4 years. But I might be back for some more. Life is shit and it needs me to emphasise this.
I hope you all missed me?
Friday, December 31, 2010
Friday, January 12, 2007
Goodbye Suite
Back in January 1998 , I had what I described as the 'worst week of my life'. It was a traumatic and tragic period of my life, where, inside the space of 5 days, my mother died and my employer unhappy about the timing, fired me because my work for that week was not up to standard, He claimed that 'in the real world, people have to overcome their problems for the good of the company' and that people would not understand and wouldn't care about my problems, so therefore he had to take the same stance.
It was quite a horrendous time and I always hoped that I'd never have to go through another week as bad ever again.
Over the last 9 years, there have been some bloody awful times, but thankfully, these awful times have happened at better times (if there is such a thing as a better time for a bad thing to happen?) and have made them easier to deal with.
Most recently, as little as one year ago, I talked about a colleague who died and how that affected all of the people she worked with and the aftermath of that. Januarys are not good months for me...
2007 arrived quietly and, with hindsight, a little bit of menace. We had been having reoccuring problems with the youngest of our two elderly dogs and while Christmas had just about convinced us that he was on the mend, the New Year arrived and so did the spectre of death and destruction. I had bad guts on NYE and opted to avoid drink, January 1st was a strange day, I was worried about the dog's lethargy and also battling with some tummy virus and my wife had torn a muscle in her back and was in agony.
January 2nd, we took the boy to the vet's and they could find nothing really wrong, apart from him seeming to be suffering more from his arthritis. His medicine was upped and we left feeling happier. But 7 days later, he had died from what appeared to be a blood problem. He was old. He was 15 and he'd had a long and happy life outside of this bout of illness.
It was devastating.
20 years ago, my wife and I decided that we weren't going to have any children. It was a conscious decision and we've never regretted it. Our dogs became our children and losing our youngest has hit us probably as badly as any death could.
When you have spent literally 15½ years of your life living with something, especially something as loving and attentive as a dog, it becomes a completely different kind of grief - it isn't like losing a parent, or a sibling or a good friend; I can only presume it is like someone losing a child of 15 - you've spent their entire life with them and now they're gone and there's a huge void, a cold emptiness that really feels as though it has decided to take hold in you for good.
That's bad enough, but while we were struggling to come to terms with the loss in our lives, my best friend's father was killed in a road traffic accident. He was 80 and just walked in front of a car. So suddenly, we had to deal with our own grief, our friend's double grief - his father and the loss of one of his best friends - our dog.
Wednesday gave a little respite from the bad news, but everything fell apart completely on Thursday when I received a call from work.
The local council has to make nearly £800K of cuts, of which 10% of that has to come from my department, that means a 10% reduction in the staff and I'm one of the last in, so I was one of the first out. I get one week's notice and that's it. 17 months of excellent service and they couldn't even wait a week to tell me, they phoned me at home, in the knowledge of what a shit week I was already having and made it even worse. I suppose, I have to thank someone that it all came in four days.
My wife has suffered a breakdown. The stress of losing her boy, a dear old friend's father, my job and her own physical problem has meant she's plunged headlong over the precipice. My work means that I know that people prescribed Diazepam need some big help and presumably the doctor thinks my wife needs big help.
I'm just staring at walls and wondering what will go wrong next.
It's always darkest before the dawn...
It was quite a horrendous time and I always hoped that I'd never have to go through another week as bad ever again.
Over the last 9 years, there have been some bloody awful times, but thankfully, these awful times have happened at better times (if there is such a thing as a better time for a bad thing to happen?) and have made them easier to deal with.
Most recently, as little as one year ago, I talked about a colleague who died and how that affected all of the people she worked with and the aftermath of that. Januarys are not good months for me...
2007 arrived quietly and, with hindsight, a little bit of menace. We had been having reoccuring problems with the youngest of our two elderly dogs and while Christmas had just about convinced us that he was on the mend, the New Year arrived and so did the spectre of death and destruction. I had bad guts on NYE and opted to avoid drink, January 1st was a strange day, I was worried about the dog's lethargy and also battling with some tummy virus and my wife had torn a muscle in her back and was in agony.
January 2nd, we took the boy to the vet's and they could find nothing really wrong, apart from him seeming to be suffering more from his arthritis. His medicine was upped and we left feeling happier. But 7 days later, he had died from what appeared to be a blood problem. He was old. He was 15 and he'd had a long and happy life outside of this bout of illness.
It was devastating.
20 years ago, my wife and I decided that we weren't going to have any children. It was a conscious decision and we've never regretted it. Our dogs became our children and losing our youngest has hit us probably as badly as any death could.
When you have spent literally 15½ years of your life living with something, especially something as loving and attentive as a dog, it becomes a completely different kind of grief - it isn't like losing a parent, or a sibling or a good friend; I can only presume it is like someone losing a child of 15 - you've spent their entire life with them and now they're gone and there's a huge void, a cold emptiness that really feels as though it has decided to take hold in you for good.
That's bad enough, but while we were struggling to come to terms with the loss in our lives, my best friend's father was killed in a road traffic accident. He was 80 and just walked in front of a car. So suddenly, we had to deal with our own grief, our friend's double grief - his father and the loss of one of his best friends - our dog.
Wednesday gave a little respite from the bad news, but everything fell apart completely on Thursday when I received a call from work.
The local council has to make nearly £800K of cuts, of which 10% of that has to come from my department, that means a 10% reduction in the staff and I'm one of the last in, so I was one of the first out. I get one week's notice and that's it. 17 months of excellent service and they couldn't even wait a week to tell me, they phoned me at home, in the knowledge of what a shit week I was already having and made it even worse. I suppose, I have to thank someone that it all came in four days.
My wife has suffered a breakdown. The stress of losing her boy, a dear old friend's father, my job and her own physical problem has meant she's plunged headlong over the precipice. My work means that I know that people prescribed Diazepam need some big help and presumably the doctor thinks my wife needs big help.
I'm just staring at walls and wondering what will go wrong next.
It's always darkest before the dawn...
Monday, January 01, 2007
Nine Cats
The Guardian today has a small editorial piece 'in praise of... vegetarianism', it was short and succinct. Over the next few years, I expect that amount of column inches to expand, exponentially.
Over the years, we've seen veggies treated like 2nd class citizens in a number of eating places: restaurants have laughably pathetic vegetarian options, gastro pubs, while having moved away from the inconclusive slop of 'vegetable lasagne' seem to think that all vegetarians eat goats cheese or pasta. And don't get me started on cafes and diners; I just get the impression that these people are failing to take advantage of nearly 10% of the population and feel that a cheese sandwich or a bacon bag of crisps is a suitable alternative. While takeaways are an anathema - with the exception of 'Indian' takeaways, the range of options is pathetic: Pizza parlours offer three, maybe four veggie options; you can have a pitta bread stuffed with salad at a Kebab House, or maybe you'd like stir-fried vegetables at the local Chinese.
In fact, Chinese takeaways are possibly the worst for many reasons. Considering many Chinese are Buddhists and that alternatives to meat was something the Chinese were at the forefront with - tofu, you would think that Chinese living and working in the UK would actually have some grasp of vegetarianism, but to most it is a complete enigma. Like with many other eateries, the vegetarian is almost treated like an afterthought or even a slightly eccentric freak - at my local takeaway you can get included on the vegetarian menu the following: prawn crackers, spring rolls (no explanation as to what is in them), mixed vegetables in oyster sauce, and a couple of other dubious entries with fishy overtones. Recently, I was disgusted to have bought a 'Vegetarian Singapore Chow Mein' and found shrimp in it. I took it back and the Chinese serving assistant said, "shrimp isn't meat" and, without wishing to sound xenophobic, you try explaining to someone whose English is basic that shrimp is meat.
I have found a couple of Chinese restaurants, as opposed to takeaways, that have excellent Cantonese menus, an area of China where there are a lot of vegetarians, and it is heartwarming to see that some areas of catering is beginning to recognise vegetarians.
Earlier, I referred to Indian as 'Indian'. I wasn't being clever, I was stating something of a fact. Have any of you actually eaten real Indian food? I don't mean the generic crap they dish up in your local 'Indian' restaurant, I'm talking about food that is both exotic and vibrantly exciting and, more importantly, is cooked in a traditional way and is predominantly aimed at your actual Asian and Indian populations. Back in 1999, there was an article in The Guardian about Indian restaurants and the amazing fact that came out of it was that 92% of Indian restaurants are run by either Bengalis, Bangladeshis or Pakistanis and only 8% of Indian restaurants were owned and run by Indian nationals or the children of. According to my friend, Mr Patel - a Gujarati - even that 8% was misleading, because a lot of Indian owners employed Bangladeshis to run their businesses.
Over the last ten years we have seen a slew of new restaurants opening - Indian by name, but offering very little that would be dished up in an Indian town or city. These new restaurants are offering Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Punjabi and even Mongolian cuisine, but with the exception of the last two, the food is almost as bland as anything cooked by a Bengali. The problem is, according to my mate Mr Patel, that when Indian restaurants first opened in the UK in the 1960s, they actually did offer the British public something a little different and while the Brits embraced the food, they found some of it a little too spicy or hot and eventually most Indian restaurants modified their menus and their recipes. Over the years, with profit margins immensely important and turnover also vital, Indian restaurants developed 'the sauce' - a generic gravy that added to meat or vegetables and a few extra spices basically covered every curry on the menu. The 'sauce' was a bland combination that could be added to either with hot spices or could be even more adulterated by the addition of cream to make it even more palatable for Brits. Don't get me wrong, while Mr Patel sneers at this 'fast food' method employed in almost every single Indian restaurant or derivative in the UK, it can't be that bad because Indian restaurants are busy most nights and that specific cuisine has become the most popular in the UK. I personally can't understand why, but perhaps I'm just the food snob I've always accused myself of being.
What I've been trying to illustrate with the generic sauce story is that if you're a vegetarian in an Indian restaurant, you might expect to get preferential treatment, as over 50% of the population of India is vegetarian. But that isn't the case; yes, we get a far wider variety and choice on an Indian menu, but it all tastes the same. If you're lucky you might get some fresh vegetables included in a curry, occasionally, I've found potato, green pepper, onion and mushrooms in the food, but usually it is uniformly chopped frozen vegetables - pea, corn, green beans and carrots - the kind you buy in Iceland.
Just occasionally, you'll find a Punjabi restaurant with something a little different, a little closer to actual Indian cooking, but in general just about every vegetarian section on an Indian menu is either restricted to side dishes or you get the offer of the meat curry without the meat... It makes my blood boil!
In recent years, there has been a number of real Indian restaurants opening, and when I say 'real' I mean as real as physically possible. Yes, I can travel to Leicester or West London and sample real authentic cuisine, cooked by nationals for fellow nationals, but these are there because they have a local market - no one in smaller towns are going to take the risk of alienating 90% of the population because they don't offer a Chicken Bhuna or Jalfrezi. The brilliance of these real Indian restaurants is that it becomes a real adventure in food discovery, because most people would walk into one of these establishments and be completely confused by the array of interesting and unusual sounding dishes. It is promising, and there is even a takeaway run by Indians that has opened nearby. I love it, but I half expect it to either close or change because the food they offer actually tastes of things. plus, they have a takeaway menu that is dominated by vegetarian options.
[Sidebar: Chicken Tikka Massalla didn't exist in India and the sub-continent. It was invented in Bradford in 1969 by an intrepid Pakistani cook at, what was, one of the few Indian restaurants in the UK at the time. A regular customer came in to have a curry and ordered a Chicken Tikka and was dismayed when it arrived at his table as a lump of red-coloured chicken on a bed of salad. He sent it back saying he expected a curry like the others he had there. The chef took a tin of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup and mixed it with a selection of Tikka spices and invented what is now the UK's national dish - however apocryphal this story might be, I'm inclined to believe it.]
The bottom line is that it takes an enormous amount of space to produce meat to sustain the country, yet it takes a miniscule amount of space to feed the same amount of people the meat would feed with vegetables. Who cares? Well, we should, because in the next 100 years most carbon based fuels will have been exhausted or will be so expensive that only the elite will travel; this means that your fine beans from Kenya and your Peruvian asparagus, as well as your New Zealand lamb and Argentinian beef will find it increasingly difficult to ship their foods to other countries quickly. Ultimately as fuel becomes more and more expensive, these foods will be priced out of being competitive to bring over any more - alternatives will have to be found, or we'll have to either become more seasonal again or we'll have to develop ways of efficiently growing crops out of season. Eventually, more and more space will have to be turned over to agriculture, keeping sheep, pigs and cows will become too expensive and if people want to eat meat, they may well find they're eating manufactured or grown meat by 2107. Imagine it, huge vats of cloned rump steak, chemically altered so that all the bad things in meat are elimated. No fat, no gristle, just a nice steak grown in a petrie dish - yum yum!
Vegetarianism might be classed as a lot of things by the ignorant, but at least I feel as though I've made a contribution. Yes, I'm as guilty as others of leaving a carbon footprint; I love green beans, but they don't grow all year round and the African option is bought. I'll buy other vegetables that have travelled a distance, but I'll also look for locally grown produce and while it is more expensive, I think it tastes better and surely that is why it is being down, to make the consumer think that local is also more healthy as well as better for the planet.
The biggest problem I see at the moment is the growing number of kids who eat nothing but junk food based around the beef that is causing the most environmental damage. Personally, I'd like to see these people all die of nasty heart diseases and obesity, so that it sends a message out that eating healthy is the key to a healthy future, but I also know that a huge amount of people in this country and all over the world can only ever see as far as the end of their collective noses and if you work hard or are stressed out, it is far easier to go to MacDs or Burger King and blow £20 on some processed shit than it is to spend £5 cooking a healthy vegetable chili or curry for the whole family and it will take a lot of major global events to start changing the majority's opinions.
There are more and more vegetarians arriving every day and yet the rest of the world refuses to accept that this growing army of lentil and vegetable fanatics is actually the future of mankind.
Over the years, we've seen veggies treated like 2nd class citizens in a number of eating places: restaurants have laughably pathetic vegetarian options, gastro pubs, while having moved away from the inconclusive slop of 'vegetable lasagne' seem to think that all vegetarians eat goats cheese or pasta. And don't get me started on cafes and diners; I just get the impression that these people are failing to take advantage of nearly 10% of the population and feel that a cheese sandwich or a bacon bag of crisps is a suitable alternative. While takeaways are an anathema - with the exception of 'Indian' takeaways, the range of options is pathetic: Pizza parlours offer three, maybe four veggie options; you can have a pitta bread stuffed with salad at a Kebab House, or maybe you'd like stir-fried vegetables at the local Chinese.
In fact, Chinese takeaways are possibly the worst for many reasons. Considering many Chinese are Buddhists and that alternatives to meat was something the Chinese were at the forefront with - tofu, you would think that Chinese living and working in the UK would actually have some grasp of vegetarianism, but to most it is a complete enigma. Like with many other eateries, the vegetarian is almost treated like an afterthought or even a slightly eccentric freak - at my local takeaway you can get included on the vegetarian menu the following: prawn crackers, spring rolls (no explanation as to what is in them), mixed vegetables in oyster sauce, and a couple of other dubious entries with fishy overtones. Recently, I was disgusted to have bought a 'Vegetarian Singapore Chow Mein' and found shrimp in it. I took it back and the Chinese serving assistant said, "shrimp isn't meat" and, without wishing to sound xenophobic, you try explaining to someone whose English is basic that shrimp is meat.
I have found a couple of Chinese restaurants, as opposed to takeaways, that have excellent Cantonese menus, an area of China where there are a lot of vegetarians, and it is heartwarming to see that some areas of catering is beginning to recognise vegetarians.
Earlier, I referred to Indian as 'Indian'. I wasn't being clever, I was stating something of a fact. Have any of you actually eaten real Indian food? I don't mean the generic crap they dish up in your local 'Indian' restaurant, I'm talking about food that is both exotic and vibrantly exciting and, more importantly, is cooked in a traditional way and is predominantly aimed at your actual Asian and Indian populations. Back in 1999, there was an article in The Guardian about Indian restaurants and the amazing fact that came out of it was that 92% of Indian restaurants are run by either Bengalis, Bangladeshis or Pakistanis and only 8% of Indian restaurants were owned and run by Indian nationals or the children of. According to my friend, Mr Patel - a Gujarati - even that 8% was misleading, because a lot of Indian owners employed Bangladeshis to run their businesses.
Over the last ten years we have seen a slew of new restaurants opening - Indian by name, but offering very little that would be dished up in an Indian town or city. These new restaurants are offering Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Punjabi and even Mongolian cuisine, but with the exception of the last two, the food is almost as bland as anything cooked by a Bengali. The problem is, according to my mate Mr Patel, that when Indian restaurants first opened in the UK in the 1960s, they actually did offer the British public something a little different and while the Brits embraced the food, they found some of it a little too spicy or hot and eventually most Indian restaurants modified their menus and their recipes. Over the years, with profit margins immensely important and turnover also vital, Indian restaurants developed 'the sauce' - a generic gravy that added to meat or vegetables and a few extra spices basically covered every curry on the menu. The 'sauce' was a bland combination that could be added to either with hot spices or could be even more adulterated by the addition of cream to make it even more palatable for Brits. Don't get me wrong, while Mr Patel sneers at this 'fast food' method employed in almost every single Indian restaurant or derivative in the UK, it can't be that bad because Indian restaurants are busy most nights and that specific cuisine has become the most popular in the UK. I personally can't understand why, but perhaps I'm just the food snob I've always accused myself of being.
What I've been trying to illustrate with the generic sauce story is that if you're a vegetarian in an Indian restaurant, you might expect to get preferential treatment, as over 50% of the population of India is vegetarian. But that isn't the case; yes, we get a far wider variety and choice on an Indian menu, but it all tastes the same. If you're lucky you might get some fresh vegetables included in a curry, occasionally, I've found potato, green pepper, onion and mushrooms in the food, but usually it is uniformly chopped frozen vegetables - pea, corn, green beans and carrots - the kind you buy in Iceland.
Just occasionally, you'll find a Punjabi restaurant with something a little different, a little closer to actual Indian cooking, but in general just about every vegetarian section on an Indian menu is either restricted to side dishes or you get the offer of the meat curry without the meat... It makes my blood boil!
In recent years, there has been a number of real Indian restaurants opening, and when I say 'real' I mean as real as physically possible. Yes, I can travel to Leicester or West London and sample real authentic cuisine, cooked by nationals for fellow nationals, but these are there because they have a local market - no one in smaller towns are going to take the risk of alienating 90% of the population because they don't offer a Chicken Bhuna or Jalfrezi. The brilliance of these real Indian restaurants is that it becomes a real adventure in food discovery, because most people would walk into one of these establishments and be completely confused by the array of interesting and unusual sounding dishes. It is promising, and there is even a takeaway run by Indians that has opened nearby. I love it, but I half expect it to either close or change because the food they offer actually tastes of things. plus, they have a takeaway menu that is dominated by vegetarian options.
[Sidebar: Chicken Tikka Massalla didn't exist in India and the sub-continent. It was invented in Bradford in 1969 by an intrepid Pakistani cook at, what was, one of the few Indian restaurants in the UK at the time. A regular customer came in to have a curry and ordered a Chicken Tikka and was dismayed when it arrived at his table as a lump of red-coloured chicken on a bed of salad. He sent it back saying he expected a curry like the others he had there. The chef took a tin of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup and mixed it with a selection of Tikka spices and invented what is now the UK's national dish - however apocryphal this story might be, I'm inclined to believe it.]
The bottom line is that it takes an enormous amount of space to produce meat to sustain the country, yet it takes a miniscule amount of space to feed the same amount of people the meat would feed with vegetables. Who cares? Well, we should, because in the next 100 years most carbon based fuels will have been exhausted or will be so expensive that only the elite will travel; this means that your fine beans from Kenya and your Peruvian asparagus, as well as your New Zealand lamb and Argentinian beef will find it increasingly difficult to ship their foods to other countries quickly. Ultimately as fuel becomes more and more expensive, these foods will be priced out of being competitive to bring over any more - alternatives will have to be found, or we'll have to either become more seasonal again or we'll have to develop ways of efficiently growing crops out of season. Eventually, more and more space will have to be turned over to agriculture, keeping sheep, pigs and cows will become too expensive and if people want to eat meat, they may well find they're eating manufactured or grown meat by 2107. Imagine it, huge vats of cloned rump steak, chemically altered so that all the bad things in meat are elimated. No fat, no gristle, just a nice steak grown in a petrie dish - yum yum!
Vegetarianism might be classed as a lot of things by the ignorant, but at least I feel as though I've made a contribution. Yes, I'm as guilty as others of leaving a carbon footprint; I love green beans, but they don't grow all year round and the African option is bought. I'll buy other vegetables that have travelled a distance, but I'll also look for locally grown produce and while it is more expensive, I think it tastes better and surely that is why it is being down, to make the consumer think that local is also more healthy as well as better for the planet.
The biggest problem I see at the moment is the growing number of kids who eat nothing but junk food based around the beef that is causing the most environmental damage. Personally, I'd like to see these people all die of nasty heart diseases and obesity, so that it sends a message out that eating healthy is the key to a healthy future, but I also know that a huge amount of people in this country and all over the world can only ever see as far as the end of their collective noses and if you work hard or are stressed out, it is far easier to go to MacDs or Burger King and blow £20 on some processed shit than it is to spend £5 cooking a healthy vegetable chili or curry for the whole family and it will take a lot of major global events to start changing the majority's opinions.
There are more and more vegetarians arriving every day and yet the rest of the world refuses to accept that this growing army of lentil and vegetable fanatics is actually the future of mankind.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Comforting Sounds
Jesus Harry Christ, is there anything to be optimistic about any more?
Last week, one of the most positive and glass half full people I knew made the comment, "We all know life is shit and we just live for the good moments." That did nothing more than depress me some more, but not straight away. The person is a lapsed Catholic and I commented that we were in fact all in pergatory and the good moments only made the rest even worse.
Wow... this was one hell of an up tempo discussion, but the thing was neither of us were particularly depressed about this insight, it was like a resignation rather than a revelation.
It was only over the next few days that I started to realise that the world is basically a shit place and it doesn't matter how many optimists you meet, how many incredibly upbeat party animals you bump into, or the numerous people who seem to walk around town with a rictus grin on their face - smiling about something as pointless as the sun coming out or a pedestrian being run over by a bus, every one of us suffers woe, heartache, bad news, bad luck, incompetent services, over-charging, being under-valued. We feel dissatisfaction, disdain and hatred for just about anything you care to think of, from politics to public services, the next door neighbours, the kids down the street in their hoodies with fuck all to do, the imbeciles on the roads, the unnecessary speed cameras in places where they are used as revenue traps and not for public safety, the idiots on a Saturday night who turn your city or town centre into a sea of violence and vomit, taxes, rates, VAT, booking fees, lotteries, charities, companies pretending to be charities... If you sat down and made two columns, one for good things in life and one for the bad things, you'd soon find that the bad things that happen far outstrips the good things. Then, you look at all the good things in your life and then work out which of them are bad for you, or are detrimental in large quantities, suddenly you're left with very few things that can make you smile or happy, and even some of these things have hidden dangers or woes attached. Sex - be sure you know and trust your partner. The countryside - global warming is killing off species and replacing them with dangerous European varieties and the odd weather patterns mean we spend all the wrong times of the year looking like a desert and all the times we should look like a desert up to our knees in floods. Going on holiday - well, if you go by bike, then you're not damaging the environment, but if you fancy a trip to Spain or Florida then consider the amount of emissions your mode of transport is pumping into the atmosphere.
For fuck's sake... I just sat here and reeled that off in a few minutes; can you imagine what that would look like if I had a long time to contemplate it all?
You know what annoys me, people who insist that life is great and we should all cheer up. These people should be killed, or at least made to suffer in the same way as the rest of us.
Is there anything left that we can enjoy without having to earn money, or suffer in some way either physcially or mentally? Probably not and that's why life is ultimately depressing, because unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth or are blissfully unaware of your surroundings, life just catches up with and kicks you in the teeth, on a regular basis.
I'm actually having a good weekend, you wouldn't think so by reading that. But, there is nothing in the world that says you can't feel negative but still appreciate highs when they come along, however small they might be.
While I'm on odds n sods subjects. I find it really annoying when people say 'self-depreciating' when they mean 'self-deprecating' - are they just losing value all the time they stand there?
I'm quite taken by a slew of new(ish) bands that have taken my fancy. So underwhelmed by the BBC's Reading/Leeds festivals and the fact the hosts were getting orgasmically excited about bands that would have seemed amateurish in the early 1990s. Frankly, I'm still trying to understand why everyone and their aunts get worked up by Franz Ferdinand, the Arctic Monkeys, Dirty Pretty Things, Muse and treat bands such as Primal Scream like they have the same iconic status as The Beatles or The Stones. Yeah, I'm older and maybe my tastes are mellowing, but that doesn't stop me from listening to stuff that's obscure, new or hip and trendy, even if it does look like a list of bands who raided their hippy parents' record collections. Bands like Mew, The Secret Machines, Blow Up Hollywood and the more commercially viable Kasabian all feature on heavy rotation on my CD player, so I can't be that bloody old.
Still think 80% of music produced nowadays has little or nothing to compliment it, or is basically just shite.
Music has been a great pleasure, even if it costs if you want to do it legally - which I do.
Last week, one of the most positive and glass half full people I knew made the comment, "We all know life is shit and we just live for the good moments." That did nothing more than depress me some more, but not straight away. The person is a lapsed Catholic and I commented that we were in fact all in pergatory and the good moments only made the rest even worse.
Wow... this was one hell of an up tempo discussion, but the thing was neither of us were particularly depressed about this insight, it was like a resignation rather than a revelation.
It was only over the next few days that I started to realise that the world is basically a shit place and it doesn't matter how many optimists you meet, how many incredibly upbeat party animals you bump into, or the numerous people who seem to walk around town with a rictus grin on their face - smiling about something as pointless as the sun coming out or a pedestrian being run over by a bus, every one of us suffers woe, heartache, bad news, bad luck, incompetent services, over-charging, being under-valued. We feel dissatisfaction, disdain and hatred for just about anything you care to think of, from politics to public services, the next door neighbours, the kids down the street in their hoodies with fuck all to do, the imbeciles on the roads, the unnecessary speed cameras in places where they are used as revenue traps and not for public safety, the idiots on a Saturday night who turn your city or town centre into a sea of violence and vomit, taxes, rates, VAT, booking fees, lotteries, charities, companies pretending to be charities... If you sat down and made two columns, one for good things in life and one for the bad things, you'd soon find that the bad things that happen far outstrips the good things. Then, you look at all the good things in your life and then work out which of them are bad for you, or are detrimental in large quantities, suddenly you're left with very few things that can make you smile or happy, and even some of these things have hidden dangers or woes attached. Sex - be sure you know and trust your partner. The countryside - global warming is killing off species and replacing them with dangerous European varieties and the odd weather patterns mean we spend all the wrong times of the year looking like a desert and all the times we should look like a desert up to our knees in floods. Going on holiday - well, if you go by bike, then you're not damaging the environment, but if you fancy a trip to Spain or Florida then consider the amount of emissions your mode of transport is pumping into the atmosphere.
For fuck's sake... I just sat here and reeled that off in a few minutes; can you imagine what that would look like if I had a long time to contemplate it all?
You know what annoys me, people who insist that life is great and we should all cheer up. These people should be killed, or at least made to suffer in the same way as the rest of us.
Is there anything left that we can enjoy without having to earn money, or suffer in some way either physcially or mentally? Probably not and that's why life is ultimately depressing, because unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth or are blissfully unaware of your surroundings, life just catches up with and kicks you in the teeth, on a regular basis.
I'm actually having a good weekend, you wouldn't think so by reading that. But, there is nothing in the world that says you can't feel negative but still appreciate highs when they come along, however small they might be.
While I'm on odds n sods subjects. I find it really annoying when people say 'self-depreciating' when they mean 'self-deprecating' - are they just losing value all the time they stand there?
I'm quite taken by a slew of new(ish) bands that have taken my fancy. So underwhelmed by the BBC's Reading/Leeds festivals and the fact the hosts were getting orgasmically excited about bands that would have seemed amateurish in the early 1990s. Frankly, I'm still trying to understand why everyone and their aunts get worked up by Franz Ferdinand, the Arctic Monkeys, Dirty Pretty Things, Muse and treat bands such as Primal Scream like they have the same iconic status as The Beatles or The Stones. Yeah, I'm older and maybe my tastes are mellowing, but that doesn't stop me from listening to stuff that's obscure, new or hip and trendy, even if it does look like a list of bands who raided their hippy parents' record collections. Bands like Mew, The Secret Machines, Blow Up Hollywood and the more commercially viable Kasabian all feature on heavy rotation on my CD player, so I can't be that bloody old.
Still think 80% of music produced nowadays has little or nothing to compliment it, or is basically just shite.
Music has been a great pleasure, even if it costs if you want to do it legally - which I do.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
The Invisible Man
In my line of work, politics is either a burning issue or something that is never talked about - it depends where you are, really. My colleagues burn and bristle about cutbacks, budgets and bureaucracy, while my clients avoid the subject - actually 'avoid' is the wrong word, they ignore it, it doesn't exist, it means nothing to them.
Imagine my surprise then, when one of my young charges, someone who isn't renowned for interacting with people, started a conversation with me about politics - albeit basic politics. There's nothing wrong with talking about basics, especially to the youth of today, because for many of them the entire political world is like a field at a rainy Glastonbury Festival - a quagmire of brown.
"Politics is something that adults do." He said, driving passed the constituency office of his local MP. I commented that the MP must be a brave man to have an office in the middle of the town, it being such an urban sprawl of struggle and the MP being a Conservative. "I think everyone thinks they're all the same, Labour or Conservative. They're just as bad as each other." I made the comment about it not mattering who you vote for because the government always get in, but I think the irony was lost on him - like I said, Politics isn't even on the radar, so political humour doesn't work.
The conversation went a bit odd, he asked me a couple of questions, unrelated to politics, then he asked me something unusual, "I suppose you earn lots of money?"
"Not really. I'm comfortable, but only as far as a point."
"What does your wife do?"
"Government."
"Is your wife a politician?"
"No, she's a civil servant. An office manager, she manages people rather than products." He frowned.
"What's the problem?"
"There's something I don't understand." I asked him to try and tell me what it was. "What's tax?" Jesus, where do you start? I asked him to be more specific. "My dad pays income tax, he also pays National Insurance, he pays Council Tax and we have a purchase tax as well, he says." I frowned, 'purchase tax', then it struck me what he meant.
"You mean VAT?"
"That's it, VAT. I get the impression that adults all work for the government." I smiled, wiser words and all that. "Are there any more taxes?" I had to think about that one.
"Not that will affect you for a long time," I said, deciding against mentioning stuff like Death Duties, Corporation tax and all the other taxes that don't appear to affect the general public - indirect indirect taxes?
The lad shook his head and mumbled something about prison being a better option, because that way you won't be giving the government anything and they have to pay for you. I saw this as a typical idiot mentality you get from urban council estates - someone with half a brain comes up with this plausible (to them) reason for justifying prison. "Yeah, you're right. It costs the government about 50 grand a year to keep a kid like you in a YOI." He grinned, "Of course, the government don't get your money, but they get your freedom and they control you and continue to control you once you come out of prison. You become known to the system and the system never lets you go." He understood exactly what I meant.
"So, why do we pay so much money to them?"
"The basis for this is that we are a country and in this country there are millions of people and with millions of people there are millions of problems and duties, tasks and responsibilities. Everything from looking after the health of the population to making sure they have proper facilities and lastly to make sure that we always have the things we want when we want them."
"But why does it cost so much money?"
"If some politicians had their way we would pay even more money in taxes, to pay for such things as schools and hospitals, prisons and recreational schemes to occupy your time, but there are other politicians who want taxes to drop even lower than they are now, but these politicians only want direct taxes to fall - the tax you pay to the government out of your wages rather than the taxes you pay everywhere else by cash or direct debit, so that people think they have more money in their pockets and therefore make them feel good about the government. But the problem here is that when a government cuts tax, they cut their own revenue and that means that things they would normally pay for become the responsibility of councils and councils are like mini governments, who also take money from their residents to pay for the upkeep of the town rather than the upkeep of the country. This money pays for your street lights, your bin collection and passed that I struggle to think what it pays for, probably a lot of wage bills for council employees, employed specifically to make the life of its residents... awkward. If the government hasn't got enough money, then it has to place the onus on councils and they have to charge their residents more council tax and almost always you end up paying more money in indirect taxation (that's what it's called) than you would have done if it had all been centralised in one place."
"That's stupid."
"No, it's political blame deflecting. Councils are like 4th division football teams, they rarely perform giant killing acts, because government has more power than them. Chelsea are one of the richest football clubs in the world, but they're also enormously in debt [the boy is a Chelsea fan] and that's a bit like what our government is like, so it is difficult for councils to fight them, so normally the money that has been given back will be taken away and a bit more by the unsuspecting pawns of the central government, the council worker." I think I was starting to lose him. We sat in silence for a while.
"Will it ever get better?" How do you not shatter a kids allusions?
"How much are a packet of fags?"
"Fiver."
"Do you know how much they were when I was your age?"
"Two quid?"
"26p. I could buy 10 No.6 for 14p and have enough money left for a bag of chips and a bus home." He laughed, thinking I was joking. I wasn't. "In five years time, cigarettes will be £7.50 a packet." He looked horrified. "But you might have had a wage rise according to inflation, because that is why fags have gone from being pennies to being many pounds - inflation - the cost of living is always going to go up and the cost of running countries and towns and cities is always going to increase and councils will not be able to afford it and eventually everything will have to be paid for by the individual. I can't imagine a town like this ever being able to drag itself away from poverty and crime because there is never going to be enough money." I could see myself going off on some dystopian tangent and making the kid want to kill himself. "You have to play the game and try to stay one step ahead of it - having a job and doing stuff that you wouldn't expect is something you'll grow accustomed to and maybe one day you'll try to change it inside a council rather than in a stolen car." It sounded patronising, but he nodded, as if he'd learned more today than he could ever be taught in a school.
What is needed is for a government to explain how it works to the people who don't know, or don't care. People have forgotten what politicians do, they have become detached from our real lives and when they try to claw back some of their credibility they are pilloried by the press and quite rightly so, because there are very few politicians that many of the voters would trust as far as they could spit. Politics should be about passion and fighting for the rights of the people, not about what it appears to be - a new cult of personality.
I don't care what a politicians background is (with obvious exceptions) as long as he does a good job and achieves things. I don't care if he has gay, adulterous or criminal skeletons in his cupboard, just so long as they don't affect him doing his job. Some of the best people I've worked with in Youth Justice have got criminal backgrounds and they are by far the most effective workers. I don't care if a prime minister has smoked pot or taken cocaine in his youth, in fact I'd rather welcome it, because at least we'd have a person in charge who maybe knew what it was like to be young, bored and out of work.
Politics needs a complete overhaul if it is not to lose touch with its future mandate givers. It needs people in it that can actually relate to issues and are prepared to stand up and tell the suits that unless something is done then it's just going to get worse and whatever government inherits the former's handywork is never going to be able to fix it.
Politicians need to get real.
Imagine my surprise then, when one of my young charges, someone who isn't renowned for interacting with people, started a conversation with me about politics - albeit basic politics. There's nothing wrong with talking about basics, especially to the youth of today, because for many of them the entire political world is like a field at a rainy Glastonbury Festival - a quagmire of brown.
"Politics is something that adults do." He said, driving passed the constituency office of his local MP. I commented that the MP must be a brave man to have an office in the middle of the town, it being such an urban sprawl of struggle and the MP being a Conservative. "I think everyone thinks they're all the same, Labour or Conservative. They're just as bad as each other." I made the comment about it not mattering who you vote for because the government always get in, but I think the irony was lost on him - like I said, Politics isn't even on the radar, so political humour doesn't work.
The conversation went a bit odd, he asked me a couple of questions, unrelated to politics, then he asked me something unusual, "I suppose you earn lots of money?"
"Not really. I'm comfortable, but only as far as a point."
"What does your wife do?"
"Government."
"Is your wife a politician?"
"No, she's a civil servant. An office manager, she manages people rather than products." He frowned.
"What's the problem?"
"There's something I don't understand." I asked him to try and tell me what it was. "What's tax?" Jesus, where do you start? I asked him to be more specific. "My dad pays income tax, he also pays National Insurance, he pays Council Tax and we have a purchase tax as well, he says." I frowned, 'purchase tax', then it struck me what he meant.
"You mean VAT?"
"That's it, VAT. I get the impression that adults all work for the government." I smiled, wiser words and all that. "Are there any more taxes?" I had to think about that one.
"Not that will affect you for a long time," I said, deciding against mentioning stuff like Death Duties, Corporation tax and all the other taxes that don't appear to affect the general public - indirect indirect taxes?
The lad shook his head and mumbled something about prison being a better option, because that way you won't be giving the government anything and they have to pay for you. I saw this as a typical idiot mentality you get from urban council estates - someone with half a brain comes up with this plausible (to them) reason for justifying prison. "Yeah, you're right. It costs the government about 50 grand a year to keep a kid like you in a YOI." He grinned, "Of course, the government don't get your money, but they get your freedom and they control you and continue to control you once you come out of prison. You become known to the system and the system never lets you go." He understood exactly what I meant.
"So, why do we pay so much money to them?"
"The basis for this is that we are a country and in this country there are millions of people and with millions of people there are millions of problems and duties, tasks and responsibilities. Everything from looking after the health of the population to making sure they have proper facilities and lastly to make sure that we always have the things we want when we want them."
"But why does it cost so much money?"
"If some politicians had their way we would pay even more money in taxes, to pay for such things as schools and hospitals, prisons and recreational schemes to occupy your time, but there are other politicians who want taxes to drop even lower than they are now, but these politicians only want direct taxes to fall - the tax you pay to the government out of your wages rather than the taxes you pay everywhere else by cash or direct debit, so that people think they have more money in their pockets and therefore make them feel good about the government. But the problem here is that when a government cuts tax, they cut their own revenue and that means that things they would normally pay for become the responsibility of councils and councils are like mini governments, who also take money from their residents to pay for the upkeep of the town rather than the upkeep of the country. This money pays for your street lights, your bin collection and passed that I struggle to think what it pays for, probably a lot of wage bills for council employees, employed specifically to make the life of its residents... awkward. If the government hasn't got enough money, then it has to place the onus on councils and they have to charge their residents more council tax and almost always you end up paying more money in indirect taxation (that's what it's called) than you would have done if it had all been centralised in one place."
"That's stupid."
"No, it's political blame deflecting. Councils are like 4th division football teams, they rarely perform giant killing acts, because government has more power than them. Chelsea are one of the richest football clubs in the world, but they're also enormously in debt [the boy is a Chelsea fan] and that's a bit like what our government is like, so it is difficult for councils to fight them, so normally the money that has been given back will be taken away and a bit more by the unsuspecting pawns of the central government, the council worker." I think I was starting to lose him. We sat in silence for a while.
"Will it ever get better?" How do you not shatter a kids allusions?
"How much are a packet of fags?"
"Fiver."
"Do you know how much they were when I was your age?"
"Two quid?"
"26p. I could buy 10 No.6 for 14p and have enough money left for a bag of chips and a bus home." He laughed, thinking I was joking. I wasn't. "In five years time, cigarettes will be £7.50 a packet." He looked horrified. "But you might have had a wage rise according to inflation, because that is why fags have gone from being pennies to being many pounds - inflation - the cost of living is always going to go up and the cost of running countries and towns and cities is always going to increase and councils will not be able to afford it and eventually everything will have to be paid for by the individual. I can't imagine a town like this ever being able to drag itself away from poverty and crime because there is never going to be enough money." I could see myself going off on some dystopian tangent and making the kid want to kill himself. "You have to play the game and try to stay one step ahead of it - having a job and doing stuff that you wouldn't expect is something you'll grow accustomed to and maybe one day you'll try to change it inside a council rather than in a stolen car." It sounded patronising, but he nodded, as if he'd learned more today than he could ever be taught in a school.
What is needed is for a government to explain how it works to the people who don't know, or don't care. People have forgotten what politicians do, they have become detached from our real lives and when they try to claw back some of their credibility they are pilloried by the press and quite rightly so, because there are very few politicians that many of the voters would trust as far as they could spit. Politics should be about passion and fighting for the rights of the people, not about what it appears to be - a new cult of personality.
I don't care what a politicians background is (with obvious exceptions) as long as he does a good job and achieves things. I don't care if he has gay, adulterous or criminal skeletons in his cupboard, just so long as they don't affect him doing his job. Some of the best people I've worked with in Youth Justice have got criminal backgrounds and they are by far the most effective workers. I don't care if a prime minister has smoked pot or taken cocaine in his youth, in fact I'd rather welcome it, because at least we'd have a person in charge who maybe knew what it was like to be young, bored and out of work.
Politics needs a complete overhaul if it is not to lose touch with its future mandate givers. It needs people in it that can actually relate to issues and are prepared to stand up and tell the suits that unless something is done then it's just going to get worse and whatever government inherits the former's handywork is never going to be able to fix it.
Politicians need to get real.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Forgiveness
I'm not the world's most prolific blogger, although I do have another blog that is about football and I have religiously kept that blog up all year. Today I find it has been blocked by Blogger, because it has all the characteristics of a spam blog... What the?
This is robot software for you, it couldn't spot a spammer in a box of pork luncheonmeat.
This is robot software for you, it couldn't spot a spammer in a box of pork luncheonmeat.
Monday, April 17, 2006
I'm a believer
I abhor the BNP and everything they stand for. It's evasive, hidden and nasty politics, but it is also the choice of the people who belong to it and it is the choice of the electorate if they choose to vote BNP as opposed to someone else (who won't give them what they need).
I cannot understand the role of the BNP in a widely multi-cultural country, but I can understand that people feel the ethos of the BNP is closer to their beliefs than those of Conservative or Liberal and therefore, because we live in a democracy (of sorts) they must be allowed to exist. Just because their politics are abhorant and offensive to most people doesn't mean they should be precluded from discussion. I know people who find members of the Green party just as vile and insidious, but we don't have government sponsored campaigns to rid us of the Green Party once and for all, do we?
The BNP is a face of Britishness that cannot be ignored or forgotten. The BNP appeal to a small minority of the population that will never change and will continue to procreate, so there will be a constant stream of poorly-educated bigots ready to carry the BNP standard. We need to remember that the world is made up of people - extremists - who don't agree with the rest of us (generally). The best way to treat people like this is with ignorance and a lack of respect - giving them coverage on TV and radio does nothing but polarise them in the eyes of those who maybe don't understand the BNP and might be tempted to follow their politics because of exposure they just shouldn't get. They exist, so do Jesus Freaks and conmen, but we don't acknowledge the others in the House.
I cannot understand the role of the BNP in a widely multi-cultural country, but I can understand that people feel the ethos of the BNP is closer to their beliefs than those of Conservative or Liberal and therefore, because we live in a democracy (of sorts) they must be allowed to exist. Just because their politics are abhorant and offensive to most people doesn't mean they should be precluded from discussion. I know people who find members of the Green party just as vile and insidious, but we don't have government sponsored campaigns to rid us of the Green Party once and for all, do we?
The BNP is a face of Britishness that cannot be ignored or forgotten. The BNP appeal to a small minority of the population that will never change and will continue to procreate, so there will be a constant stream of poorly-educated bigots ready to carry the BNP standard. We need to remember that the world is made up of people - extremists - who don't agree with the rest of us (generally). The best way to treat people like this is with ignorance and a lack of respect - giving them coverage on TV and radio does nothing but polarise them in the eyes of those who maybe don't understand the BNP and might be tempted to follow their politics because of exposure they just shouldn't get. They exist, so do Jesus Freaks and conmen, but we don't acknowledge the others in the House.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)