What AM I Doing ?

Ahh, Twitter...

Apotheosis or nadir ?

Never mind that - if I spend all my time on networking sites, boards and writing blogs, how will I find the time to do/think of stuff to write on said sites/boards/blogs ?

Is this the paradox of Social Networking ?

What is the theoretical maximum of interactions before the law of diminishing returns sets in ?

Answers on a (virtual) postcard... hang on, that's just given me an idea...

Ch ch ch Changes...

This chap seems to be the big topic of conversation this week.

He seems like a courageous fellow. He is clearly a great communicator. Let's hope his words live up to his deeds, unlike Clinton (or Blair for that matter).

I admit to having a bit of a soft spot for George Bush. I always thought his "down home" style of speaking and his phrases, use of the word "folks" etc, was deeply rooted in an American culture and style that is largely misunderstood by the outside world, and mostly reviled.

I also admit to feeling very uncomfortable with the way in which our liberal media felt they had the right to take the piss out of the man by portraying him as a buffoon. To read/hear the obituaries of his Presidency, you might be forgiven for thinking that the only thing Bush ever did was mangle some words and phrases and give us all a jolly good laugh, sort of like an errant chimp at a tea party. I actually think this is hugely disrespectful to the man and his Country.

It occurs to me that this is a trend only covering Republican Presidents - Reagan was treated much the same by our meedja. Interesting to compare their treatment with the morally corrupt and empty presidency of Clinton, for example. I mean, Clinton fucked his way through 8 years in the Oval Office and was on the verge of being impeached before he got out. Reagan, by comparison ? Well all he did was win the Cold War and rescue the World from the threat of Nuclear Armageddon. Oh and Communism.

As Rod Liddle comments in todays Sunday Times:-

' "The nightmare is over,” said Jon Snow on Channel 4 News... I suppose Jon thought that he was speaking for all of us; this is the way with our liberal media elite – they do not think that they are remotely biased, merely that they are the sole guardians of the unvarnished truth. Bush was a nightmare – everyone agrees, from that nice Armenian chap who works in our local delicatessen to the BBC and The Guardian. That is everyone, isn’t it? '

I get the symbolism in the USA of Obama, and it is a triumph of the American dream - Obama is probably its most perfect embodiment - and that countrys ability to reinvent itself but still to retain its core attributes and articles of faith. What I don't get is the reaction to his election by the white middle-class in this country. Obama is not there to save you/us and it's important not to make the mistake of believing he's anything other than the AMERICAN President and will act in anything other than the interests of his country.

In fact, I might be so bold as to posit that the main attraction of Obama outside of his democracy is that he is young, gifted and black and there is no bandwagon that white liberals like hopping onto than one seen to be driven by a slightly anti-establishment figure. It is worth pondering that the image above, has a certain stylistic similarity to the famous posters of Guevera and Castro once de-riguer in any student or "right-on" white-youth's pad.

The very fact that fucking Bono has jumped on board should be enough to ring the alarm bell loud and clear. Oi, give us a lift mate !!




I fear therefore, that Mr Obama's honeymoon in the world outside America may be a little short lived - for example, don't expect him to renounce Israel anytime soon, you know ?. Then again, he won't worry about that and neither will I. He was not elected by me and I have no mandate to challenge him; he must do what he feels is best for his Country and if that happens to coincide at times with what's good for this Country, then so be it.

Obama is a deeply political animal - how could he be anything else to survive the hothouse of American politics and to claim the greatest prize of all ? I really hope he lives up to his billing, but he is not the Messiah and we should not burden him with expectations created from our own insecurities and yearning to see what's wrong with the world (in our eyes) put right.

You don't get to be the President by being Mr Nice Guy - but let us hope that he may have got to be President because he's Mr Right Guy.

Subdivisions - Acoustic

Always check your child's homework

Here's the reply the teacher received the following day.

Dear Mrs. Jones,

I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.
I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn't show me dancing around a pole. It's supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.
From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Smith

Mobile Phones, the Economy and some Lyrics

I'm a bit of a sucker for a gadget, truth be told. I was delighted therefore, when Nokia announced the replacement for the N95 - the N96 (bet you'd never have guessed !!). This phone was released slightly after the 3G iPhone, to whose softly rounded charms and genius of Apple's marketing I nearly succumbed.

But NO !! I resisted; my stubborn individuality surfaced and I gave my heart to the glossy and high-powered, kind of attractive but not in a conventional way, Nokia. The phone equivalent of a power suit and shoulder pads. Purposeful but sexy (you get the picture).

OK, no innovative touch screen control surface and effortless integration to Google Maps, iTunes etc etc, but well specc'd and pretty heavyweight when it comes to memory and processing. And if you de-branded it (ie removing the crap software installed by your network) then it reveals other tricks, like an embedded BBC iPlayer etc etc.

Trouble is, it's not actually the great leap forward it was billed as, and does nothing that my old N95 wouldn't do. I therefore feel somewhat cheated; she seduced me, opened her arms and then announced that her name was Roger. A bit of a let down, by all accounts.

Now I watch in envy at iPhone users, with their touching, brushing, squeezing and pinching... no failed promise there, I think.

Now, not even 6 months later, Nokia will release this to the world:-

You bastards !!!

I want one so much, it hurts...

This time, you'd better be called Candy and act like it.

Moving on, I fear my previous missive on the economy especially apropos the Banks, may, in the light of Monday's events, have been ever so slightly, errr, optimistic. Time will tell whether it will work, but I would ask only one question; what would you do ?

It's all very well, and very tempting, to rub your hands with glee at the thought of a bunch of Bankers taking it the painful way, and saying things like "they let Woollies go down, why is a bank any different ?". Well it is; banks are, in a deeply symbiotic sense, intrinsically linked to the economy, regardless of whether that economy is a free market one or not. Even communist countries have Banks.

Don't make the mistake of comparing these institutions with hack outfits like Northern Rock or B&B - they are several orders of magnitude bigger than that and hence are much more important. Remember, these are masive institutions with balance sheets larger than the UK economy (and incidentally, whose money do you think this is ?).

Now, imagine what would happen if one of these institutions were allowed to fail.

Without Banks (I use the term in an abstract sense), you don't have an economy. Just think what that means; no wages (how do they get paid and where do they go ?); no way of getting your money (forget ATM's, they won't work or have any cash in); no way of buying anything. No trade. No Car. No house. In short, the total and utter breakdown of our way of life.

Now, unless you are a Yurt inhabiting, twig eating Green or George Monbiot, I doubt you yearn for a return to a subsistence economy, with us all working the land and bartering our turnips. Putting aside the general excess of Western Civilisation, I quite like the way we live today and it's a damn sight better than any alternative I've seen.

So I say, if you don't want to end up eating grass, support your local Banker.

Now for some song lyrics; this one is called Saline. I think it's rather good.

If I
Say why
Will you cry
To please me?

Tell me lies
Fail to try
Say goodbye
It’s easy

Eyes cry
Tears dry
Tongues tie
Release me

Blue sky
Mind’s eye
Do or die
Appease me

Fine chilling mime
And I don’t know if I can believe in all the lies
Calcify
And I don’t know if I can survive the feeling
Losing all that’s mine

Amputee
Cut from me
Setting free
Deceiving

Leaving be
Lost at sea
Absentee
You’re grieving

Fine chilling mime
And I don’t know if I can believe in all the lies
Crucify
And I don’t know if I can survive the feeling
Losing all that’s mine

All, hold the wall, shallow call, doubters all, face the wall
Lovers fall, face the wall, losers all

I won’t be the good for nothing
I won’t be the same old feeling
I won’t be the one you turn to
I won’t be the phase you go through

(C) J Godfrey

That's all folks !!

Like, Wow Man !

Totally awesome. When I pick my jaw up from the floor, I might burble a few observations.

Economics and all that

A rousing Gable End cheer for Evan Davis and his excellent programme on Wednesday evening "The City Uncovered". Now, the meedja in general, and the BBC in particular have not, in this correspondents view, been entirely balanced in their perspective and reporting of the economic state we're in. Not much calling the Government to account and plenty of stick aimed at the banks etc.

It should be borne in mind that many hundreds of thousands of normal people work for the UK's banks, and 99.9% of those people carry no blame or responsibility for the behaviour of the minute fraction of employees who did call the shots wrong. Trouble is, we're all a "banker" in the Sun's (etc) eyes and should be strung up from the nearest lamppost on mention of a bonus or a £10ph company contribution to the staff Xmas meal.

It is, of course, preposterous to suggest that such people are awarded multi-million £ bonuses - most of them are lucky to get a bonus at all, and those that do, it probably runs into a few hundred quid (before tax). I think the great British public should not lose sight of that fact and frankly, if people are going to get on their high horses about financial institutions "wasting" taxpayers money, they ought to get a sense of perspective and look pretty hard at where their tax-pounds have ended up over the last 12 years !

Anyway, TVFGE is not intended to be a political soapbox, so I digress...

This programme was a pretty detailed look at why the banks, UK and otherwise, Retail and Investment, got themselves into such a pickle (driven incidentally, by the demands of shareholders and Boards to be profitable to turn shareholder value, and from consumers to provide cheap, available, no-questions-asked credit). What was so impressive though was the methodical and straight-forward way that Mr Davies explained the workings of the system and how things turned bad and why. It was an entirely sober, non-patronising, non-hysterical and factual examination.

Totally unlike the economic-terror-doom outpourings of this clown...

Robert Peston is the economics equivalent of nails running down a blackboard and someone needs to turn his volume down. He harbours a breathtaking streak of arrogance and a complete refusal to accept his place in the roll-call of blame.

The Gable End view of the economy is that it doesn't seem quite so bad as some people would have us believe. It is very easy to think that everything is turning to shit. For example, yes the average house price in this country has declined in the last 18 mnths, but is still higher than it was 3 years ago. A loss is only a loss if you capitalise it.

Undeniably things are worse than they were, but far from this being due to the collapse of free market capitalism, it is actually the safety valve inherent in the system letting off steam. The human cost is of course, dreadful for the people involved, but really, our are high streets worse off due to the demise of USC, Adams and Zavvi ? And as for Woollies and MFI, they've been basket cases for years; it's been quite laughable how much hand wringing sorrow has been generated as a result of them going, but c'mon, where were we all a few years ago ? I, and I suspect many people, long ago gave up shopping at Woolworths. The seeds of its demise were sown then, not in the last three months..

So, if the BBC isn't dumbing-down quite as much as we feared then equally, this thing may not be quite as bad as they would have us believe.

Mind you, I could be completely wrong. Here's what Karl Marx once said on the matter:-

"Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalized, and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism."

Crikey ! Let's hope that it isn't as bad as that !!!

What goes through your mind when someone says "Lets go for a drink"?

Utter genius !!

To Avoid Those Embarrassing Moments

Janauary - 2nd time you've been...etc

Why is it that, despite the Winter solstice or whatever it's called, has passed, it seems the mornings and evenings in January get ever more gloomy ? Shouldn't there be some semblance of earlier mornings/lengthier evenings ? It defies all logic in my book.

Went to Wath (pronounced "Woth") to the Hobbit Rock... sorry Classic Rock Society Band of the Year awards last weekend. Had a good time actually, although I have decided that I will not launch into the fighting lager quite so early in the evening, cos then I might stand a chace of doing some quality ligging with the collected musos.

I went there to see Frost*, who were very good, again. However, I was slightly over refreshed by the time I got to meet Jem and TBE and fear I made a bit of an arse of myself. However Jem assures me that I was fine, so that's a relief. Got to reacquaint myself with some some other Frost*ies too.

This live music lark is really good fun - seeing good bands in pokey venues - and I've decided that 2009 will be a year of gigging. Coming up then are Pure Reason Revolution at the Arts Centre in March and possibly Pineapple Thief at the Peel in Feb. Then, I have an idea to take a trip to Holland to see Frost* (maybe) then we'll see what happens from there.

In other news, I am 44 this week... bollocks !!

I'm also thinking of ways that I can express myself kinda, artistically. So, I've been thinking that I might pitch a Radio show to Future FM and bind that all up into my blog/venue/club idea. I'd like to do that...so I will

I was listening to a Radio 5 phone in the other day, triggered by a "news" item about placing magic boxes in cars so that, upon entering a certain speed limit, the car would automatically decrease it's speed to the speed limit for that section of road.

Now, regardless of the benefits or otherwise of this, it got me wondering, who comes up with these ideas and how do they subsequently gain the traction that sees them a) be a newsworthy item and b) have an hour + airtime devoted to a phone -in "debate" (funny how they are never a debate - just a game of verbal tennis from opposing views) ?

The thing is, no one I know has ever had a conversation with me, or anyone I know, in the pub etc, about how we must have this. In other words, it's not a response to some groundswell of opinion in Merrie Englande; us proles are not calling out from our collectives in unison a message to our Glorious Leader that, despite everything turning to crap, this is the one must-have idea that gains currency in the public psyche.

So, where did it come from ? Who thought it up ? Cos while they're at it, I have a few ideas of my own that I'd like publicised.

Amyway, my homeboy Rog "the D" Tubby, had this to say on the matter:-

"These crazy fools may seem barking mad, partly because they are, but more sinister is their real intention.

For example, how many people know that the traffic cameras installed around Norwich (the green ones), allegedly for a congestion charging trial, have all been converted to ANPR usage ? So the police (read Government) know exactly where you are, every time your car enters or exits the city boundary.

Of course these are not used for purposes of catching criminals, stolen cars, no tax, no insurance etc. The Police are far too busy attending another diversity awareness thought realignment programme.

The real issue is how these crackpots get funding from our taxes. The next move will be to justify doing away with all traffic police because the GPS system by which this technology works, will be employed to a) inform the Police of your movements and b) allow the same to raise taxes through so called fines."

Surely not ? Not in England....