I suppose it's the lot of the aging to point out the faults in this ever changing world, why else would a programme like Grumpy Old Men become so popular - it's watched by a nation of grumpy aging people nodding in agreement (even if their guilty themselves) at the celebs putting the world to rights.
I have considered joining CAMRA in the last year, my love for real ale having grown exponentially since the discovery of some pubs with real variety. However, after careful scrutiny of the leaflet I couldn't see the point. It didn't offer me value for money. What might be a suitable alternative would be to buy this year's CAMRA Good Beer Guide (proceeds to CAMRA, etc.) but after thumbing through it I was hit by a horrible realisation.
I live in a town that has gone from being the centre of the UK shoe industry to being the town with the largest concentration of bars, pubs, and licensed venues in the universe. The town once dubbed Shoesville has been renamed Pubtown, it has meant that the town centre is a buzzing nest of vipers just about every night of the week. It brings in huge amounts of revenue for the council, but puts tremendous pressure on the police force and subsequently they spend more time sorting out drunken idiots on the main drag than preventing crime.
But that isn't my point today. If I was to go on a virtual tour of my town's nightlife we'd be here all day, there are 17 drinking establishments on the main road leading into the town centre alone and for someone of my age there are maybe two or three places that I wouldn't feel like a pervert in a schoolyard, and two of these places are anachronistic pubs - they could easily still be in 1970 (apart from the prices). The other place is so bloody espensive and exclusive that you leave feeling as though you're glad you're getting old if this is what it costs the young to have a reasonable time.
In my town there are about 400 pubs - I'm not kidding, but it is a big town. There are 3 (yes THREE) specialist real ale pubs, and another 6 pubs that have a changing real ale rota - the rest are lager and John Smiths pubs. Of the 3 specialist real ale pubs, one is incredibly parochial, one is a bit of dive and the other is about the most successful pub in town for a clientel of my age - the place heaves most nights and you rarely see flesh younger than 30 in there.
The villages around the town used to have some of the best watering holes in the country, now they are restaurants and bistros and concentrate on the discerning diner rather than drinker - beer is not a profit making business on a large scale, lager makes the money because most casual drinkers will have a pint of lager. I have no problem with lager, I drink it at home, but we used to be a country of fine brewers and while we still have many micro breweries in existence, fewer and fewer pubs are stocking real beer and worse still some that do have no idea how to keep it. Plus the aggravation for people in this area like me (and there seems to be a lot of us) is that with all this choice, we only really have less than a handful of places to go to.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Monday, July 25, 2005
Smile
I'm a socialist, but as I get older I get extremes that are anything but socialist. I suppose these are the times when we think we're becoming our parents.
When I changed careers from one that involved nothing buit paperwork to one that required very little it was the secondary part of this new career that probably made it as rosy as it seemed. The support services and voluntary sectors had, over the last 15 years, become less bureaucratical and focused specifically on helping individuals, but because of the lack of recording it was easy for the slackers to slack and this meant there were people in jobs that were either not doing their job or couldn't prove they were doing it. So with the arrival of a new Labour idea - Supporting People - the entire sector was overhauled, new reporting systems and policies and procedures were brought in, many of them good and safeguards against abusing the system, but the majority left dedicated workers with their heads in their hands. We had gone from one extreme to another, where there was recording, vital notes made for the benefit of staff not present all the time, etc., now we have a situation where everything needs to be recorded almost in quadruplet, plus some of this repeated work has to be repeated in a different format somewhere else. In fact there is so much paperwork now that instead of 90% of our time being dedicated to our clients, we're having to cancel meetings with clients because the paperwork has become a priority.
My latest job was no different and what made that worse was that because of my loftier position I had to do even more paperwork, I had to justify everything I did, even if it was just part of my job description. Everything needs logging, almost to the degree if you have to go to the loo for more than a couple of minutes, OK maybe not that bad but it feels that bad sometimes.
The thing is I am praised for the good work I do, yet criticised almost in the same sentence for not doing the correct, or any, reporting. I know I could find the time or I could organise things to allow me the time, but I also know that the nature of the work doesn't really allow you to book 'periods of time' because the demands of the client are not based on a diary or a clock.
I'm moving jobs next week, the new one has two hours a week set aside for paperwork, all over paperwork is handled by a admin assistant (how good and clever is that?). The problem is with the voluntary sector is, why employ an admin person when you can get the support worker to do it all? Proving to me that the people running the voluntary sectors now don't understand it.
When I changed careers from one that involved nothing buit paperwork to one that required very little it was the secondary part of this new career that probably made it as rosy as it seemed. The support services and voluntary sectors had, over the last 15 years, become less bureaucratical and focused specifically on helping individuals, but because of the lack of recording it was easy for the slackers to slack and this meant there were people in jobs that were either not doing their job or couldn't prove they were doing it. So with the arrival of a new Labour idea - Supporting People - the entire sector was overhauled, new reporting systems and policies and procedures were brought in, many of them good and safeguards against abusing the system, but the majority left dedicated workers with their heads in their hands. We had gone from one extreme to another, where there was recording, vital notes made for the benefit of staff not present all the time, etc., now we have a situation where everything needs to be recorded almost in quadruplet, plus some of this repeated work has to be repeated in a different format somewhere else. In fact there is so much paperwork now that instead of 90% of our time being dedicated to our clients, we're having to cancel meetings with clients because the paperwork has become a priority.
My latest job was no different and what made that worse was that because of my loftier position I had to do even more paperwork, I had to justify everything I did, even if it was just part of my job description. Everything needs logging, almost to the degree if you have to go to the loo for more than a couple of minutes, OK maybe not that bad but it feels that bad sometimes.
The thing is I am praised for the good work I do, yet criticised almost in the same sentence for not doing the correct, or any, reporting. I know I could find the time or I could organise things to allow me the time, but I also know that the nature of the work doesn't really allow you to book 'periods of time' because the demands of the client are not based on a diary or a clock.
I'm moving jobs next week, the new one has two hours a week set aside for paperwork, all over paperwork is handled by a admin assistant (how good and clever is that?). The problem is with the voluntary sector is, why employ an admin person when you can get the support worker to do it all? Proving to me that the people running the voluntary sectors now don't understand it.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
LA Boost
On a lighter note... (for a change...)
Women...
Or more specificially - women, summer, clothes, lack of them.
It has often been an enigma to me why there aren't more tailenders during the summer - cars ramming up the arse of the car in front of you because the driver of said car is more interested in the semi-naked woman walking down the street than the other idiot gawping in front of him.
This evening wasn't the warmest evening on record, by a long chalk, but it was pleasnt enough to wear a shirt and trousers and not much else... Not Much Else is what a large percentage of the woman aged between 15 and 65 that were out wearing tonight.
I like women, always have. There's something about their tits, hips and stomaches that do it for me - women's torsos do it for me big time. Especially if they are under 5' 4"...
However, as I get older I find myself more amazed by the get-ups rather than sexually aroused. Don't get me wrong, if any of the upper eschelons of the gorgeous percentage out tonight had wandered over to me and said, 'fancy slipping me one' I probably would have consulted my diary to see when I could pencil in some infidelity :-)
And that's the point of this in a nutshell... I was very sexually active during the period between 1978 and 1983 (and beyond that but monogamously) and had more shags than I was probably entitled too, but as far as my addled memory allows, I can't ever remember a single girl uttering the words "fancy slipping me one", although with more intensive memery scanning I'm sure words similar to that were uttered, but I digress, I have had forward girls in my time, but none so forward as to take the entire responsibility...
I have a mate with two teenage kids - a girl of 16 who may or may not be sexually ambiguous and a boy of 15 who is anything but. He was also very active in the bedroom during his youth and chucked it about a bit. However, he, like me, didn't lose the Big V until we were 16.
Friday night, his wife at her usual Friday appointment, my mate rolls back from town after a few beers with some mates and finds his son and his girlfriend almost in flagrante on the sofa. My mate is a responsible bloke and prides himself on his upbringing of his kids, despite the fact that he frowns (as does his equally 1980s promiscuous wife) on behaviour considered too risky for kids in 2005.
Later, after the girl's dad has picked her up, matey decides to have a heart-to-heart with his son, maybe explain a few things that maybe he'd missed in the earlier years. Unexpectedly his son wasn't very happy or receptive to a 'chat'. Why? Simple...
The girlfriend, a petite, perfectly formed 14 year-old with the face of an angel and the mouth of a devil, had instigated the entire scenario. She had heard his folks were out and came round with the specific intention of getting a damned good rogering. The dad having arrived home about an hour earlier than believed had stopped the coitus before it could be interupted and the ultimate outcome was that 14 year-old nympho ended up dumping mate's son because he couldn't service her with the required volume. I'm amazed! But I can also see why the son was utterly pissed off. When I was his age I hadn't shagged anything, but most of the girls I got off with were never in the same league as this girl. Also as much as I got casual sex with willing girls in my late teens I always had to be the person who made the initial move, like girls in 1978 knew what they wanted but wanted you to prove it to them.
I feel very sorry for people who reached sexual peak in the years between 1982 and 2000. It seems that an entire generation were a damned sight more careful about their sexual habits than any previous generation, or the ones that are coming. Because of AIDS, sexuality never reached the heights it should have reached and is looking like it will reach over the next ten years or so...
And that should be the end of this little lecherous rant, except to say that when I was 18 and doing town on a Saturday, fashion and appearance were not the same as they were today, but tonight, while out for a meal, we were sitting next to a table with a few people on it. One of the girls at the table was stunning - you wouldn't have had a moment of doubt if she had walked up to you and said anything at all that involved you delivering a load on or in her and you would have been like putty in her hands.
However, I recognised one of the other women at the table and as they were leaving she saw me. It was an ex-wife of a cousin of mine and the stunningly gorgeous girl sitting with her was her FOURTEEN year old daughter (of only 8 weeks), and she was also my second cousin. If she had been out on the streets I doubt there would have been one person who would have put her age at anything less than 21 (maybe the Garfield T shirt gave something away, but other than that - nada - nothing to make you think she was her actual age.
I've seen this many times before, girls who should be playing with Barbie dolls wearing wonder bras and clothes that hookers would feel uncomfortable with. Tonight's example wasn't one of these, but there are hundreds of them out there and I saw then on my walk through town.
I hate getting old because the older I get the more of a pervert you'll think I am!
Women...
Or more specificially - women, summer, clothes, lack of them.
It has often been an enigma to me why there aren't more tailenders during the summer - cars ramming up the arse of the car in front of you because the driver of said car is more interested in the semi-naked woman walking down the street than the other idiot gawping in front of him.
This evening wasn't the warmest evening on record, by a long chalk, but it was pleasnt enough to wear a shirt and trousers and not much else... Not Much Else is what a large percentage of the woman aged between 15 and 65 that were out wearing tonight.
I like women, always have. There's something about their tits, hips and stomaches that do it for me - women's torsos do it for me big time. Especially if they are under 5' 4"...
However, as I get older I find myself more amazed by the get-ups rather than sexually aroused. Don't get me wrong, if any of the upper eschelons of the gorgeous percentage out tonight had wandered over to me and said, 'fancy slipping me one' I probably would have consulted my diary to see when I could pencil in some infidelity :-)
And that's the point of this in a nutshell... I was very sexually active during the period between 1978 and 1983 (and beyond that but monogamously) and had more shags than I was probably entitled too, but as far as my addled memory allows, I can't ever remember a single girl uttering the words "fancy slipping me one", although with more intensive memery scanning I'm sure words similar to that were uttered, but I digress, I have had forward girls in my time, but none so forward as to take the entire responsibility...
I have a mate with two teenage kids - a girl of 16 who may or may not be sexually ambiguous and a boy of 15 who is anything but. He was also very active in the bedroom during his youth and chucked it about a bit. However, he, like me, didn't lose the Big V until we were 16.
Friday night, his wife at her usual Friday appointment, my mate rolls back from town after a few beers with some mates and finds his son and his girlfriend almost in flagrante on the sofa. My mate is a responsible bloke and prides himself on his upbringing of his kids, despite the fact that he frowns (as does his equally 1980s promiscuous wife) on behaviour considered too risky for kids in 2005.
Later, after the girl's dad has picked her up, matey decides to have a heart-to-heart with his son, maybe explain a few things that maybe he'd missed in the earlier years. Unexpectedly his son wasn't very happy or receptive to a 'chat'. Why? Simple...
The girlfriend, a petite, perfectly formed 14 year-old with the face of an angel and the mouth of a devil, had instigated the entire scenario. She had heard his folks were out and came round with the specific intention of getting a damned good rogering. The dad having arrived home about an hour earlier than believed had stopped the coitus before it could be interupted and the ultimate outcome was that 14 year-old nympho ended up dumping mate's son because he couldn't service her with the required volume. I'm amazed! But I can also see why the son was utterly pissed off. When I was his age I hadn't shagged anything, but most of the girls I got off with were never in the same league as this girl. Also as much as I got casual sex with willing girls in my late teens I always had to be the person who made the initial move, like girls in 1978 knew what they wanted but wanted you to prove it to them.
I feel very sorry for people who reached sexual peak in the years between 1982 and 2000. It seems that an entire generation were a damned sight more careful about their sexual habits than any previous generation, or the ones that are coming. Because of AIDS, sexuality never reached the heights it should have reached and is looking like it will reach over the next ten years or so...
And that should be the end of this little lecherous rant, except to say that when I was 18 and doing town on a Saturday, fashion and appearance were not the same as they were today, but tonight, while out for a meal, we were sitting next to a table with a few people on it. One of the girls at the table was stunning - you wouldn't have had a moment of doubt if she had walked up to you and said anything at all that involved you delivering a load on or in her and you would have been like putty in her hands.
However, I recognised one of the other women at the table and as they were leaving she saw me. It was an ex-wife of a cousin of mine and the stunningly gorgeous girl sitting with her was her FOURTEEN year old daughter (of only 8 weeks), and she was also my second cousin. If she had been out on the streets I doubt there would have been one person who would have put her age at anything less than 21 (maybe the Garfield T shirt gave something away, but other than that - nada - nothing to make you think she was her actual age.
I've seen this many times before, girls who should be playing with Barbie dolls wearing wonder bras and clothes that hookers would feel uncomfortable with. Tonight's example wasn't one of these, but there are hundreds of them out there and I saw then on my walk through town.
I hate getting old because the older I get the more of a pervert you'll think I am!
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Getaway
I love a good conspiracy theory and if I can instigate one all the better.
Today's 2nd wave of terrorist bombs just didn't ring true, not in the context of a fortnight ago.
The police want more and new sweeping powers, how better to prove we need it than England being on red alert all the time?
Incidentally, there was a programme on the BBC in the New Year about how we have come to live in a climate of fear and how Al Qaeda doesn't actually exist. Next week the BBC will feature a documentary on the New Al Qaeda...
Today's 2nd wave of terrorist bombs just didn't ring true, not in the context of a fortnight ago.
The police want more and new sweeping powers, how better to prove we need it than England being on red alert all the time?
Incidentally, there was a programme on the BBC in the New Year about how we have come to live in a climate of fear and how Al Qaeda doesn't actually exist. Next week the BBC will feature a documentary on the New Al Qaeda...
Sunday, July 03, 2005
The Politics of Dancing
LIVE8...
Piss poor coverage by the BBC. Very poor sound quality for the first half of the gig. Digital coverage also poor. Too much time spent wasting music time talking to B list celebs or idiots in the crowd who had no idea what G8 was. Lots of other great concerts from other countries that could have had highlights slotted in between the 10 to 15 minute wait between many of the acts on the first half of the day.
I'm not an evil man, I work in the voluntary sector in the UK. I absolutely hate the fact that there are millions of people all over this world that are dying or are facing death through a host of things. But it isn't our problem, is it? Not you or me. If someone had to be blamed you'd point accusatory fingers at the heads of the richest countries, but you'd also point fingers at the corrupt and ruthless leaders of these African countries, who take the aid to bolster their own lives and who cares about the dying.
The problem is you can't just write off debts and increase aid to these places without policing it, and if you police it you are the USA and friends trying to take over the world. The only safe way to handle this would be to send the SAS and Navy Seals into these countries and wipe out all the insurgents and leave the countries to the people. Except, we all know that the people would become as corrupt as their former leaders and I'll bet you in 20 years most of somewhere on this planet will be up to its eyeballs in debt and living on the edge.
In a horrible and ironic way I'd love it to be the UK because perhaps we'd spend more time and money on the concerns of this country rather than trying to be one of the idiots on a pedestal trying to change it to further their own political ambitions. I have time and respect for these campaigners, but I fear that we live in a country where poverty and social underclass is growing - we might not have people starving to death, but we have a country where the actual infrastructure is falling apart and needs £50bn spent on it just to stop it from falling into more of a decline.
Our transport system is crap. Our utilities networks are archaic and in decay. Our roads are a collection of potholes and speed bumps, pleasing no one but the people who look after our roads revenue or fix our cars. We have drugs problems in urban areas, we have gun problems as well, we have a future generation that is growing to be uninterested in their own futures and therefore are going to be the people who help dismantle what's left of this country, because they have no desire to preserve it. Yet we can fill the streets with hundreds of thousands of people who give a shit about Africa, yet will turn a blind eye or ignore the soical injustices in this country. It isn't just us, we've seen what's happened in the USA and we're heading down the same path. Soon it will be safer to live in Lesotho or Ethiopia or even Zimbabwe than it will be to live in a major connurbation in the UK. It might be already...
Piss poor coverage by the BBC. Very poor sound quality for the first half of the gig. Digital coverage also poor. Too much time spent wasting music time talking to B list celebs or idiots in the crowd who had no idea what G8 was. Lots of other great concerts from other countries that could have had highlights slotted in between the 10 to 15 minute wait between many of the acts on the first half of the day.
I'm not an evil man, I work in the voluntary sector in the UK. I absolutely hate the fact that there are millions of people all over this world that are dying or are facing death through a host of things. But it isn't our problem, is it? Not you or me. If someone had to be blamed you'd point accusatory fingers at the heads of the richest countries, but you'd also point fingers at the corrupt and ruthless leaders of these African countries, who take the aid to bolster their own lives and who cares about the dying.
The problem is you can't just write off debts and increase aid to these places without policing it, and if you police it you are the USA and friends trying to take over the world. The only safe way to handle this would be to send the SAS and Navy Seals into these countries and wipe out all the insurgents and leave the countries to the people. Except, we all know that the people would become as corrupt as their former leaders and I'll bet you in 20 years most of somewhere on this planet will be up to its eyeballs in debt and living on the edge.
In a horrible and ironic way I'd love it to be the UK because perhaps we'd spend more time and money on the concerns of this country rather than trying to be one of the idiots on a pedestal trying to change it to further their own political ambitions. I have time and respect for these campaigners, but I fear that we live in a country where poverty and social underclass is growing - we might not have people starving to death, but we have a country where the actual infrastructure is falling apart and needs £50bn spent on it just to stop it from falling into more of a decline.
Our transport system is crap. Our utilities networks are archaic and in decay. Our roads are a collection of potholes and speed bumps, pleasing no one but the people who look after our roads revenue or fix our cars. We have drugs problems in urban areas, we have gun problems as well, we have a future generation that is growing to be uninterested in their own futures and therefore are going to be the people who help dismantle what's left of this country, because they have no desire to preserve it. Yet we can fill the streets with hundreds of thousands of people who give a shit about Africa, yet will turn a blind eye or ignore the soical injustices in this country. It isn't just us, we've seen what's happened in the USA and we're heading down the same path. Soon it will be safer to live in Lesotho or Ethiopia or even Zimbabwe than it will be to live in a major connurbation in the UK. It might be already...
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