Well, my pension has eventually come through. some reward for those pre-university days of toil in former life as a railway clerk. The lumnp some won't pay off the all the debts but it will keep the wolf from the door for a couple of months in these unusual 'credit crunch' times.
It also means that we shall eat this Christmas, and, bonus of bonuses, I may even be able to afford a new sofa and tickets to see Leonard Cohen.
My next step is to see if as a 'pensioner' I am entitled to any railway travel facilities as my service with the railways was before all this privatisation nonsense, when, at least some elements of our public transport system were actually owned by the public, rather than the Richard Bransons (and the rest of the ragbag army of 'entrepreneurs') got their grubby hands on our trains. Then again, when I worked for the railway, the midget roadbuilder Ernest Marples had already got his hatchet man, the incredibly non-telegenic Dr Beeching, to close most of the lines, with little regard to the communities and businesses they served.
Still, self-seeking scheisters are nothing new in politics; we have had the Church of England in its present form since 1689 and the Tories for just as long. Renaming them the Conservative Party in 1848 changed nothing. Now, just as then; still the enemy of the people.
Friday 31 October 2008
Saturday 25 October 2008
SAGA
My brothers have asked me to go out for a drink this evening but I feel I may have to politely decline. I have just paid my credit card bills and am scraping the bits and pieces together for next month's mortgage payment, so I dare not really spend any money as frivolously as on alcohol. Not that I mind too much as I am not much of a drinker.
I think that autumn is well and truly here now. I am not sure of mists and mellow fruitfulness, more grey skies and drizzle.
I was in a hospital waiting room yesterday - waiting, as you do in such rooms, when I happened upon the current copy of SAGA magazine. Now once I had got over the initial prejudice of even contemplating looking at an OAP magazine, which I felt belonged best in God's waiting room, and after I had waded through the 'why don't we all read the Daily Mail and denigrate young people' copy that was in truth scattered throughout the pages, I actually found a very funny comment. It was made by Spike Milligan (obviously at some time in the past I assume as even SAGA cannot interview dead people). He had once been heard to say:
"Anyone can be 52, but only a bus can be 52B"
Although that is strictly untrue on a number of levels such as people who die before attaining the age of 52, and specialist bras for fat, smallbreasted ladies, it is still very funny. It tickled me. Indeed it has set me up for the weekend to realise that the appreciation of the ridiculous is still alive and well even in SAGA magazine.
PS How insane would a 52B bra actually look, let alone the person inside it.
I think that autumn is well and truly here now. I am not sure of mists and mellow fruitfulness, more grey skies and drizzle.
I was in a hospital waiting room yesterday - waiting, as you do in such rooms, when I happened upon the current copy of SAGA magazine. Now once I had got over the initial prejudice of even contemplating looking at an OAP magazine, which I felt belonged best in God's waiting room, and after I had waded through the 'why don't we all read the Daily Mail and denigrate young people' copy that was in truth scattered throughout the pages, I actually found a very funny comment. It was made by Spike Milligan (obviously at some time in the past I assume as even SAGA cannot interview dead people). He had once been heard to say:
"Anyone can be 52, but only a bus can be 52B"
Although that is strictly untrue on a number of levels such as people who die before attaining the age of 52, and specialist bras for fat, smallbreasted ladies, it is still very funny. It tickled me. Indeed it has set me up for the weekend to realise that the appreciation of the ridiculous is still alive and well even in SAGA magazine.
PS How insane would a 52B bra actually look, let alone the person inside it.
Friday 24 October 2008
Modern life, the internet and gadgets
What is it with modern life? We live in the strangest of times. Apart from the small matter of global warming and economic meltdown, we have a world in which John McCain is meant to be a serious contender for the most powerful job on the planet, David Cameron is meant to be taken seriously, reality TV has got so mental now that there are pointless shows about God knows what starring the most awful and pointless people from amongst the general public, and the general attention span of human beings is treated by the media as being no greater than that of one year old chimpanzee. What passes for drama on Film and Television is embarrassing; no longer do we seem to let the plot develop and the characters slowly reveal themselves, rather we seem to have an explosion or a tidal wave every 90 seconds, with legions of ridiculous characters darting aimlessly around in the most frenetic ways. But this is not my gripe; serious and sad as these things may be they are not what drives me demented. Neither is it bank charges that appear to be made up on the back of a fag packet or a news and current affairs agenda that kowtows to the will of the establishment. No my gripe is with gadgets, gizmos, computers and the information society.
Firstly, let’s take the internet. Why, oh why, is there so much rubbish out there, all of which is desperately keen to make itself acquainted with us. Whenever you type a keyword or phrase into Google, at least some inappropriate (i.e. useless to the task in hand) sites show themselves on the first page. Clearly these sites have all the wrong keywords embedded and are just wasting everyone’s time. I actually think in general that there is too much use of the internet on pointless things such as pornography, gambling and online gaming to the point that it slows down and interferes with internet access for serious users (business people, students, and people with something constructive to say etc.).
Then there is spam email. Exactly how lucrative is the online market for penis extensions, high interest loans and Viagra. It baffles as well as annoys me. More annoying than spam, however, is the excruciating ‘broken connection’. In these days of superfast broadband (which should be faster and cheaper in the UK than it is) how do we get broken connections. When you sell something (e.g. a broadband connection) make sure that it is unlikely to break.
Then there are websites themselves. Despite the WC3 conventions on accessibility and standards that have existed and been constantly revised and updated for over a decade, the majority of websites are non-standard compliant and inaccessible to people with disabilities. Yet, it isn’t rocket science to build a standards compliant, accessible website; I do it every day. Internet explorer lets too many substandard web designers off the hook.
I also have a gripe about computers and their operating software. I realise that people more sensible than me use Macintosh, or better still, Linux operating systems, and therefore are not subject to the nonsense of Microsoft’s constant process of updating Windows. Why didn’t they get it right before releasing it? They have gone one further now and developed Vista, an operating system that requires a level computing power that would have been a top of the range desktop at the turn of the millennium just to make the computer work, before you actually open any programs.
And finally, gadgets: Why do all MP3 players that cost less than three weeks wages constantly break? And why do all the different types of earphone hurt my ears?
That’s the last of the moans for now. Tomorrow I am going to go into my garden and photograph one of my dogwood plants. The house may be a tip, and the garden may be messy. Winter may soon be upon us and shortage of cash is a constant problem, but that dogwood as it prepares to shed its leaves looks absolutely stunning. If I get a good photo I will put it on facebook.
Firstly, let’s take the internet. Why, oh why, is there so much rubbish out there, all of which is desperately keen to make itself acquainted with us. Whenever you type a keyword or phrase into Google, at least some inappropriate (i.e. useless to the task in hand) sites show themselves on the first page. Clearly these sites have all the wrong keywords embedded and are just wasting everyone’s time. I actually think in general that there is too much use of the internet on pointless things such as pornography, gambling and online gaming to the point that it slows down and interferes with internet access for serious users (business people, students, and people with something constructive to say etc.).
Then there is spam email. Exactly how lucrative is the online market for penis extensions, high interest loans and Viagra. It baffles as well as annoys me. More annoying than spam, however, is the excruciating ‘broken connection’. In these days of superfast broadband (which should be faster and cheaper in the UK than it is) how do we get broken connections. When you sell something (e.g. a broadband connection) make sure that it is unlikely to break.
Then there are websites themselves. Despite the WC3 conventions on accessibility and standards that have existed and been constantly revised and updated for over a decade, the majority of websites are non-standard compliant and inaccessible to people with disabilities. Yet, it isn’t rocket science to build a standards compliant, accessible website; I do it every day. Internet explorer lets too many substandard web designers off the hook.
I also have a gripe about computers and their operating software. I realise that people more sensible than me use Macintosh, or better still, Linux operating systems, and therefore are not subject to the nonsense of Microsoft’s constant process of updating Windows. Why didn’t they get it right before releasing it? They have gone one further now and developed Vista, an operating system that requires a level computing power that would have been a top of the range desktop at the turn of the millennium just to make the computer work, before you actually open any programs.
And finally, gadgets: Why do all MP3 players that cost less than three weeks wages constantly break? And why do all the different types of earphone hurt my ears?
That’s the last of the moans for now. Tomorrow I am going to go into my garden and photograph one of my dogwood plants. The house may be a tip, and the garden may be messy. Winter may soon be upon us and shortage of cash is a constant problem, but that dogwood as it prepares to shed its leaves looks absolutely stunning. If I get a good photo I will put it on facebook.
Thursday 23 October 2008
The current financial crisis
It appears that a number of economies across the world from Iceland to South Korea and from South Africa to Argentina are in crisis through lack of confidence in their currencies and need to be propped up by all manner of means, ranging from handouts from international institutions to nationalising private pensions funds.
This follows highly publicised bailouts for banks in the USA, UK and several EU countries, and the partial or complete collapse of certain ‘big name’ financial institutions across the world.
Yet, I can remember the ways in which Alan Greenspan, when he was head of the Fed in the USA was hailed as an economic guru when he preached less and less regulation of markets and led almost all western politicians to at least tacitly worship at the alter of the free market. Apparently the free market creates wealth, engenders democracy, and is the one and true benefactor of mankind. Our politicians only just fell short of praising the free market for Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and even virtue itself. It is now apparent that this was, as some of us heretics always suspected, utter nonsense; at best a bag of hot air, at worst a recipe for collapse. The economic Tsunami has now arrived and these great apologists for the free market are expressing amazement and wonder. One needs to be reminded of the dangers of false prophets (and false profits).
The rhetoric of the free marketers also posited another dangerous thesis; that economic growth would always be per se a good thing. How on God’s earth did they work that one out. The clear and unambiguous dangers of climate change, driven by unfettered, loosely regulated industrialisation since the late eighteenth century, and particularly since the enormous changes in human economic activity that have taken place from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day, have driven the planet to a probable climatic tipping point, whose consequences we cannot possibly envisage until they are upon us. Economic growth was the watchword that brought us to this point. The environmental Tsunami will follow the economic Tsunami as sure as night follows day.
Even before the current financial crisis the free market has led to other disasters. The development of cotton as a cash crop in Sudan in the 1970s just before the bottom fell out of the ‘free’ cotton market led to mass starvation, and eventually the appalling crisis in Darfur. Africa’s problems over the past three decades have been well publicised; starvation and drought and mounting debt; another free market triumph. Comfortable liberals in the West mourn the passing of huge tracts of the Amazon and other rainforests. I believe that logging is a free market activity. The Sumatran rainforest is so diminished now that we will probably witness the extinction of the Orang Utan within our lifetimes; yet another triumph for the free market. The difference with the present crisis is that dumb animals and the people from the poorer countries have been joined in the firing line by those from the developed world.
There is, and always has been another way; the way of fully accountable democratic control of the economy and seeing the economy as an economy not just in terms of the cash nexus. The economy comprises, to be sure, the banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions (but must never again include such total parasites as hedge fund managers; the worst criminals on the planet). It also comprises manufacturing and service industries. What, however, seems forever to have been ignored, is that the economy also comprises the natural resources of the planet both as the raw material for manufactured goods and also as the heart and lungs (and liver and kidneys if we wish to stretch the analogy) of the earth. What is required is economic stability, an even playing field and a full and sophisticated appreciation of nature in all our economic activities. To say such things even now is seen as heterodox, after all that would be socialism, or worse still the green subversion of environmentalism.
Nothing worthwhile will happen. We will muddle through the present crisis and then wait for the next one. Capitalism is the scourge of the earth, but sadly is yet to fall terminally ill. As someone once said, there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
This follows highly publicised bailouts for banks in the USA, UK and several EU countries, and the partial or complete collapse of certain ‘big name’ financial institutions across the world.
Yet, I can remember the ways in which Alan Greenspan, when he was head of the Fed in the USA was hailed as an economic guru when he preached less and less regulation of markets and led almost all western politicians to at least tacitly worship at the alter of the free market. Apparently the free market creates wealth, engenders democracy, and is the one and true benefactor of mankind. Our politicians only just fell short of praising the free market for Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and even virtue itself. It is now apparent that this was, as some of us heretics always suspected, utter nonsense; at best a bag of hot air, at worst a recipe for collapse. The economic Tsunami has now arrived and these great apologists for the free market are expressing amazement and wonder. One needs to be reminded of the dangers of false prophets (and false profits).
The rhetoric of the free marketers also posited another dangerous thesis; that economic growth would always be per se a good thing. How on God’s earth did they work that one out. The clear and unambiguous dangers of climate change, driven by unfettered, loosely regulated industrialisation since the late eighteenth century, and particularly since the enormous changes in human economic activity that have taken place from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day, have driven the planet to a probable climatic tipping point, whose consequences we cannot possibly envisage until they are upon us. Economic growth was the watchword that brought us to this point. The environmental Tsunami will follow the economic Tsunami as sure as night follows day.
Even before the current financial crisis the free market has led to other disasters. The development of cotton as a cash crop in Sudan in the 1970s just before the bottom fell out of the ‘free’ cotton market led to mass starvation, and eventually the appalling crisis in Darfur. Africa’s problems over the past three decades have been well publicised; starvation and drought and mounting debt; another free market triumph. Comfortable liberals in the West mourn the passing of huge tracts of the Amazon and other rainforests. I believe that logging is a free market activity. The Sumatran rainforest is so diminished now that we will probably witness the extinction of the Orang Utan within our lifetimes; yet another triumph for the free market. The difference with the present crisis is that dumb animals and the people from the poorer countries have been joined in the firing line by those from the developed world.
There is, and always has been another way; the way of fully accountable democratic control of the economy and seeing the economy as an economy not just in terms of the cash nexus. The economy comprises, to be sure, the banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions (but must never again include such total parasites as hedge fund managers; the worst criminals on the planet). It also comprises manufacturing and service industries. What, however, seems forever to have been ignored, is that the economy also comprises the natural resources of the planet both as the raw material for manufactured goods and also as the heart and lungs (and liver and kidneys if we wish to stretch the analogy) of the earth. What is required is economic stability, an even playing field and a full and sophisticated appreciation of nature in all our economic activities. To say such things even now is seen as heterodox, after all that would be socialism, or worse still the green subversion of environmentalism.
Nothing worthwhile will happen. We will muddle through the present crisis and then wait for the next one. Capitalism is the scourge of the earth, but sadly is yet to fall terminally ill. As someone once said, there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
Not quite the weekend
Well, it's Thursday and we are well on the way to the weekend. Today has been inordinately dull. I have been working with my sole employee recoding responses to a questionnaire that is to say the least dull. the only thing that tended to light up proceedings was the inanity of some respondents comments. But such is the life of a social researcher.
I am also bearing some underlying mild anxiety as my ex-wife is to go into hospital next week for a major operation. (We may be divorced, but we are friends, thus I am a little concerned).
On a more upbeat note, the weekend is coming and I am really looking forward to a lie in on Saturday (how exciting am I, one asks?), and I have got medium term plans to refurnish parts of the house before Christmas.
Christmas promises to be busy; I already have my step-son at home and my son will be coming back from university. My eldest daughter, her husband and their two small children are coming to me for Christmas, as is my ex-wife and probably my other daughter and her husband. Please send chairs is the new warcry.
I make it sound as if I am worried over the logistics of it, but I am not. I am really looking forward to having a houseful of people; it will make a glorious change from the quietness of just me and my step-son.
I may post later today on the farcical mess that corporate capitalism has got itself (and all of us) into through its culture of greed and irresponsibility and the ideological and misplaced obsession in Western democracies with economic growth, but that will be later, as now it is almost tea time.
I am also bearing some underlying mild anxiety as my ex-wife is to go into hospital next week for a major operation. (We may be divorced, but we are friends, thus I am a little concerned).
On a more upbeat note, the weekend is coming and I am really looking forward to a lie in on Saturday (how exciting am I, one asks?), and I have got medium term plans to refurnish parts of the house before Christmas.
Christmas promises to be busy; I already have my step-son at home and my son will be coming back from university. My eldest daughter, her husband and their two small children are coming to me for Christmas, as is my ex-wife and probably my other daughter and her husband. Please send chairs is the new warcry.
I make it sound as if I am worried over the logistics of it, but I am not. I am really looking forward to having a houseful of people; it will make a glorious change from the quietness of just me and my step-son.
I may post later today on the farcical mess that corporate capitalism has got itself (and all of us) into through its culture of greed and irresponsibility and the ideological and misplaced obsession in Western democracies with economic growth, but that will be later, as now it is almost tea time.
Wednesday 22 October 2008
My first post
Today has been a strange day. Lots of news about the financial mire we all in splashed across the TV screens, still slightly excited about Arsenal's wonderful vistory last night, and slightly disappointed that my date for tomorrow has cried off at the last minute.
The day started well enough; a little cold but lovely sunshine all morning. It deteriorated as the morning slipped imperceptibly into afternoon and work became tedious, boring, and to some extent even soporiphic. Then as evening drew on it became worse still as my dughter regailed me with the tedium of the resort her and her new husband had spent their honeymoon in, finally to become thoroughly dull when my date for tomorrow found that 'something had come up' and she couldn't make it.
All in all a curate's egg of a day. Let us see what tomorrow brings
The day started well enough; a little cold but lovely sunshine all morning. It deteriorated as the morning slipped imperceptibly into afternoon and work became tedious, boring, and to some extent even soporiphic. Then as evening drew on it became worse still as my dughter regailed me with the tedium of the resort her and her new husband had spent their honeymoon in, finally to become thoroughly dull when my date for tomorrow found that 'something had come up' and she couldn't make it.
All in all a curate's egg of a day. Let us see what tomorrow brings
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