generations of Love" is a lovely backdrop, calming and uplifting but not too slow, so that you're ready for action as you walk through the door.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Should I have apologised?

I was walking past the White House the other day, when I suddenly thought to myself that perhaps I should go and apologise because it was burned down by the British in the War of 1812. I know it's all the rage to apologise for ancient wrongs, and I want to surf the zeitgeist.

I have to say it was a beautiful day and as I had a couple of hours free I walked all around the White House and down to the Washington Monument and part way along to the Capitol and a few others places. While I was having coffee, I read an article in the Washington Post about American's giving up their cars and using public transport. I have to say that I've been using the bus and transit here -- I didn't take a taxi once -- and it works very well. I caught the bus to West Falls Church metro and then took the metro downtown. I also took the bus over to Tyson's Corner for a $2 exchange rate rampage. The buses were pretty much on time, comfortable and only $1 (that's a fraction of what I pay to ride the bus to Woking train station, which is the equivalent of $3.50) each way. There was even a story in the Post about a couple getting married and then taking the metro -- along with all of their guests -- to the reception. Once major difference between riding the bus in Washington D.C. and riding the bus in Woking that I noticed was the civility. People were being nice to each other. The teenagers weren't drunk, swearing at everyone or listening to loud music and one or two of them even -- unprompted -- said hello to me. Even the BBC have begun to acknolwedge this...

I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns.

[From BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | America's 'safety catch']

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Dragon's den

I was talking to my 11-year old in the car about school.

Me: So how was school today?
Son: They told us the story of St. George in assembly, about how he killed a green dragon with his spear. But I don't think it's true, it's just a story. It couldn't have happened.
Me: Why do you think that?
Son: Because a long spear only does 1d8 damage, so even if he got critical hit with triple damage, that's not enough to take down a green dragon. Unless it was a juvenile.
Me: Well, suppose St. George had a lance, not a spear, and was charging.
Son: Couldn't have happened. A lance is a bludgeoning weapon and the teacher said he pierced the dragon's side.
Son (after a bit of thinking): Suppose George was a 10th-level Paladin with Weapon Focus spear, Power Attack and strength 18. Then suppose that the story exaggerated the size of the green dragon, and that the green dragon had been out fighting or something and flew back to its lair because it was down to 40 hit points. Then it could have happened, if George got a critical hit. That would have made him a hero.

Clearly, obsession with Dungeons & Dragons is, after all, genetic.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.[posted with ecto]

I saw one! I saw one!

According the U.K. newspapers, the American grey squirrels that have been driving our own British red squirrels to extinction are now about to get their come-uppance from a new master race of mutant black super squirrels.

Scientists say the testosterone-charged black is fitter, faster and more fiercely competitive than both reds or greys.

[From The pack of mutant black squirrels that are giving Britain's grey population a taste of their own medicine| News | This is London]

I nearly fell off the couch when I read this, because I saw a mutant black squirrel in New York two weeks ago, in Central Park. I'd never seen a black squirrel before so I stopped to look and take a picture to show the folks back home...

Even more amazingly, not 20 yards away I saw the dead body of grey squirrel! Seriously! They're here already! You're next! You're next!

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.[posted with ecto]

Top comment on Glastonbury

I wish I could write as well as Emily Hill at Spiked...

Glastonbury’s got 99 problems – but Jay-Z ain’t one.

[From Who killed Glastonbury? | spiked]

A sentence that works on so many levels. In order to understand it, you need to know about Glastonbury's slide from countercultural Mecca (when I used to go, of course) to flabby post-modern dreariness, one of Jay-Z's greatest hits (and a work of modern poetry, "99 Problems") and the fact that ticket sales are down this year. All beautifully encapsulated in a single sentence that literally shines from the page. Sometimes, writing like this makes me want to cry, because I fancy myself as a writer (I've even been to my first editorial conference at a real magazine) yet I know I'll never write that line now.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Wireless whingeing

I was staying at the Okura in Amsterdam for a couple of days. They put me in one of their refurbished rooms, which was great. It had a bath as well as shower and a flat-screen TV in the bathroom wall. Normally, I just have a shower and then get on with things, but it was genuine pleasure to lay back and soak in the tub while watching (in my case) football on the telly. The shower cubicle was glass-sided as well, so I watched Sky News while having a shower in the morning. Most convenient.

The room was very comfortable, with a well-configured desk for working (it has U.S., European and U.K. power sockets -- nice touch!) and a comfy bed. All in all, very good. Except... it was 27 euros per day for Internet access. Why do they do this? It drives me mad. I got in late and was very tired, I flopped into bed and quickly typed a couple of e-mails, but when I wanted to send them to had to get up, go and find my wallet and type in the usual rubbish before I was able to log in. There should be a law forcing hotels to display their internet charges -- these are, essentially, a hidden charge since it's simply not possible to go for a couple of days without internet access in the modern world. If only my dongle came with more reasonable roaming charges then these outrageous hotel charges would be a thing of the past.

One more point: like most people in the hotel, I'm sure, I didn't really care what the Internet access cost since I wasn't paying for it, but it's the principle of the thing (and the hassle) that bothers me. Why isn't Internet bundled into the room cost with water and electricity?

By the way, I stayed at the Empire Hotel in New York a few days later and it had free wifi, just as wifi should be.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Guru gloats

There's something quite strange about the looking-glass world that is Britain today. I know this is the case because when I relay news stories from the U.K. to friends, relatives and colleagues in other countries, I find myself having to begin my tale with "I'm not making this up". That, sadly, tells you something terrible about our society. Anyway, sometime back, I said in a post about the Home Secretary's extension of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act that

I'd lay a pound to a penny that the first time Woking council invoke their new Stalinist powers it will not be to defeat a cunning plot by international terrorists dedicated to our destruction but in a dispute over hedges or car parking.

[From Citizen of the World... (Well, Woking)]

I can't tell you how upset I am to find my status as a guru confirmed by the news of the last couple of days. It transpires that

Councils and other public bodies are using legislation designed to combat terrorism in order to spy on people, obtain their telephone records and find out who they are emailing... Last year, councils and government departments made 12,494 applications for "directed surveillance", according to figures released by the Office of the Surveillance Commissioner. This was almost double the number for the previous year.

[From Council spy cases hit 1,000 a month - Telegraph]

Note that, in comparison, applications from police and other law enforcement agencies fell during the same period, to about 19,000. The trend is very clear: soon, councils will be conducting more surveillance than MI5. Are the councils using the legislation to keep track of budding suicide bombers? No, of course not. The whole reason that this has blown up now is that one council was caught... well, I'm not making this up:

A council has admitted spying on a family using laws to track criminals and terrorists to find out if they were really living in a school catchment. A couple and their three children were put under surveillance without their knowledge by Poole Borough Council for more than two weeks. The council admitted using powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) on six occasions in total. Three of those were for suspected fraudulent school place applications. It said two offers of school places were withdrawn as a consequence.

[From BBC NEWS | England | Dorset | Council admits spying on family]

For puzzled overseas readers I must point out that the education system in the U.K. is so bad that parents who are unable to afford private school fees that have been inflated by Russian oligarchs, civil servants and celebrities will do anything to try and get their kids into the dwindling number of decent schools. One couple I know (not in Woking) gave their in-laws address, for example, because it was in the catchment area of a good school. In the socialist paradise of local authorities, this is considered an unpardonable sin. Hence the campaign to drive these terrible people (ie, middle class parents who want a good education for their kids) out of our neighbourhoods.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people. [posted with ecto]

Global cooling

Woke up this morning to a fairytale Christmas scene, with flakes falling gently outside and the garden covered in snow. The kids leaped out of bed and went out to have snowball fights and build a snowman with their friends. I started thinking about roast turkey with all the trimmings this afternoon... but hold on a minute, it's already a week after Easter!

This must be global cooling at work. Or was it global warming?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Truly shocking figure

Pottering around on the interweb, you now and then come across some news (ie, a fact you didn't know before) that is so shocking that you can't stop reflecting on it. The most recent case of this came when I was browsing the news headlines and saw a sidebar link to the NPR story:

In 1850, a slave would cost roughly $30,000 to $40,000 — in other words it was like investing in a Mercedes. Today you can go to Haiti and buy a 9-year-old girl to use as a sexual and domestic slave for $50."

[From Author Struggles to Stay Removed from Slave Trade : NPR]

I have no idea why this keeps bothering me so much, when you read about so many horrible things going on the world every day, but I think it's something to do with the fact that we congratulate ourselves on ending slavery -- William Wilberforce, Amazing Grace and all that -- but we haven't even come close to ending it. We shouldn't be so smug sometimes. Anyway, sorry to lecture. I'll be back to moaning about travel shortly since I will be flying into Terminal 5 for the very first time in a while.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Seven up

I'm in Hong Kong and we went out for a walk to have a beer and get something to eat. The streets were absolutely packed.

Now, at first it didn't strike me as odd that I couldn't walk on the pavement for people, until I noticed that these people included sombrero-wearing Aussies, very drunk Irish persons dressed up as leprechauns, bar girls who could (as Raymond Chandler famously said) make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window and assorted cavorting Brits, Kiwis and others. Then I remembered: the Rugby Sevens finished today.

I have to say I'm really enjoying myself here. There is a real buzz to wandering in Hong Kong, a buzz of stuff happening. Right outside my hotel room window there is the biggest crane I've ever seen in my life helping to erect yet another gargantuan modern structure on reclaimed harbour land. When all of the port traffic has transferred to China in a few years, I imagine that they will fill in the harbour completely. I'm not saying that in a bad way: the skyscrapers and office blocks here are beautiful, multiple tribes of neon-powered aliens that have touched down for an intergalactic pow-wow on the neutral ground of Earth. It's a pleasure to walk among them, especially on our way to the restaurant just past the Crazy Horse and San Francisco bars. Very colourful.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

The world's favourite airline

Well, they are as far as I'm concerned. I got bumped to First Class from London to Singapore, and since I've never been in BA's First Class on a long haul flight, I will only ever fly BA again. When it's a twelve hour flight coming up, you can't imagine what a spring it puts in your step when you're about to board and you get called over for an upgrade. What a great start to the week.

In case you're wondering what life the other side of the curtain is like, here's a quick guide...

Good. The seat was pretty comfortable and you get a much bigger table to work on. I really liked the leg support: it made for a comfortable working position. They give you a very nice sleep suit. I'd always assumed that the First Class toilets would be luxuriously large so that celebrities could have sex with the cabin crew in them, but they're not that much bigger so it's a bit uncomfortable to change. You get a duvet if you prefer it to a blanket: very cozy. The wash kit is much, much nicer than in the back of the plane and the sleep mask was better too. Really nice food and especially good full English breakfast.

Bad. The new BA Business Class has proper power sockets in addition to airline adapters, so I didn't bother bringing my airline adapter with me. But in First Class, the seats only have the airline adapters and my MacBook Pro gave up the ghost after 2 hours 20 minutes. It didn't really matter because I was knackered anyway so I slept for a fair bit.

The middle-aged (ie, like me) couple in the middle seats were obviously famous in some way, judging from the way they were greeted and seated, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out who they were so that I could impress my friends. He looked a bit like David Gest, she looked a bit like Delia Smith. Any ideas? Perhaps a simple future enhancement to the in-flight entertainment could point out the celebs to other passengers: I've even worked out how to do it, by getting people to add their Facebook page when they go through the online check-in (after all, it already asks you for your mobile phone number and so on).

P.S. I watched Beowulf with dinner: lobster salad, monkfish and dark age slaughter. Excellent.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Good news

It's generally very depressing reading the newspaper, which I why I don't do it terribly often. I used to read two newspapers every day, then one, then one now and then plus a glance at the Financial Times in the office, then none except at weekends. Now I just buy The Telegraph pretty much other Saturday. Physically, most of it goes straight in the bin because I throw away property, travel, weekend (except for the crossword), magazine, motoring etc etc. I read the money section now and then. I read the first part of the sport section about football. But mostly I just read the main section.

Now and then you do stumble across some good news, though. I was trying to think of the last time I read some really good news, and I had to cast my mind back a few months to the time when I read that Mr. Robbie Williams, the world's most famous karaoke singer, had gone on strike. Not only are we to be denied his dreary warblings for some time, but apparently he may also be sued for countless gazillions. He probably won't even notice: his record company (EMI, the same people who once paid $50 million to Mariah Carey to NOT make any more records) gave him EIGHTY MILLION QUID to make four records so he must have some of it left. Sometimes the good news veers into the surreal: Mr. William's manager is quoted as saying that EMI is acting like a "plantation owner", implying that Mr. Williams is being treated as a slave. What planet are these nauseating people living on?

Anyway, I was thinking that as bands stop behaving like farmers and instead adjust to the new realities of the "intellectual property" business (despite their products not being property in any real sense of the word and not being intellectual in any way at all) the inevitable adjustment will be that the cost of recorded music will fall to zero and the cost of live music will soar, as the market prices the economically scarce resource appropriately.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Normal Service

Last week, I wasn't well for a couple of days, I was laid up in bed with some sort of flu. When I was feeling a bit better -- not sick, but still very tired -- I decided to keep my meetings and set off into London. How reassuring it was to find myself on the 7.40 cattle-truck to Waterloo and hear this announcement from the guard: "We apologise for the overcrowding on this service, which is due to an excess number of passengers." As the staid looking chap in a suit and tie opposite me remarked, "no shit".

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

D & Deceased

I was surprised how sad the news of Gary Gygax's death made me. For those of you who aren't initiates, Gary Gygax was the man who invented Dungeons and Dragons. When I was first introduced to D&D, I had never come across anything like it before. I came from the borderline-autistic wargames school, having spent many happy hours (days, in fact) at University refighting the Yom Kippur war and repelling Soviet tank brigades sweeping through the Fulda Gap. The idea of a game where you could do, essentially, anything... wow.
I always loved the game, even after moving on to Runequest and Stormbringer. Now life has gone full circle: my kids and their friends love D&D and I still love playing it with them. In fact, playing D&D with your kids is even more fun than playing D&D with your friends. Thanks, Gary.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Rabbit rabbit rabbit

As is typical on South West Trains, people today were rude, annoying and generally revolting. There's no escaping the boorish British public. Yesterday I caught a 7.30pm train home and I was one of the last people to get a seat: other poor sods had to stand all the way after long day at work. And if, by some chance, the t*sser lawyer in the blue pinstripe who was sprawled across two seats talking loudly into a mobile phone all the way to Guildford is by any chance reading this: no act of charity you might undertake in the future will ever absolve you.

Today, I caught an early train home and was so happy to find some empty seats in a "quiet carriage" (ie, one of the carriages where people are not supposed to talk on mobile phones or listen to loud music). What happens?

Exactly. People rabbiting away on mobile phones right underneath the "no mobile phones" sign. Unfortunately, in 21st century Britain, you dare not ask anyone to shut up in case you get stabbed.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Poles apart

I've been in Warsaw. I took this photo as I arrived at my hotel on the outskirts of Warsaw. It's an interesting place: one of the guys I was with said that it was built in the 1950s as some kind of holiday camp for communist party officials, a sort of Hi-De-Hierarchy. It was quite odd inside, in an ornate but worn way. There was wireless Internet everywhere, but the radio in the room looked like a 1960s East German copy, a special version that could report back to the central committee to tell them what you were listening to.

I have to say that I enjoyed my trip -- traveling on new EU-funded roads across EU-funded bridges -- and next time I go I'm going to take a day or two off to look around more. I was very sad to hear, though, that the well-presented, courteous and hard-working Poles that we find throughout our green and pleasant land are now moving on. The pound has fallen from over 8 zlotys down to less than 5, our inflation is high and I imagine the crime and poverty they find in the U.K. is quite distressing to them. Now their jobs will be filled -- insofar as any of them will be filled -- by the surly and ignorant indigenous population. It's not progess.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

It's a sign of the times

My younger son (11) was playing a game on the computer today. It was a detective game where you have to hunt around and find clues, solve puzzles, that kind of thing. But he was stuck, because he didn't know what a "cassette player" was. Even when I described a cassette to him, he still had no idea what I was talking about. So I went out in the garage and found a box of old tapes to show him.
I can remember getting my first cassette player -- I think for my birthday, but I'm not sure -- when I was 13, in 1972. The big, big song in the charts at that time was All the young dudes by Mott the Hoople. I absolutely loved that song, and I still do. It's had an odd effect on me actually, because when my eldest son turned 13, the song happened to come on the radio in the car and it made me cry! The opening chords evoke (in me) that feeling of being 13, of walking down the street (where my parents still live) on a Swindon council estate, listening to the best music I had ever heard in my life, not having a care in the world, looking forward to meeting my friends. It's a feeling that's never going to come back, so there's no point in wishing for it, yet the knowledge that my son feels that way is, in a way that I could never have imagined when I was 13, even better.
Mott's lead singer, Ian Hunter, was a favourite of mine for many years. I remember buying his first eponymous solo album when I was in the sixth form after hearing the fabulous "Once bitten, twice shy". I recorded the album on to a cassette tape some time later, and played it endlessly. Much later in life, the Ian Hunter Band's live double, Welcome to the Club, was (if I remember correctly) the first album that I put on my first iPod. It hate to say it, but they don't make them like that anymore.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Provisional plan

The government's basic manifesto commitment to turn Britain into a lunatic asylum, with the patients in charge, came a little closer to realisation recently when Harriet Harman, the Minister of State in the Government Equalities Office, suggested that the universal franchise be extended to 16-year olds.

Miss Harman, who is one of the Cabinet ministers responsible for constitutional reform, gives the clearest sign yet that the Government is seriously considering allowing 16-year-olds to vote.

[From Children of 16 may be given the vote - Telegraph]

I cannot fathom the reasoning behind this transparently insane suggestion: I don't doubt that the next suggestion will be to extend the vote to household pets (they are stakeholders too). I can only assume that the government think (possibly correctly) that 16-year olds are so stupid that they might be persuaded to vote in the correct way come an election. For all I know, that may well be an integral element of the policy.

"What is needed is a population educated just enough to be able to read simple propaganda, but not educated enough to challenge it". Lenin.

[From An Experiment : January 2008 : Slightly Grumpy : My Telegraph]

If anything, we should be going in the other direction, putting the voting age back up to 21 or perhaps even 31. Who cares what 16-year olds think? About anything, I mean, not only politics. This really will mean compulsory asparagus for breakfast...

A fifth of British teenagers believe Sir Winston Churchill was a fictional character, while many think Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur and Eleanor Rigby were real, a survey shows.

[From Winston Churchill didn't really exist, say teens - Telegraph]

In a spirit of open-minded public service, however, I would like to put forward a compromise that I think neatly addresses all of the real requirements of the current situation. In the same way that young drivers are allowed a provisional driving licence before they can drive by themselves, why not allow people to have a provisional vote when they are 16? Just like the provisional licence they would not be allowed to vote by themselves but only if accompanied by someone who had paid income tax in six of the preceding twelve months. Alternatively, let them vote and have the provisional votes tallied and displayed, but don't let the provisional votes count toward the result. That way, politicians and journalists and anyone else mad enough to care could see which way "the provisionals" are voting but no-one would actually be elected by a vote from someone who thinks that Hannah Montana is on a par with Kenneth Clark.

My plan is considerably less idiotic that the government's. It meets Ms. Harman's goal of drawing "the kids" into the democratic process (just when everyone else is leaving) but doesn't let them have any actual control. Perfect.

The more I mull it over, the better it sounds. And in thinking about it, I've come up with a few refinements. First of all, just as you have to keep your provisional licence until you've passed your driving test, I think that people should have to keep their provisional vote until they leave full-time education with some minimum qualification, such as GCSE passes in English and Maths, or something like that. Secondly, we you get above a certain age, then you should have to have periodic refresher tests otherwise your licence will be taken away.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

You can't hold a candle to them

This really is beyond parody. We are getting desperately close to the point where even the most dedicated and vicious satirist is going to have to abandon their profession in the face of European Commission pronouncements. This morning, I hear...

European candle makers, from Germany, the Netherlands and other countries, complained to the European Commission in January that they were being damaged by illegal pricing by Chinese rivals, accusing them of getting unfair export aid.

[From EU starts dumping probe of Chinese candles and steel | Business | Reuters]

I assumed that I was hallucinating under the influence of Lemsip, and that my brain was feverishly conflating snapshots from economics text books with the memory of my dreary trip to Brussels last week. But I looked it up at Reuters, and it appears to be true. The candlemakers are complaining about foreign competition. Far be it from me to sneer as the European economy is about to be devasted, but who didn't hear or see the report and immediately think of Bastiat's famous "Candlemakers' petition"...

The Candlemakers' petition is a well known satire of protectionism written and published in 1845 by the French economist Frédéric Bastiat as part of his Economic Sophisms. In the Candlemakers' petition, the candlemakers and industrialists from other parts of the lighting industry petition the Chamber of Deputies of the French July Monarchy (1830–1848) to protect their trade from the unfair competition of a foreign power: the Sun.

[From Candlemakers' petition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

And for those of you unfamiliar with this landmark in economic history, the petition claims that

We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion

[From Bastiat's famous Candlestick makers' Petition]

Today, as is the spirit of the times, the inscrutable Chinese have replaced perfidious Albion as the crucial "other", but other than that, what has changed?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Mannekin pis-sed off

I've been in Brussels for a couple of days. As you can tell from this picture, it was very dull.

It was foggy, very cold and damp. But worse than that, it was unpleasant.

I rather used to like coming to Brussels. There are times when I've had to come over weekly, and it never bothered me. It's not that big, it's easy to get around on the metro, there are pleasant restaurants to go to in the evening, and various things going on (eg, going to the opening of the Tintin museum, as I did a couple of years ago). I haven't been there for a few months, and I was surprised by how much I didn't like it this time. When I arrived, there were groups of (mainly) young men hanging around at the train station and in the subway. At Gare Midi there was quite a violent argument going on between some gangs of girls -- I couldn't understand what was being said, but it felt quite threatening, so I gave them a wide berth.

In the morning I went down to the subway at about nine o'clock and there were already drunks down there and I'm sure I saw lots more bums sleeping and begging in the subway that I do in London. What is going on? Belgium went without a government for a while last year and yet seemed to get along quite nicely, but obviously in the capital, something has gone wrong. Brussels apparently has twice the violent crime rate of London!

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

My 4Gb precious

There are two things that I really dislike about public transport: these are the transport, which is generally hopeless, and the public, who are annoying at the best of times and unbearable at the worst. My dislike of both was considerably amplified yesterday because I made the catastrophic mistake of leaving home without my iPod. I made a mistake because I had to be in London early for a couple of meetings before heading over to Heathrow to fly out for a client. The early start meant that I was still medically asleep when I left the house and therefore fail to pick up my precious as I walked out the door.

Despite arriving at the train station before half past seven, I found myself jammed into a South West Trains hommage to the Tokyo subway and had to stand all the way to Waterloo. This meant I couldn't get any work done. Now only did I have to stand, I couldn't even enjoy the book I was reading in lieu of doing any work ("The Vikings" by Magnus Magnusson) because the two guys next to me were wittering on about planning permission for some office they are building. It's very rare you get to overhear an interesting conversation which is why my precious is so important, and was choc-a-bloc with goodies that I'd been looking forward to: the new Led Zep "Mothership - Very Best Of (2CD/DVD)" album, the official Manchester City podcast and last week's In Our Time for a start. But instead I fumed all the way into Central London and learn nothing and was not entertained.

The airport was equally disastrous. I had some really bad luck. The British Airways plane that I was on developed some kind of fault before takeoff and so we had to sit on the plane for a couple hours while a replacement plane was flown in from somewhere or other. Then we had to wait to while they transferred the luggage and the catering and everything else to the new plane, and then finally we had to be bussed back across the airport to get onto the new plane. I did manage to get some work done but my laptop battery gave up after a couple of hours and are no power sockets in Club Europe, so I read for a while, and fumed some more that my precious was so far away. When I eventually arrived at my destination hotel several hours late, all I wanted to do was put my feet up and listen to some music for a while. Once again, thwarted.

At least I did hear something interesting on the bus between planes though. I was standing next to a couple of guys who worked for some kind of media organisation (I couldn't be sure if it was some kind of magazine publisher or something) and they obviously had a large well-known international organisation providing management consultancy to them. One guy was asking the other guy what he thought about the consultants that he had working for him. The other guy said the consultant in charge was "a talentless thief" and that his team were "pointless muppets".

Anyway, back to my precious. So when I go to conferences and people say, as they often do, that people often leave home without their wallet but they never leave home without their mobile phone because it's more important, I always think that is not true anymore. If I forget my mobile phone it is certainly annopying and inconvenient, but it would never leave me fuming for hours on end as I was when I couldn't feel the comforting presence of my precious in my shirt pocket.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Evening in Madrid

Our for a pleasant evening stroll around Madrid, we came upon the Playa del Mayor, which looked very nice indeed in the lights. As you probably know, people go out to eat much later here than they do in Woking, so at ten at night, it was only just warming up.

You could have knocked me down with a feather. As we came out of the tapas bar, a guy came past on a Segway!

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Now this is a traveller

I went to the launch of the book "A Brief History of Disability" by Bryan Breed. It's been published, posthumously, by John Coleman of New European Publications. I've known John for many years, so kindly invited me along. The launch was at a travel show, and John brought along his 1925 Austin -- he drove it up to London, it's still running -- that features in the book "Coleman's Drive". He drove it from Buenos Aires to New York -- solo up mountains, through jungles, across rivers -- in 1962. And there's me complaining because they didn't have my first choice left for dinner on my last flight back to London. Here's John with the car...



Anyway, it was a pleasure to be at the launch. Baron Morris of Manchester (better known as Alf Morris) gave a talk on the introduction of the 1970 Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act that was behind. He then went on, 1974, to become Britain's first Minister for the Disabled.



It's a privilege to spend a little time with men like these.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

August journey

I'm a pretty good traveller, I think, and I don't get wound up. But yesterday was just one of those days. My flight was delayed three-and-a-half hours because of fog, so I was sitting in the British Airway lounge at Heathrow for nearly five hours all told, all the time cursing myself for not bringing my splending new USB 3G modem dongle thingy with me. I absolutely refuse to pay to use the wireless network: it should be free to BA silver and gold card holders and why they can't just send you a password to log in to the wireless network in any lounge I don't know. Anyway, I got to Munich and took the train to Augsburg. The train was eight minutes late, which I expected to make the front page this morning but it didn't: things must be getting worse here all the time. When I arrived at my hotel, they had sold my room, because it was only guaranteed until 9pm, which I didn't know. They had a ring round some other hotels and found me a place at Hotel Augusta, which had no internet access and the movie/sport channels didn't work either. And my room was noisy. And then when I got up I got confused about the tram lines and almost froze to death waiting for a non-existent tram. Oh well. Seems like a nice place though. I met up with a friend and we went to the traditional "Irish" pub for some Belgian beer and Mexican food.

Anyway, here's what Augsburg looked like in the morning, while I was waiting for a tram at the wrong tram stop...



Just to round things off, when I got back to the UK, I picked up my car from Pink Elephant around 11pm and (exhausted) set off home. But the M25 had three of the four lanes coned off from Heathrow round past the M3, so I sat in a huge jam. It's a glamorous life.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Rats!

I'm Singapore and have been downtown to join in the Year of the Rat festivities.

What a splendid day out. Everything works, everything is clean and efficient, the weather is pleasant, everyone is friendly, good food, a couple of beers, everyone is out in the street, the market stalls are fun. I hope it's a good one for all of you Rats out there.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Celebrity guff reaches new heights

OK, so I'm clearly not the only one who wonders why it is that -- insofar as they are not speaking in a professional capacity, be it as an actor about the theatre, a pop singer about recording studios, or a wannabe cockney cook about jellied eels -- celebrities are afforded media coverage and perhaps even reverence when they pontificate from the same perspective as an average member of the public (ie, cluelessly) giving their views on certain matters with which they may or may not be familiar. As Spiked say, they’re entitled to spout nonsense views on a subject as much as the next person, just as we’re entitled to question, ridicule or ignore them. But why have the public utterances of people like Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna or Jamie Oliver acquired such significance? Why do we think that because someone is, say, a pop star that their opinions on anything are worth listening to? You don't have to go the absurd extremes of Irish tax-avoider Bono or capitalist entrepreneur St. Bob lecturing us on poverty to find examples that ought to engender a double take.

This absurd trend in modern life reached a new low a couple of weeks ago, when I heard an actor who plays a teacher in a movie being asked (by the BBC, no less) about education policy. I don't know what the show was, but I think it was on Radio 5. I flipped on to it in the car and at first I assume it was an interview with some sort of education expert, but after a few minutes realised that that it was an actor. The actor turned out to be former rent boy Rupert Everett, who is in the movie St. Trinians, which looks absolutely ghastly in every respect. Fortunately, the reviews are so bad that it won't be in your cinema for long, if it hasn't already gone to DVD. Only another person removed from reality (ie, a BBC employee) could imagine that we would be interested in Rupert's declaiming about schools, education and the learning process. Personally, I don't care what Rupert Everett thinks about anything at all (least of all matters of public policy), but who am I against the crowd. Still, I nearly choked on my Yorkshire Gold when I heard him talking about everyone packing children off away to school at the age of seven. No, that's not everyone Rupert, it's nobs like you. Most of us rather like our children, so still have them at home.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Birmingham or Paris?

I took the train from Guildford to Birmingham. It was comfortable, I have to say. There were power sockets for the laptops, a table to work on and a buffet station serving only a few feet away. But it took 2 hours 45 minutes, which is longer than Waterloo to Paris. I took the train to York. On the way there were no power sockets in cattle class, and I had to stand up all the way back. I took the kids and some of their friends into Woking town centre and to be green, I went on the bus. It cost more than fifteen quid. Last night I saw -- I don't know what the programme was, I was just flicking over -- a sanctimonious green type (who looked and sounded one of those metropolitan millionaires who are always going on about other people having to cut down on air travel) was going on about getting people out of their cars and into public transport. He meant, I'm sure, getting other people out of their cars. Communist. I want to be green, I really do, but the only way to get me to use public transport more is to make it better. Ah, but how? Since I live under the yoke of South West Trains who can arbitrarily raise fares as much as they like whenever they like, it doesn't seem like much of a system. Perhaps if we were to concrete over the railway line into Waterloo, then coach operators could compete to provide a green (they could run on soya or something) service into the heart of London.

The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas.
[posted with ecto]

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