The Diary of Humphrey Clarke

Efficiency Savings

2010-07-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

And so, a new decade has dawned and yet, in contrast to the previous ten years of excess, squander, and living beyond ones means, the spirit of this age has turned out to be ‘thrift’, ‘cost cutting’ and ‘austerity’. To it’s credit the government has turned to the people for ideas on how the bloated deficits of the world’s nations can be slashed, their departments downsized and the over-privileged fat cats of the public sector quangos pulled back from the trough and sent to the slaughterhouse.

In keeping with this zeitgeist I have been thumbing through my books in search of inspiration. Take this example from one of my father’s tomes entitled ‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Islam’ by Yahiya Emerick. Next to a technical diagram showing the major postures of the Islamic prayer is a text box called ‘Ask the Iman’. It reads:

‘When a person or group begins to pray, any angels who are nearby come and join in the prayer. The angels then report back to God and tell him what His servants are doing, though he already knows.

Now this strikes me as a prime example of an unnecessary and frankly gratuitous extra level of bureaucracy. Why Allah the almighty – an omniscient being, let us remember – needs a vast department of cosmic civil servants running around spying on his creations is anyone’s guess; especially when He can read their minds whenever he feels like it. What we see here is state spending out of control; creating unsustainable government jobs merely for the sake of it. Axeing whole of this lower tier of angels would be a considerable efficiency saving and achieve at least a 40% spending cut.

Matters get worse when we refer to the pit of hellfire; probably the worst run subterranean organisation outside of London Underground.

Nineteen angels patrol the summit, their sole role being to push the damned back in when they try to crawl out; a simple electric fence and a coating of Vaseline around the sides of the pit would do the job just as well without having to shell out market rate for 19 jailor’s salaries and their inventory of ‘smiting’ equipment. Furthermore there is no need for seven separate levels of hell fire, particularly when the last of these has to be heated up to 70 times hotter than fire on this planet. A single incinerator with inmates housed at different levels would be much more efficient without sacrificing on the unpleasantness of the overall inmate experience. Here too there is room for some consolidation, for example there is no need for the haughty and the mighty to be subject to different levels of temperature when the facilities can be centralised and standardised.

Nor do there really need to be separate forms of punishments for the damned. According to the book, faultfinders have to ‘scratch their faces with iron nails’, liars have to ‘rip out their cheeks with iron bars’ and greedy ‘will be bitten by snakes’. Instead it would be far cheaper to issue the whole lot with copies of now redundant New Labour papers on ‘Best Practice Strategies in Public Sector Management’ and ‘Controlling Wellbeing in the Work Force’ and have them read passages aloud to one other.

These cuts will be painful on the celestial workforce. Some of them might even join Shaytan and his devils. But it will be a price worth paying for a leaner, more sustainable organisation which will serve as an example to mankind.

Genealogy and Sexual Misdemeanor

2010-03-02T07:38:00.000-08:00

The real problem with Darwin’s theory of evolution is that it makes the entire pursuit of genealogy a total laughing stock. As a case in point, somewhere on the wall in my childhood home there hangs a framed certificate. It displays the face of William the Ist of England, a man who –in one of the more audacious pieces of rebranding known to history – began his life with the nickname ‘the bastard’ and ended it as ‘the conqueror’. Underneath his portrait is emblazoned text which proudly proclaims that – according to the findings of the William the Conqueror Society - the Clarke family are related by blood to the man himself, and can presumably bask in all the vicarious glory this entails. Although, in my experience, this rarely impresses anyone down the pub; not least because -thanks to our moribund education system - most of the population have either never heard of him or think he fights for the World Wrestling Federation.

Similarly, the Clarkes are also connected – through a series of poorly documented and implausible ‘begats’ - to the mysterious Kings of Donegal. These fellows apparently took their genealogy very seriously indeed, even going to the lengths of tracing themselves back to Noah. This they achieved by the time honoured and scientific technique of locking the best scholars they could lay their hands on in a room and threatening to execute them if they couldn’t deliver the goods. Sadly you can no longer use this technique on IT departments.

Of course, none of this matters a jot. Thanks to the aforementioned theory of evolution and the discovery of common descent I am now related – not just to William the Conqueror, the Donegal glitterati and the apocryphal Noah – but also to dung beetles, mosquitoes, skunks, tapeworms and genital herpes. In fact I could probably produce a plausible genealogy certificate for every ‘slimy thing’ that crawls ‘with legs upon the slimy sea’. Hopefully the whole ghastly business can be suppressed.

In the past few weeks I have been greatly entertained by the number of marital infidelities that have come to light in the media. These were gleefully documented and regaled to me by my better half as she trawled the ‘Perez Hilton’ blog site. Perhaps in amongst all that celebrity coaching and counselling, Tiger Woods, Ashley Cole and John Terry should have been exposed to the teachings of Sextus the Pythagorean. This –ironically named - 3rd century Stoic advised that those who found it difficult to practice celibacy should castrate themselves, extolling them to 'cast away every part of the body that misleads you to a lack of self control, since it is better for you to live without the part in self control than to live with it to your peril'.

One can take this attitude too far though. At around the same time Sextus was delivering this advice, Arnobius remarked that it blasphemous to believe that Jesus was 'born of vile coitus and came into the light as a result of the spewing forth of senseless semen, as a product of obscene groping’ and extended this to refer to all intercourse as ‘filthy and degrading’. Following this general attitude the Patristic figure Tertullian decided to publicly renounce sexual relations to his wife and composed a lengthy treatise to her, explaining his reasons for doing so and admonishing her to suspend her lustful desires and lead a celibate life. Her reaction sadly has not been recorded for posterity. I can pretty much guarantee that if I tried this with my wife I could expect a harshly worded treatise in reply admonishing me to suspend my abject silliness and take the rubbish out. Quite right too.

An Afternoon at the Tate

2009-10-12T12:05:00.000-07:00

It was in the post-war section of the gallery that you could really sense the nihilism beginning to creep into Western Culture. A series of hastily drawn sketches from the 1920s depicted several naked men, all of whom appeared to have severed their penis in a fit of existential anguish. ‘What the hell is it for?’ they seemed to be saying as their severed member sat forlornly on the couch beside them. I had enjoyed Claude Monet’s ‘Waterlillies’ in the previous room, but for me this rather spoiled my visit to the Tate Modern. St Augustine writing in the 5th century had said that his own genitalia were ‘shameful parts’ that had to be covered ‘because they excite themselves just as they like, in opposition to the mind which is their master’; but even he never went so far as to cut them off.

Deciding to remove myself from this sorry scene, I saw that other patrons were meandering through a separate doorway towards another exhibit. Having followed them I peered through the darkness within and started in horror. The room was pitch black save for a series of white screens. Upon these were projected the moving image of a man who was predictably naked, save for an animal mask. Having dressed in this peculiar manner he appeared to be leaping into the air at regular intervals while fondling himself with a paint brush. Perhaps feeling that this wasn’t disturbing enough, he had decided to augment his performance with wild cries and animal grunts.

I looked down in curiosity down to see what this ‘piece’ was titled. The sign simply read ‘room with projectors’. It seemed a bit of an understatement; a bit like describing Ingres’s ‘Turkish Bath’ – a seething mass of voluptuous naked women - as ‘Room with enormous red carpet’.

Worse was to follow. The sole exhibit in the enormous downstairs area was a bizarre scene in which a giant spider had evidently chained a selection of second hand books to metal bunk beds. No explanation was given for why the arachnid had chosen to do this. Had he felt peckish and concocted an elaborate scheme to tempt bookish types into his lair?. Had he simply felt lonely and decided to throw a literary slumber party for all who would accept the invitation?. Why was the spider watching footage of yet another naked man scrambling frantically over a rocky landscape?. No answers seemed forthcoming. Perhaps this was meant to solicit an ‘individual response’ from the spectators but the best I could summon were four letter words.

It was here that I began to long for the delights of a bucolic classical landscape. No doubt these things find themselves out of favour these days because they are not ‘avant guarde’ or ‘autobiographical’ enough. Perhaps the sight of a band of rosy cheeked cherubs playfully attempting to steal wolf cubs from their mother will tell you less about the human condition than a scene of genital hari kiri, but at least I could go to see them in an Art Gallery without feeling mentally disturbed.

The Prospect of Castration

2009-03-26T14:06:00.000-07:00

As I sat back contentedly in my armchair, sipping a cup of herbal tea and gazing lethargically over at the bookshelf, I began to ponder how best to engineer the deaths of thirty million of my fellow citizens. This train of thought was prompted by a recent article in the Times by Jonathon Porritt of ‘The Optimum Population Trust’, which argues that the UK population must be drastically cut from 60 million to 30 million in order to save the planet. The minor detail of how to actually halve our population, he appears to have left up for discussion. These kind of scurrilous suggestions appear to be all the rage these days.

It appears to be in the nature of the intelligencia to demand the suspension of reproductive freedom. Back in the early decades of the twentieth century at the dawn of the Eugenics movement, we were told by doctors, psychiatrists, scientists and pundits that society was undergoing a biological disintegration. The ‘weak’, ‘the unfit’ - ’idiots’, ‘degenerates’ and ‘cretins’ – would all have to be ruthlessly sterilised in order to usher in a bright and prosperous tomorrow. Now we are told, by the usual line up of environmentalists, scientists and pundits, that humanity is mother earth’s equivalent of herpes and we must endeavour not to reproduce in order to save the planet. Now instead of the ‘weak’ and the ‘degenerate’, it is the ‘polluters’, ‘the carbon producers’ and the ‘environmentally illiterate’ which must be expunged from the gene pool. This seems a little naive. As I recall from Patricia Churchland, the priorities of human beings consist of ‘the four f’s’; feeding, fighting, fleeing and heading upstairs for a bit of ‘how’s your father?’. The last of these pre-occupations inevitably results in production of offspring. A straightforward prohibition on breeding will skew the evolutionary balance in favour of those too stupid to use contraceptives; even more than it already is. This being the case, I fear the worst for our sex organs in the coming century. In fact it may be that new labour will go so far down the Green route that they pass legislation to turn us all into eunuchs. I doubt this will achieve anything; although at least we will be able to usher in the coming apocalypse with a rather charming soprano accompaniment.

A more equitable alternative method of halving the population, I feel, would be to do the following. A ministry for population reduction would be assigned to divide up the country into pairs. This would be arranged by things like age, personal income and athletic ability. At the appointed time, letters would be sent to each pair telling them to hunt down and kill each other within a certain period, perhaps including some handy information like a polaroid photo, their address, personal weaknesses and favourite pub. The member of the pair that kills the other one first wins and thus, 60 million becomes 30 million with a minimum of administration cost. This doesn’t seem to me like too bad an idea; in fact for all I know the eco lobby in the government has enacted it already. Perhaps the letter was slipped in with my Council tax bill?.

The end of the world is beginning to sound more and more like the first draft of ‘The Book of Revelation’; the one that John of Patmos decided to tear up because it ‘sounded a bit over the top’. ‘Look at this’ exclaimed my CEO as he proudly presented me with a colour coded map of the coming disaster. The once mighty east coast of the United States was reduced to a smear of purple death. The white cliffs of Dover, a mere bump at the bottom of the expanded English channel. ‘This is great!, I’m going to buy land in Canada’ my boss exclaimed, before disappearing into his office to examine a satellite view of the Yukon; presently a rather monotonous stretch of tunda but soon to be a pastoral Eden. I began to contemplate my options and eventually decided to ‘think strategically’ and buy a plot on the moon. Future generations of ‘moonlings’ will hopefully praise me for my foresight, gaze in reverence at my lunar constitution and sing my hastily composed anthem. Either that or I just paid good money for a phoney deed and a rather silly T-shirt.

Civil Liberties and Moral Turpitude

2009-03-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

'Give me Liberty, or give me Death!' roared the Virginian politician Patrick Henry on the eve of the American Revolution, conveniently forgetting for a moment the slaves he had chained up at home. In more recent times there has been much talk aboard about what many consider to be the imminent loss of our civil liberties. After much reflection I have come to the conclusion I don’t deserve any civil liberties. A single example will serve to illustrate. On a recent excursion to Sainsbury’s I arrived at the till and paid for a stack of groceries. Before doing this I was informed by the checkout girl that I had points on my supermarket loyalty card and ‘would be able to get money off’ if I cashed them in. It was with horror I realised that all the while I had not even suspected that this plastic card gave me any benefits whatsoever; I had simply been swiping it, drone-like, day in day out thinking it was ‘just what I was supposed to do’, thereby allowing the nefarious Sainsbury’s corporate machine to track my every movement and pass a record of my purchases back to their database for sinister purposes. By mere power of suggestion they had been able to manipulate me and secure my unquestioning loyalty.

This is the way liberty dies, step by feeble step; Tesco’s club card to ID cards, TV licensing to CCTV. When ‘Google Street View’ do their next sweep, I may as well invite them in to photograph all the rooms in my flat, steal all my personal data and ransack my hard drive for pornography.

The advantage of Google Street View is that it’s blurriness obscures a lot of the more unpleasant details. Should you load up this particular program in your web browser and want to get the authentic north London experience I would suggest doing the following. First, navigate your way on the map across to Edgware high street, then load up street view. Next sprinkle the floor around your computer with a half dozen cigarette butts, a selection of dirt encrusted phone card offers, a selection of dried chewing gum and, as the piece de resistance, one used Condom.

When George Orwell wanted to depict a dystopian world the first detail he provided was a clock striking 13. For me the ultimate symbol of a dystopian society has to be the sight of a crusty prophylactic dumped in the middle of the road for all to see; a symptom of decadence, moral turpitude and decay. I should like it if people made an effort to take care of their surroundings, but sadly that’s about as likely as Joseph Fritzel winning a prize for interior design. If you really want to go the whole hog with the street experience, get your partner or flatmate to dress up in a t-shirt jeans and a clipboard and leap out at you unexpectedly in an attempt to ‘charity mug’ you for your credit card details.

Following my last post, the objection was raised in some quarters that line-dancing is not a suitable hobby for a strapping young chap like myself and that I should engage myself in more manly activities. Upon reflection I have concluded that this is a scurrilous suggestion. Besides, there are worse hobbies. The favorite pastime of the Emperor Tiberius, we are told by Suetonius, was to encourage small boys to fellate him in the bathtub, James 1st’s way of passing the time was to walk around the palace nervously fiddling with his cod-piece. Compared to that, gyrating to country music with an assortment of geriatric Londoners seems far more acceptable.

Evolutionary Angst

2009-03-07T03:27:00.000-08:00

As I chewed frenziedly at the edge of my pencil in a science lab at my elitist public school, I felt all my youthful energy and enthusiasm ebbing away. At the time I could scarcely conceive of a more boring subject than Biology. The Uppingham science block did nothing to fire the imagination and everything to convince you that architects in the 50s and 60s were Stalinist maniacs on hallucinogenic drugs. It used to be so different. An old engraving I have of the Renaissance astronomer Tycho Brahe shows the great man at work in his laboratory. As he reclines back in his chair beside his mural quadrant, surrounded by arcane looking pieces of equipment and dusty old tomes, he raises his hand raised towards the heavens and contemplates the wonders of the natural world around him. By contrast the science facilities at my school were a labyrinthian maze of uninspiring laboratories populated by rank after rank of the eponymous Bunsen burner and always smelling faintly of gas and teenage body odour. The only hypothesis I ever tested was whether it was possible to lose consciousness from sheer boredom.

As I recall, my GCSE exam paper consisted of a short essay extolling the virtues of fish farming and a diagram demonstrating an ecological food chain; the process whereby the inter-related inhabitants of the natural world contrive to cannibalise one other. As one gets older and escape the stifling clutches of the national curriculum one realises that a study of nature might enlighten our understanding of human nature. One book which aims to do this is ‘The Selfish Gene’ a book written in the seventies by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. According to the author the purpose of this popular work was to convey ‘a truth which still fills me with astonishment’. I eagerly thumbed through the pages to find out what it was. The ‘truth’ is, as it happens, that we are all ‘lumbering’ sex robots, ‘blindly programmed’ to ‘preserve the selfish molecules known as genes’.

Of course one natural inclination is to reject this interpretation, dependent as it is on the open question of whether the universe has any overarching purpose. The mind wanders to incredulity; is everything reducible to gene survival?; did P.G Wodehouse write his Castle Blandings series in a subtle attempt to smuggle his genes into the next generation?; when John Constable painted ‘The Hay Wain’ in 1821, was he merely expressing his gene’s deep seated desire for a suitable environment in which they could flourish and propagate?.

And yet, as anyone who has been to a British high street on a Saturday night can testify, there is a great degree of plausibility to Dawkins’s thesis. There we see the inhabitants of merry England, un-inhibited by societal pretences and possessed by the kind of demonic lust which would have made St Augustine retire solemnly to his study to write his confessions. Kicking out time at the UK pub is where we see the kind of behaviour that socio-biologists love; the human animal unmasked, a slave to its underlying programming.

‘But that can’t be what its really all about can it?’, I wondered to myself as I settled down to read an improving book. As I flicked through it pages in search of enlightenment I stopped in horror at one particular passage, a quote by the evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker. It read:

‘Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options is I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father and took his position and married my mother?’.

Great. So Hamlet is nothing more than a survival guide. The Sharpe novel I finished a couple of days ago is presumably nothing more than a strategy manual for the unlikely scenario of being somehow transported back in time to the Napoleonic Wars. If this were to happen by the way I would be well prepared. In a fit of evolutionary angst I searched in vain for a hobby which no socio-biologist would be able to link to genetic survival. I turned to scribbling landscapes in a pad, only to find that Denis Dutton has written in ‘The Art Instinct’ that:

'The universal preference for a particular type of landscape painting taps into universal innate inclinations formed during the Pleistocene period, ‘the 1.6million years during which modern human beings evolved’. Featuring, amongst other things, water, open spaces of low grasses interspersed with thickets of trees, evidence of animal or bird life, and an opening up to an unimpeded view of the horizon, this predilection for a particular landscape testifies to a primordial memory of the African Savanna'

At last I hit upon line dancing and have begun a class on Monday evenings. The rationale for this decision was my belief that even the most ingenious feat of pseudo - scientific trickery would not be able to link my synchronised dancing to country music to any attempt by my crafty genes to squirm their way into the narrative. And yet, as I struggled to match my movements to those of the elderly Londoners around me amidst the beats of ‘County Line’, a surge of unease came over me. It was as if I heard the voice of Stephen Pinker in my head saying:

Line dancing supplies us with an opportunity to rehearse formations which will prove useful in hunting strategies. By practicing our body movements, attuning them to those of others and following a rhythm, humans are fostering the techniques which would enhance survival. It is as if we are channelling the memory of the African Savannah upon which we evolved.

Could it be that this dance hall, this line dance, even this country music record are all the product of the selfish replicators struggle for existence?. After weighing this up for a moment I decided to reflect on something else. As Dawkins says ‘DNA just is. And we dance to its music.’ Sometimes the music just happens to be Country and Western.

Ozymandias

2009-02-16T12:35:00.000-08:00

As I squeezed through the door of my local Woolworths, its dilapidated interior chocked with lunchtime shoppers anxious to carry off a last scrap from the dying carcass, I was reminded of a sonnet by Shelley. It’s verses tell of a traveller wandering through the desert who comes across a shattered statue of an ancient pharaoh. The inscription reads ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’, Now his grandiose monument and the civilisation he had ruled lay in ruins, a monument to the transitory nature of humanity and all it works. In my youth the Woolies sign with its gleaming red and white lettering had seemed to bestow a sense of grandeur and permanence. The store had once been the queen of the high street, it’s pix-a-mix section and bargain video box had tempted me in on many occasions, my fingers had pawed through the aisles in search of bargains. Now, in the chaotic violence of the closing down sale, those same pix-a-mix baskets were being ruthlessly pillaged. The DVD section had been ransacked down to the last copy of ‘I Robot’; its shelves would never be filled again in anger. Nothing remained of the CD aisle besides a few shattered fragments of a Leona Lewis single. As I pondered this scene of desolation I felt the sudden pang of sadness one feels when witnessing the passing of an era; then I remembered Woolworths was always a bit shit, the security guard was rude and the floor was always suspiciously sticky. On reflection, good riddance.

Before this economic turmoil erupted there was much talk abroad that many of the more traditional humanities were outdated and superfluous. The young men and women of the information age, it was felt, should not be wasting their lives in a futile grapple with the niceties of History, Latin and Philosophy. Instead they should be doing ‘proper’ subjects such as Accounting, Management, Law and Business studies; In contrast to the narrow-minded bookish student of yesteryear, these bright eyed graduates would march forth into the workplace and go on to become future captains of industry. Of course the much maligned history student, casting a cynical eye back into the past, can easily identify this as mere hubristic hogwash. In much the same way, as the venerable Bede sat working at his desk on his ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ in the 8th century AD, he was waylaid by his more short sighted contemporises. “Bede”, they would say, “why are you wasting your time on all this science, history and theology?”. “Don’t you realise it’s the dark ages!”. “The ‘it’ subjects now are raping, pillaging, serf management and putting people’s heads on spikes; that is where the growth industries are right now”. “Just this year for example, by headhunting some Saxon mercenaries and launching a few armed expeditions I have managed to increase my fiefdom’s turnover dramatically, this ‘classical learning’ of yours will never take off”. Stuck in the past he might have been, but this state of affairs isn’t necessarily a disadvantage; in fact you can generally see which mistakes are likely to be committed again. Today’s sure thing is tomorrow’s squalid failure.

Before the economy began its meteoric slide into depression, Lloyds bank was in the habit of giving me a hard time for my rather modest overdraft. A wise man once said ‘why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but pay no attention to the log in your own eye?’, or in this case why do you persecute your customers for minor indiscretions but take no heed of the 10 billion debt you just incurred with your reckless and morally insane corporate dealings?. Pardon me if I decline to accept your offer to have me visit your branch for a personal finance review; particularly when your sordid institution has demonstrated the kind of financial incompetence not seen since the Scots managed to bankrupt their entire country by starting a colony in the middle of a malaria ridden swamp; at least they demonstrated ‘out the box’ thinking.

The fate of the transgressors

2008-11-13T14:36:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the Enlightenment and the banishment of God from the European mind, the logical positivists of the 19th century created a religion of humanity to extol the virtues of ‘science’ and ‘progress’. Adherents set up temples to the worship of mankind and adopted practices such as pressing their fingers to their heads in order to stimulate the areas of their brains connected with progress, benevolence and order according to the new science of phrenology. Chief among their interests were the canals and waterways being dug out by colonising empires around the world. ‘Now that we have canals, human beings will no longer fight one another’, they would say; ‘now that we have canals bigotry will wither away’; ‘Now that we have canals there will be no more tyranny. In the next century those same canals would carry men, machinery and armaments around the world in the two greatest conflagrations in human history. The technology changes but the crooked timber of humanity remains the same.

What was said of canals is now said of the internet, which it is hoped will become a vehicle for the enlightenment of mankind. Instead it serves as just another landscape over which human folly and ineptitude can work its predictable course. It also presents a variety of dangers for those of us who lack the blessing of concentration. A misplaced click on your Facebook homepage and you might accidentally announce the breakdown of your marriage to your friends and family, a clumsy mouse point on the wrong link in your google mail and you may mistakenly convert yourself to scientology. Some weeks ago I noticed an intriguing item on my news ticker informing me that two bulls had taken it upon themselves to copulate in and destroy a shop in Volgograd, presumably in defiance of both humankind and Mother Nature. My curiosity stirred, I clicked on the link only to watch on in horror as my ageing laptop was dealt a mortal death blow by a Russian computer virus. Worst of all, the story about the mating bulls proved to be nothing more than a cunning deception designed to hoodwink gullible westerners. Often, when you think something is too good to be true, it usually is.

Deprived of the pleasures of aimless internet browsing I have taken to watching the box. Sadly two things have contrived to spoil my enjoyment. The first is one of those public information adverts our Stalinist government seem to enjoy rolling out these days in order to keep the masses in a state of state sponsored terror. The broadcast is a sort of modern-day medieval morality play in which a man who hasn’t paid his road tax decides to take a drive. As he motors around in the evening dusk, he begins to hear a strange beeping and, looking round, he beholds a large rectangular object which appears to be stalking him. Spooked, he drives home, parks his car and heads over to his front door, only to hear the same beeping behind him again. Turning around in a state of wide eyed alarm he beholds the black box standing in his driveway. The tag line then appears, ‘You can’t escape the computer!’. All very David Lynch. It transpires that the large rectangular object is the ‘Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority’s’ road tax computer used for checking up on violators, although here it has been re-imagined as some malevolent stalker reminiscent of M. R. James’s ‘A warning to the curious’.

The second fly in the ointment is a rather visceral advertisement, again government sponsored, which forms part of the new ‘wear your seatbelt campaign’. When I was a young lad, these sorts of accident prevention things were demonstrated with a couple of smiley cartoon figures and perhaps a happy jingle or two to hammer the message home. Having decided that the message needs to be suitably hard hitting, these now seem to take their inspiration from Quentin Tarantino. The advert begins with a man driving down the street when a disembodied voice interrupts the proceedings to say ‘It wasn’t hitting the windscreen that killed Nigel that day’. I can’t stress this enough. If you happen to be driving along and an announcement cuts in with news of your imminent demise, it might be a good idea to stop and take the bus instead. In all likelihood, the voice in question is heralding the fact the government has offered you as a human sacrifice on the altar of road safety; not a fate I would wish upon anyone. In the course of events the poor chap manages to ram into the car in front, his head rebounds off the windscreen and in graphic detail his heart is shown being punctured by his ribcage. As his blood washes over the screen the words appear with searing clarity; ‘wear a seatbelt!’.

I can’t help wondering what happens if you neglect to pay your road tax and fail to wear a seatbelt. Perhaps the disembodied voice cuts in, your internal organs are mutilated in the resulting crash, and then the dark malevolent road tax computer wades in to trample on what is left of your remains in a final act of retribution. Such is the fate of the trangressors.

On the nature of things

2008-09-14T09:17:00.001-07:00

And so the recession is finally upon us like an apocalyptic tidal wave, sweeping along with it all the property shows, home improvement magazines and ‘buy a new place in the sun’ paraphernalia that has been ubiquitous over the past decade. In much the same way the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah must have gossiped excitedly at drinks parties about the meteoric rise in value of their riverfront property, oblivious to the deluge of fire and brimstone sweeping up behind them. Despite innumerable warning signs, the collapse of the sub-prime market and the accompanying economic downturn were not expected by many people and were met with incredulous disbelief. My theory is that this is due to a secular reinterpretation of the Judeo-Christian tradition. With the arrival of Christianity, it came to be believed that history had directionality and a predetermined goal, which was human salvation. In the enlightenment this idea was hijacked by intellectuals like Rousseau, Saint-Simon and Comte who instilled the belief that civilisation is moving towards some kind of a global society based on science. In the 21st century, having shorn the past and future of its metaphysical significance, people seem to believe that history’s goal is to increase the value of everyone’s house, ever onwards and upwards till we reach some glorious utopian future where the British middle class are enthroned as the privileged aristocracy of Europe, all the menial jobs are done by Polish wage slaves and everyone owns a second home in Bulgaria and the Algarve. In pre-Christian Europe and eastern cultures, human life was understood as a series of cycles and history was seen as tragic or comic rather than redemptive. I would argue that in terms of economics this view is of considerable merit. Events such as the ‘South Sea Bubble’, the ‘Dot.Com’ boom and the ‘House Price’ revolution can best be understood as a series of tragic-comic cycles with people becoming overexcited and irrational about the value of their over inflated assets, only to be brought back to reality with a resounding thud once the market begins its customary plunge. The nature of the economic asset changes, whether it be shares in non existent companies, barrels of oil or bricks and mortar; but it is usually accompanied by the same cycle of greed, volatility and hubris; and finally nemesis, decline and eventual collapse.

The central tragedy of my life is that people are always phoning me up to ask me questions on topics I couldn’t care less about. Perhaps the best example of this occurred a couple of years ago when the office switchboard number was mixed up with the information line for Marks and Spencers travel insurance. As a result I was subjected to a torrent of enquiries from holidaymakers looking for information about their potential coverage and eligibility. When I told them that I couldn’t help them they sounded deeply wounded and had enormous difficulties coming to terms with the fact that they had the wrong number. Above all they were extremely resentful, as if, despite not being an employee of Marks and Spencers, I should at least have the decency to find out something about their travel insurance to pass on to them, or that I had fooled them into calling me through some piece of Machiavellian trickery. If anything I should be the one who is justified in feeling aggrieved. I would have few complaints if my number were to be advertised as ‘The Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow hotline’ or the ‘Battle of Stalingrad information desk’, as then I would have something to say to people. As it is, people assume I must be the world authority on such matters as ‘the availability of parking spaces in the vicinity of Edgware high street’ or ‘the layout and topography of British motorways’ but are loathe to question me about things I actually have some knowledge of. Unfortunately tedious information is the currency of the universe.

2008-09-02T13:37:00.001-07:00

As some of you might be aware my wife is an American citizen and therefore regarded as suspicious and ‘foreign’ by the U.K’s bureaucratic establishment. As penance for this we have had to undergo many hardships, including queuing up with the asylum seekers at UK Customs and immigration in Croydon and having to shell out vast sums of money to get permission from the state to marry, live in the same country and, most ignominiously of all, to take the UK Citizenship test. This vile assessment contains such questions as ‘How much does a colour TV licence cost?’ and ‘What percentage of the UK’s population are Catholics?’. I find it hard to see why knowing the extent of the UK’s Catholic community is in any way a useful requirement for being a fine upstanding citizen. The only scenario I can envisage is if I happened to be reincarnated as Oliver Cromwell and charged myself with exterminating the ‘ungodly papist religion’. One wouldn’t mention this in the citizenship test of course because it would almost certainly fall foul of the new laws governing incitement to religious hatred; especially ironic given that our constitution and national identity were mainly founded by inciting religious hatred. All one had to do in the 16th century to be a good citizen was to own a well-thumbed copy of ‘Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’. In the 21st century the only things you really need to be able to call yourself British are an unquenchable sense of self-loathing and a hatred of ones entire history and culture.

The most infuriating part of the test is having to shell out for ‘Life in the United Kingdom, a Journey to Citizenship’, the official government booklet which has all the questions and answers. On the first page The Home Secretary, John Reid’s ugly bald head stares back at you with a short forward written underneath. I regard the first paragraph as a personal insult. It reads

‘The first edition of this handbook became a best seller when it came out towards the end of 2004. Some people will have bought it out of interest, or a wish to know more about the United Kingdom’s history or institutions. And many more will have obtained it as a study guide for the new tests for knowledge about life in the United Kingdom, which we brought in during 2005 for people who want to become British citizens’.

Well yes, it is a best seller, in the same way that Chairman Mao’s little red book sold between 5.5 and 6 billion copies, partly because if you failed to produce it you were liable to be belaboured around the head and genitalia by Red Guards and sentenced to years of hard-labour. It’s certainly no cause for self congratulation.

To me the citizenship test is oddly reminiscent of some of the first IQ tests, which the United States brought in at the height of the worldwide Eugenics movement during the 1920s. These were drawn up in order to allay fears that the "American" gene pool was being polluted by a rising tide of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, who were thought to be ‘imbeciles’, ‘feeble minded cretins’ and ‘moral defectives’. Upon the ‘discovery’ by H. H. Goddard that all immigrants, except those from Northern Europe, were of ‘surprisingly low intelligence;’ tight immigration laws and IQ testing were enacted in the 1920s. These tests were also influential in some states for legitimising forced sterilization of ‘defective’ individuals who had scored badly. The tests themselves that were introduced were very crude and culturally specific; immigrants tended to do very badly indeed. Sample questions included ‘who won the baseball batting title in 1925?’ and ‘Which one of these is a stop sign?’. As a result 87% of Russian immigrants and similar numbers from other nations were found to be feeble-minded, a result so ludicrous even H. H Goddard couldn't believe it. Eventually the same test was introduced to estimate the intelligence of the armed forces and so many of the people serving were found to be imbeciles and idiots worthy of sterilisation – a lot of them war veterans - that the test was immediately ditched.

I move that the present day UK citizenship test be similarly scrapped, and in this particular incidence the only person that should be sterilised is the Home secretary.

Our place in the Cosmos

2008-08-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

The great paradox of humanity is that all the greatest of our intellectual endeavours are perversely mirrored by a crippling diminution of what it is to be human. Having emerged by a slow, bloody march from the primeval slime of the earth we are informed in gloating terms of our complete and total insignificance. Copernicus banished the earth from the centre of the universe, Darwin told us our closest ancestors were ‘damn dirty’ apes and Freud told us we all secretly fantasise about sleeping with our mothers; although that last vignette might tell us more about the scale of his cocaine habit than the state of the human condition. We should remind ourselves that all these facts are only unsettling because they are viewed through the ghastly prism of our species’ inherent sense of self-loathing. Perhaps disgusted by its capacity for greed, hate, genocide, and inclination towards such perversities as sado masochism and the covert sniffing of other people’s under garments, Homo Sapiens has a peculiar capacity to see itself in terms of some destructive virus, unworthy of existence and something to be abhorred. Even our predominant vision of the afterlife isn’t some Olympian paradise where our spiritual doppelgangers parade themselves majestically in the company of the gods, but one where we grovel submissively in front of a celestial super-being who then chastises us for the worldly activities of our sex organs. Some segments of humanity look forward to a glorious utopian future, but in my experience the vast majority look forward longingly to the next apocalypse, whether it be via nuclear annihilation, a seven degree increase in global temperature or an angry swarm of killer bees.

In the 1980s the cosmologist Carl Sagan released the TV series COSMOS, a show which aimed to bring the light of scientific truth to the world but ended up being a shameless rehash of enlightenment mythology. In one episode he claimed that the Medieval natural philosophers were conceited for suggesting that the sun and all its planetary bodies revolved around the earth. ‘How could then have been so arrogant!’ he said with the kind of smugness which accompanies the abuse of hindsight. Sagan clearly never bothered to read any history of science but if he had he would have realised that in the medieval worldview the earth’s position at the centre of the universe was not in any way celebrated. In fact it was universally believed that the centre was by far the worst place to be. According to the accepted cosmology of the period our miserable sphere was located at the bottom of the celestial hierarchy, considered too unworthy to be part of the heavens due to its imperfect and sinful nature and with hell and purgatory placed at its core. Our planet stood in dismal contrast to the heavenly firmament above, a realm of perfection derived from Plato's Theory of Forms with the realm of God beyond. Out of all celestial bodies our earth was emphatically the Middlesborough of the Cosmos. As Michael de Montaigne wrote:

"The most wretched and frail of all creatures is man and withal the proudest. he feels and sees himself lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and riveted to the worst and deadest part of the universe, in the lowest story of the house, the most remote from the heavenly arch"

The Copernican revolution, rather than knocking us from our celestial pantheon, rocketed us up to join the lofty heavenly firmament above. Consequently, if you read through the literature of the time you rarely find people complaining about being dislodged.

Nor, by any stretch of the imagination, was Copernicus the hard-headed rationalist of popular myth. This becomes immediately apparent when reading De revolutionibus, which reads more like something one would find in the ‘New age and Spirituality’ section of Borders than a scientific textbook. The aim of Copernicus was to demonstrate that the heavens worked in a way consistent with their creation by God – ‘The wisest and most orderly workman of all’. Like many Christian humanists of the time he dabbled in pagan ideas, in particular the occult writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistos or "the thrice-great Hermes", a syncretism of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth. Influenced by Platonic mysticism, Hermeticism placed considerable emphasis on the source of light, the sun as an object of worship. In De revolutionibus 1:10 Copernicus says:

At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. For in this most beautiful temple, who would place this lamp in another or better position than that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time? For, the sun is not inappropriately called by some people the lantern of the universe, its mind by others, and its ruler by still others. [Hermes] the Thrice Greatest labels it a visible god, and Sophocles' Electra, the all-seeing.

It is considered likely by historians that Copernicus took Hermeticism and the notion of ‘divine simplicity’ as his main sources of inspiration. This is consistent with the fact his model raised some serious problems -for example, if the sun is at the centre of the universe, why doesn’t everything fall into it- and owed more to aesthetics than anything else. Copernicus’s explanation for this was that ‘earthly things’ tend to fall towards earth, solar things tend to fall towards the sun, Martian things tend to fall towards mars and so on and for forth. What he meant was ‘I haven’t a bloody clue’, thus demonstrating a good scientific theory doesn’t always need to make any sense, nor does it have to be inspired by reason.

Hubris and Nemesis

2008-06-30T11:40:00.001-07:00

Commentators reflecting on the massacres committed by the communist regimes of the 20th century were fond of quoting the 16th century proverb ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. What is true of Marxist genocide is also true of plastic pot plants. Whoever masterminded the decoration of the lobby of the contemptible 1960s office building I work in was in all probability motivated by feelings of human solidarity and desired to create something that would infuse the buildings inhabitants with something akin to a state of spiritual nirvana. This, they reasoned, could best be achieved by creating a display of fauna in the entrance hall that would bring Mother Nature’s wonders to an otherwise soulless patch of concrete. Something was lost in the execution. Instead, following a series of compromises, the space was populated with a series of grotesque plastic trees, which resemble cast-off props from ‘Day of the Triffids’. Over the years the dust has accumulated so that this ghastly spectacle has even lost its kitsch appeal. Far from attracting onlookers towards its beauty and away from the boxy architecture of the building its blackened forms present themselves as a forest of death. The ghastly display fulfils the same role as the decaying victims of medieval hangings, chilling onlookers with its spectacle of decay and forcing them to reflect on the transience of existence.

Recent events have forced me to reflect on the plausibility of robot sex slaves. If, like me you follow the scientific press with a sort of horrified fascination, you can hardly have failed to notice the surge in wildly speculative literature regarding the imminent symbiosis between man and machine. This trend is best embodied by the figure of David Levy, author of such titles as ‘Love + Sex with Robots’ who claims that by 2050, machines will be able to serve as human like lovers and ‘not just mechanical sex slaves’!?!. He predicts that within the next four years advanced robots will be sold as sex toys and will possess sensors and electronic speech abilities to make them seem real, when a human touches their ‘sensitive zones’. All this gives you some idea of what St Augustine was talking about when he spoke of ‘the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible’ from which arises ‘incitements to vice and, indeed, vicious desires’. Leaving ethics to one side for the moment, I find myself worrying that the introduction of this additional household appliance might result in a number of nightmare scenarios, such as returning home to find your mechanical husband embedded in your fridge in an act of ill-conceived copulation. It also requires a tremendous leap of faith just to trust a computer to take care of my sales proposals let alone let it in close proximity to my genitalia; especially if it is running Vista. Another commentator, Kevin Warwick of the university of Reading has gone in a slightly different direction, claiming in his book ‘The March of Machines’ that by 2050, if current progress continues, the robots will have taken us over. Presumably in this scenario, the tables will have turned and the remains of humanity will be subjugated and bred as sex slaves to the robots, thus leaving David Levy with egg on his face. These are the consequences of hubris.

Happily the current state of play in artificial intelligence gives one no reason to worry about such alarming predictions. In the preface of Mark Tilden’s book ‘Junkbots, Bugbots & Bots on Wheels’ he recalls the story of his attempt to make a robot butler for his household. Having designed such a complicated and expensive machine he was bemused to discover on returning home that it had been outwitted by his pet cat which had walled it in with play furniture and left it spinning hopelessly in circles. If this anecdote is any indication, the robot menace of the future will more resemble the Daleks than Arnold Schwarzenegger in ‘The Terminator’, with our mechanical counterparts capable of unspeakable evil but unable to climb the stairs without falling over. It also proves the maxim that if you really want to create artificial intelligence you would be better off having kids than fiddling with wiring and AND gates.

And so big brother has returned to our screens, a show I affectionately refer to as ‘chewing gum for the eyes’. Many people elucidate a sort of dripping elitist contempt when they hear that this programme has returned for its latest season. This I think is misconceived. Television never has been and never will be intellectually stimulating and long may it be so. Having said this, I am slightly concerned about the values it promotes, or perhaps brings to the surface. For example, it has become clear to me that amongst Big Brother contestants, being rude to someone’s face when you don’t like them or ‘telling it like it is’ is considered a virtuous act. Whilst talking behind someone’s back is considered shameful, actively confronting the object of your displease and lecturing them on faults in their personality is the height of good manners. Things have obviously moved on since Lady Troubridge’s rules of etiquette.

Once you accept this as a guiding moral principle, Adolf Hitler begins to look positively virtuous. His 1926 work Mein Kampf - or to give its original title ‘Four and a half years of struggle against lies stupidity and cowardice’ - is a perfect illustration of how one should ‘tell it like it is’, detailing his intentions to overthrow the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles, wage war against France and destroy the ‘Judeo Bolsehvik’ regime in the east to create the desired living space for the Aryan master race. No room for ambiguity there. This book by the way was not the publishing flop of folklaw. It sold over 10 million copies by 1945 was translated into many languages including Braille; it also caused alarm in 2005 by topping the bestseller list in Turkey following a flurry of sales. Despite these explicit intentions Stalin remained convinced that the Nazis would remain pre-occupied with the west and even admired Hitler for his brutality, remarking ‘What a great fellow! How well he pulled this off!’, when news came of the night of the long knives. Hitler for his part described Stalin as ‘one of the greatest human beings since , if only through the harshest compulsion he has succeeded in welding a state out of this Slavic rabbit family (Kaninchenfamilie)’. Its strange to contemplate that in another reality these guys could have been drinking buddies.

The Rotten Fruits of Progress

2008-06-28T07:29:00.001-07:00

‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ wrote Dylan Thomas while contemplating the slow decline and death of his father, ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light’; but the bard was guilty of failing to practice what he so eloquently preached. The man who famously declared that ‘An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do’ stumbled into the Chelsea Hotel in New York on the 3rd of November 1953, uttered the immortal words ‘I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that is a new record!’ and expired at the tender age of 39. Reciting poetry boisterously in the pub and drinking yourself to death strikes me as a singularly ill conceived method of halting the dying of the light, in fact, its more akin to replacing every light fixture in your abode with Tesco ‘energy saving’ bulbs and then grumbling incredulously as one by one they fizzle into impotence. I tried this the other day in a brief moment of eco-religiosity and was subsequently returned to the dark ages as the purchased lightbulbs burned with the kind of feeble effervescence one would associate with manufactures assembled by downtrodden wage slaves in some god forsaken corner of the Orient. As a result of this, the eighty watt bulbs have been returned to their fittings where they will remain proudly until the day of revelation when the prophesies of Al Gore, Lord Stern and the IPCC will be fulfilled and the earth’s population will be purged for its eco-sins. The world may be engulfed in floods, tidal waves, swarms of insects and whatever new cataclysm is cooked up in the tabloid-esque pages of ‘The New Scientist’ but at least I will be able to find my pants in the dark recesses of my bedroom.

If like me, you were brought up on comic strips from the 50s like Dan Dare pilot of the future, where men in spaceships with improbably geometric chins did battle with the Mekon of Mekonta and travelled to faraway galaxies in search of adventure, you will probably feel more than a little twinge of disappointment at the news that our latest step in the march of progress is to send a flimsy robot to Mars equipped with a drill – not to conquer the Martian microbes in some glorious neo-colonial escapade but for the unglamorous task of looking for ice. Aside from the prospect of using this minuscule portion of the Martian Ice sheet to create the world’s most expensive dry martini, this story has nothing of the high drama and epic adventure which earlier writers expected of the 21st century. Even browsing the science journals merely hastens the onset of disillusionment. ‘Enlightened’ 18th century philosophers such as Voltaire and Diderot scorned the medieval scholastics of the Middle Ages for their turgid debates on the nature of the trinity and the number of angels that could feasibly dance on the end of a pin - and yet, among the most popular scientific theories at the dawn of the 21st century are that our universe is part of an infinite multiverse in which multiple copies of Elvis exist, that human beings are ‘nothing more than’ blindly programmed sex robots infected with mind viruses and, amusingly, that the universe is shaped like a doughnut, and will presumably meet its apocalypse when it is finally spotted by a universe shaped like Homer Simpson. All these make the metaphysical musings of figures like St Thomas Aquinas look positively sane and one is tempted to reach in disgust for Occam’s Machete. According to the over enthusiastic science fiction writers of yesteryear such as Issac Assimov this was to be the time when machines finally achieved human like properties, acting as our trusted servants and making the course of our lives effortless. Well here we are in the 21st century and the closest object I have which resembles this vision is my Wii Fit and accompanying balance board. This rather paternalistic object mocks my portly frame, labels me as obese and make me insert pre-programmed excuses into my ‘weight chart’ when I consume one two many bevies at my local. Its rather like inviting a 17th century Puritan into your house and then having him chastise you while your perform sit-ups. As a result I am racked with guilt when I over indulge in life pleasures. My customary pint of Stella and accompanying packet of salted peanuts on a Friday night turns to ashes in my mouth when I reflect that the following morning, ‘the machine’ will reprimand me for my gluttony and instigate an overly harsh weight loss program. Such are the rotten fruits of progress.

When the word ‘balderdash’ is mentioned to me it conjures an image in my imagination of an elderly and eccentric character from a P.G Wodlehouse novel, who might possibly use it in the context of an unusually heated discussion at the dinner table or perhaps a dispute with his gardener. It is a quaint and seldom used expression, a remnant of Olde England, I certainly wouldn’t have expected it to be used by the world’s most unhinged oriental despotism. And yet, last month the North Korean ‘news’ agency released this gem of a statement:

“…the U.S. let loose a spate of balderdash against the DPRK, terming it "closed" and "highly militarized society" and "dictatorship." The U.S. had the impudence to find fault with the supreme headquarters of the DPRK and slander the Korean-style socialist system centered on the popular masses”

It is gratifying to see that whilst in the country we insist on polluting our own language with vulgarities, the international appeal of English is such that words which fall out of favour here are being resurrected on the other side of the planet, albeit by the axis of evil.

I was amused to see that there is a new book out written by the last surviving member of Hitler’s bunker entourage. According to the book, Hitler was always playing humorous japes on his colleagues. His favourite victim was Herman Goering, who was notoriously fond of awarding himself medals and designing his own uniforms. Hitler was fond of recounting how Mrs Goering found her husband waving his Field Marshall’s baton over his underwear in the bedroom and asked him what he was doing. "He replied: "I am promoting my underpants to OVERpants!". Evidently Hitler was so proud of this joke that he had medals made from gold and silver paper for Goering to wear on his pyjamas. Reviews of this new contribution to our understanding of the great dictator were far from impressed by his sense of humour, but its worth recalling that Hitler was a comic genius compared to Lenin. In 1920 the pompous British Philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell spent five weeks in Bolshevik Russia as part of a Labour party delegation. The delegation naively expected to find a socialist utopia brimming with milk and honey and with contented workers spontaneously breaking into choruses of the Internationale. Russell first realised all was not well when a ragged group of what he presumed were beggars turned out to be distinguished mathematicians keen to pay homage. Lenin granted Russell an audience as he posed for a portrait sculptor. At first Russell thought how friendly and jolly he was. But a question cropped up about Communism and agriculture. Lenin described with gusto how he brought about a vast improvement in agricultural practices by inciting the poorer peasants to murder the richer ones – “and soon” added Lenin “the poorer peasants hanged the richer ones from the nearest tree. Ha Ha Ha!”. He then broke out into a fit of ghoulish laughter, oblivious to the fact he had just committed something of a public relations faux pas. Russell returned home in disgust to denounce communism in his ‘Theory and Practice of Bolshevism’, perhaps reflecting that on the whole it is not a good idea to meet ones heroes in the flesh.

Tidal waves and eco-towns

2007-11-10T11:39:00.001-08:00

Like many of Suffolk’s native-born sons I was secretly hoping that the apocalyptic tidal wave approaching Norfolk’s east coast last week would perform the same function as the biblical flood, sweeping our rivals to the north into the icy waters of the North Sea as punishment for their many vices. The tsunami approaching the East Anglian coastline we were told, would be a ‘deadly tidal wave’, ‘bring the worst flooding in 50 years’ and cause ‘extreme damage to life and property’. In the event all we were left with were a few small puddles on the landward side of our flood defences, not to mention a chorus of angry voices in the media, demanding to know why East Anglia had not been annihilated as advertised. Perhaps they should adhere to the ‘Michael Fish’ rule, which is that when the media predicts a disaster, it rarely happens. It is only in cases where the onset of disaster is overlooked, such as before hurricane Katrina and the 1987 hurricane that events seem to unfold to their worst potential. Instead of doing this, the worlds press and the public at large adopt the scattergun approach, so that a new disaster is predicted daily in practically every newspaper column and water cooler conversation. The explosion of Yellowstone park, the rupture of the San Andreas fault, the submergence of most of England due to sea level rise and, most chilling of all for the general public, the prediction that house prices might actually fall to fair and realistic levels. Possibly the most entertaining of these predictions was contained in Gary Blevin’s book ‘666 the final warning’ in which he claims that Ronald Reagan was the Anti-Christ and will return to cast us all into the lake of fire, aided in this task by the Aliens, super computers, free masons, and barcodes. Implausible perhaps, but far more entertaining than ‘The Stern Review’ and less self-righteous than the ‘IPCC report on climate change’. At least he got the Ronald Reagan bit right. The scientist’s reaction to last weeks non-catastrophe was to proclaim that we had been extremely lucky and that more of these types of events to come over the next century. If by ‘these types of events’ they mean massive media hype followed by a less than damp quib, then I’m inclined to agree. I won’t be shelling out for a wetsuit just yet, unless of course it’s to protect myself from all the psuedo-scientific dribble in the media.

I believe it was Winston Churchill who said that it was a sad day for humanity when we swapped the horse and cart for the motor car. I can’t help thinking that western civilisation suffered a similar blow when we stopped building things in factories and switched to an economy, which, when you break it down, is based on typing utter gibberish to each one another in the form of memos, meeting minutes, sales proposals and tenders. Certainly we are better off, more prosperous and happier than we were during the days of the industrial revolution, but whilst there was honour and nobility in chipping away at a coalface or spinning cotton, there is little or no nobility in trying to discuss your organisations attitude to ‘change management’ or outlining your ‘Prince 2’ influenced approach to project management in a series of confused and long winded sentences.

So who to blame for the fact that linguistic atrocities are now not only acceptable but crucial if you want to get ahead?. For my part I blame modern philosophy, in particular existentialism, for if you attack the whole concept of meaning you rehabilitate the meaningless and allow it to become acceptable, in fact the very boundaries of acceptability are stretched to breaking point. An ill-conceived Olympic logo that looks like Lisa Simpson performing oral sex on a hoodie becomes “unexpectedly bold, deliberately spirited and unexpectedly dissonant, echoing London's qualities as a modern, diverse and vibrant city….inclusive ... for everyone, regardless of age, culture and language". A repellently ugly disused brutallist car park in Gateshead becomes ‘an incredible sustainable structure…an iconic cultural and architectural landmark’. And then, in one of the 21st centuries great ironies, the previously discredited new town movement returns as ‘eco towns’; ‘family friendly’, ‘carbon neutral’ dwellings, ‘built using timber, solar thermal panels, double glazing, insulation and biomass boilers that do not use fossil fuels’. Of course, reading all this you might have thought that these new settlements the government are planning would be designed to recreate the old settlements of England such as Cavendish, the village I grew up in. Timber framed houses, close knit buildings, shops within walking distance and all designed using the wonderful and varied vernacular architecture of Britain. Wrong. A cursory glance at the website of the firm which is building ‘Northstowe’, the first ‘eco town’ in Cambridgeshire, reveals that these new settlements will have more in common with the dreadfully designed new towns and London overspill estates of the 1960s and 70s than any vision of olde Albion. To add insult to injury, this town will be built in the middle of rolling countryside, since disused airfields seem to count as brownfield sites. What’s more disturbing its that by the looks of the architectural renderings you will have to be a lobotomised cardboard cut-out to actually live there. A look at the planned Cranbrook settlement in Devon reveals similar architectural folly, with the public buildings looking as if they have been designed by an artistically challenged toddler. So if I do have an apocalyptic vision for the future it is this. Future settlements in the UK will look like they came straight out of an Ikea catalogue, they are unlikely to be carbon neutral as people will still have to drive to get into work and the whole thing will be one expensive disaster, a deformed and hideous sacrifice to the New Labour god of ‘eco-sustainability’. Our one hope is that the predicted East Anglian tidal wave finally makes an appearance and washes the whole ghastly mess into the ocean.

The wonderous animal kingdom

2007-11-07T14:56:00.000-08:00

One of the worst features of the modern age, and something I have touched upon in some of my most recent posts, is the relentless rise of scientism. This is the process whereby scientists wearing white coats, and with a long list of impressive sounding letters after their names, periodically emerge from their academic institutions in an attempt to quash the superstitious notions we hold about this world of ours. Of course this is understandable. Spending the majority of your life staring at the reproductive activities of microbes is apt to produce a cynical and materialist attitude in most people, but what gets my blood boiling is the sheer arrogance with which these self-proclaimed know-it-alls come to their conclusions and then issue an incredibly patronising press release. This in turn is treated as gospel by an uncritical media and splattered all over my early morning copy of the Metro.

In 2005, for example, a Mr Steve Morris of the university of Bristol decided to try and quash all rumours that elephants are fond of getting drunk. In the March/April 2005 issue of the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, Morris wrote that there was nothing in the biology of the elephant to support the stories from both Asia and Africa of elephants getting tanked in the wild. "People just want to believe in drunken elephants," Morris concluded. Oh really!. In October 1999 the BBC reported that elephants had run amok in the Indian province of Assan drinking a villages entire store of rice beer and killing four people in the process. A one off perhaps, or perhaps not. Last month, according to officials, a group of delinquent elephants entered a village in Meghalaya, uprooted several huts and drank the locals rice beer. Having got well and truly steaming on the stolen booze, they then electrocuted themselves to death during an inebriated attempt to topple an electricity pylon. One can’t help thinking that perhaps the cause of preventing the Asiatic elephant’s extinction would be better off if they were exposed to the BBC’s new hard-hitting "Alcohol makes you feel invincible when you are most vulnerable" campaign which is currently polluting my television set and disturbing highly-strung individuals the length and breadth of the country. Another inescapable conclusion is that when considering the drinking habits of elephants it is probably better to ask one of the locals in the remote parts of the subcontinent than a stuffy academic from Bristol with a chip on his shoulder.

Of course it is all to easy to anthropromorphise our cousins in the animal kingdom, but its hard to ignore the fact that in a series of bizarre incidents which I intend to document, animals have proved themselves akin to, and even superior to humans. In 2004 a black bear was found in a drunken stupor near a campsite in Washington State surrounded by empty beer cans. He had apparently broken into the camper’s cooler boxes and used his teeth and claws to pry open the beer cans. This in itself is not unusual, what was remarkable about the incident was that the bear had only drunk the local Rainer brand of beer and had rejected the mass market Busch beer, which is, I am reliably informed by my American spouse, a beverage barely fit for consumption, akin to Carling or Fosters. Interesting then that, whilst much of the general population of this country prefers to drink mass produced rubbish than good honest bitter, a bear’s tastes are significantly more refined and they would doubtless be more at home at a Campaign for Real Ale gathering than a piss up on cheap lager at the students union.

Cause for comfort then when observing the bears of the Pacific Northwest. Less so, I’m afraid when considering the recent activities of monkeys, which seem to be more keen on emulating the activities of Liverpudlian yobs than sticking to their normal habits of grooming and tree climbing. "Can the [tourism] minister deploy game rangers ... to deal with the monkey menace?" pleaded local representative Paul Muite in Kenya's national parliament last month, "These creatures have clearly shown that they have no respect for women". In Kenya the harassment of women by Monkeys is becoming so bad that they have been forced to dress like men. Upon seeing women or children the monkeys will habitually approach them and make obscene gestures, pointing at them lewdly and touching their private parts. Thing are no better in Delhi where encroaching development has disturbed the local monkey population to such an extent that they ‘assassinated’ the deputy mayor. In other incidents over the past few years the monkey have run riot in government departments, ripping open files and attacking bureaucrats, even killing people with flowerpots. One can understand their anger, a monkey’s views are rarely taken into account during planning applications. I believe it was Jean Paul Sartre who reprehensively said after Black September that “terrorism is a terrible weapon but the oppressed poor have no others." Presumably then the same principles apply to monkeys as the poor blighters have no weapons besides the occasional hurled stone, the odd flowerpot and the ability to gesticulate offensively at their own member.

In some ways then, animals act better than humans, in some instances worse and in others their experience mirrors ours to an uncanny degree. In early 1999, the combination of a television set and the late arrival of a series of wildlife tapes caused a family breakdown amongst a group of Orang Utangs. The TV was installed in the Leningrad Zoo in Russia so that the apes could learn their native skills. Sadly the tape arrived late, and in the interim the father of the group became addicted to dubbed American soap operas and pop videos. "Before the TV appeared, Rabu never took his eyes off his lady," explained Lena Goroshenkova, a zoologist at the ape house "But then they put up the TV and he's been glued to the screen ever since." The normally raucous feeding time was been transformed into a quiet television dinner and even the frantic swinging around of Rabu's mate Monika did not distract him from the set. It just goes to show, sadly, that with the impressive attributes of intelligence, deep emotions, linguistic ability, and self-awareness also comes the ability to waste the aforementioned attributes in mindless pursuits such as watching reruns of ‘Sex in the City’ and ‘The Fabulous Life of Celebrities’ on TMF. Somewhere in the distance, creation weeps.

On Wine and Scientific Committees

2007-10-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

One of the principle faculties you are expected to possess in order to claim membership of the upper middle class is an ability to pick out a fine wine. Unfortunately, I am decidedly ignorant on the subject, but I do have a better than average grasp of human history. Hence when I am despatched by my spouse to Londis to pick out some red wine for the evening ahead I invariably stick to familiar ground and plump for a bottle from the country with the worst record of human rights abuses. For someone like me who is woefully uninformed when it comes down to understanding the complex soil and climate variations that combine to produce a decent bottle of merlot, this approach has serious merits. Having shifted the logic of purchase, those once incomprehensible rows of bottles arrange themselves into some kind of order. Should I pick out a Chilean red because of the crimes of General Pinochet?, or are these outweighed by the apartheid era embroiled in the South African cape wine or the Aboriginal genocide encapsulated in the fruity Australian red?. Or perhaps I shouldn’t be drinking anything at all seeing as I am already over my recommended weekly limit of 21 units.

Last weeks news that this recommended safe units of alcohol limit was a purely random figure plucked out the air by a pompous scientific committee comes as no surprise. My science teachers at school were some of the most loathsome human beings I have encountered, and their illustrious counterparts in the research labs and universities seem to follow this pattern. So far, in my lifetime, these kill joys have proclaimed the non-existence of God, launched into dire tirades concerning the evils of alcohol, tobacco and obesity and, as the pièce de résistance, demonised us for destroying the world with our gas guzzling motorcars, our resource wasting refrigerators and our callous abuse of our TV’s standby function. They remind me of the 19th century lay preacher who decries his congregation every Sunday for their rampant sinfulness and vice. Strange how, despite our supposedly post-theistic modern perspective, the old Christian concepts continue to re-emerge. The capital vices of lust, gluttony, sloth and greed continue to be denounced -although this time for scientific reasons and for the good of our decaying health service- and the concepts of the carbon footprint and carbon offsetting closely mirror the Calvinist concept of original sin and the pre-reformation practice of paying money to the church in exchange for the forgiveness of sins. The worst of the scientists currently whore-ing themselves out the media is probably the odious Richard Dawkins, Darwin-fundamentalist and the author of ‘The God Delusion’, a man so obnoxious that he makes even a committed atheist like myself want to convert to Catholicism at the next opportunity and spend the rest of my life burning bread in the toaster in an effort to create a visage of the Virgin Mary.

Often it is not the evidence itself that is the problem, it is the way that evidence is assembled into a self serving conclusion and packaged for the media in a series of simplistic sound bites. Take last Friday’s Times for example which led with a huge image of earth and a series of apocalyptic headlines. ‘Humanity's very survival' is at risk, says UN’ read the header although beneath it was the intriguing fact that the ‘the world’s population has grown by 34% to 6.7 billion in 20 years’. In my experience these pronouncements from the UN are usually about as objective and reliable as a North Korean press release. If the iguana population were to surge by 34% we would in all likelihood describe them as thriving and not be suggesting they were on the brink of extinction. This preceded an ‘Earth Audit’ section in which dire facts such as ‘Ten million children under 10 die’ (global infant mortality has actually halved since 1960) sat somewhat uneasily alongside such titbits as ‘Annual income per head has grown by 40% to US$8,162’ and ‘Farmers produce 39% more from their land than in the 1980s’. The overall message however, was of doom and gloom accompanied by, thanks to the new internet enabled feature whereby readers can comment on newspaper articles, the usual displays of panic, outspoken ignorance and unbridled joy from those who don’t particularly like being Homo Sapiens and would prefer it if they, their relatives and the rest of the species faded into extinction. Under the online version of the article a sub-literate commentator, Mr John Hanson of Cairns had written

“Know doubt, Darwin's theory of evolution, is correct, perhaps homo sapiens, if they dont adapt to a very different world, will need to go the way of the Dodo like many other species, that have gone before……when homo sapiens eventually die out , perhaps some new form of life on Earth, will be slightly more cleverer.”

Whatever the state of human evolution, it certainly appears to be lagging in Queensland.

Decline and Fall

2007-10-27T09:27:00.001-07:00

As I stood in my front room clutching my Wii remote and throwing punches ineffectually into the air I couldn't help reflecting that while technology liberates us, it ultimately emasculates us. In Victorian times strapping young chaps like me would have manfully strode down to the coal face and spent the day chipping away at it with a giant pick axe. We would have undertaken this task for the vast majority of our lives before suffering an excruciating but dignified death from tuberculosis. This was known as the nobility of labour. Sadly there seems to be little nobility in slumped Internet browsing, deleting penis enlargement emails from your inbox and writing long boring sales proposals.

In old Victorian prints, the man of the house sits at the head of the table, the adoring eyes of his family fixed upon him as he contemplates a letter. When I get home, I stand at the head of the television set and contemplate how best to defeat my e-adversary, the perfidious 'Eric'; a character in Wii boxing who bears more than a passing resemblance to Admiral Tojo. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, the Wii is the latest games console from Nintendo.

Instead of just pressing buttons on a normal controller you have to actually perform the 'real world' action, swinging the remote like a tennis racket for example, or jabbing with it to throw punches. The trouble with Wii boxing is it is seriously hard work and only a couple of rounds is enough to build up a healthy sweat. Vanquishing virtual opponents takes at least half of the effort of normal boxing but produces none of the street credibility, as I have discovered on those occasions when I have boasted to my colleagues at work. There may come a time when achieving a record breaking time on Super Monkey Ball hurdles is seen as great an achievement as running the London marathon but that time is assuredly not now, unless of course you live in South Korea.

I believe it was Samuel Johnston who said “If you are tired of London, you are tired of life”, a soundbite that has been echoed many times since by the London Tourist board. Of course such quotations must always be seen in their socio-historical context. In the London of Samuel Johnson’s day there were public executions to entertain the masses, barber’s shops doubled up as brothels and the average worker drank eight pints of beer or more during his shift. Nowadays the beer is vastly over priced, the barbers shops have all become trendy salons and the kind of people you used to execute in the olden days are all living off dole money in Hackney. Even if these miscreants were to be rounded up and executed for the public’s viewing pleasure there would no doubt be a hefty entrance fee for the venue, and the organisors would charge extortionate prices for front row seating and glossy programs to cover “budget over-runs“ during the construction of the scaffold.

Katie and I’s recent excursion to the United States roughly coincided with the latest terrorist attacks on the U.K. Whilst this led to lengthy delays at the airport it did at least afford me the opportunity to spout stoic Churchillian rhetoric from a safe distance. I can help thinking that what with Comical Ali, the detonating doctors and the hate preaching mouse of Hamas this country is faced with the most unhinged adversaries since the days of the Mad Mullah.

Of these, Farfour the mouse has proved to be the most entertaining. As someone with an overactive imagination I have often wondered what would happen if Islamic fundamentalists were to take over Cbeebies. Luckily Hamas have set up an experimental TV station called ‘Al-Aqsa’ which broadcasts in the Gaza strip and shows programs such as ‘Tomorrows Pioneers’, a show in which a Micky Mouse lookalike with a squeaky voice preaches hatred of Israel and the America to small children. It’s also true that the BBC news preaches hate against Israel and the US on a regular basis, but at least it is aimed at a more mature audience and doesn’t suggest that resistance with AK-47s and grenades is a wholesome activity for young children. In the past, other Palestinian children's programs have used the Mickey Mouse image to incite radical activities and praise suicide attacks. Unsurprisingly Walt Disney has been too timid to sue for copyright infringement. Having appeared in six episodes of the program, the writers clearly made a creative decision that they had taken the character of Farfour as far as they could and in the last episode he was martyred by a land grabbing Israeli official. Hamas has recently revealed Fafour’s replacement, a six foot tall jihadist bee on string called Nahoul. By the sounds of it, they hired the same voice artist. To me this highlights the problem with fiction; some of the most interesting things in the real world are simply too crazy to make up.

The green contingent has been attempting to bring about the downfall of many things recently, among them my budget flights to the U.S to see the in-laws, my electric kettle and the standby button on my TV. They are now beginning to get their teeth into bottled water, a largely useless product which is sold by spreading paranoia about the domestic supply, rebranding it as a valuable lifestyle accessory with trendy sounding names like ‘Dansai’ and ‘Volvic, and by making unsubstantiated claims of purity. Last month the green party representative in the London Assembly urged the city to give up bottled water saying “Selling water in bottles and burning massive quantities of fossil fuels for its transportation does not make economic or environmental sense.....it's about your mindset and understanding your carbon footprint”. I have been attempting to understand my carbon footprint over the past few weeks and have come to the realisation that whatever steps I take to make my lifestyle carbon neutral, they will always be counter balanced by carbon atrocities such as my wife leaving the iron on for 12 hours yesterday, Live Earth acts taking long haul flights between gigs, or those 10,000 trees which the band Coldplay planted in India to offset the production of their album and which died shortly afterwards turning into carbon emitters.

It came as great amusement therefore to see that the recent flooding in this country and accompanying disruption to the water supply has caused bottled water to fly off supermarket shelves at unprecedented levels. If the recent weather can be attributed to global warming then it seems that this most recent green drive was thwarted by the climate itself. Good to know Gaia has a sense of humor after all.

Various Grumblings

2007-03-03T10:36:00.000-08:00

‘If I was going to kill myself why would I need the shampoo?’ I asked the store clerk quizzically. It seemed the obvious question. I was on my daily stroll down to the local shopping mall to buy some painkillers. Having dodged the inevitable hordes of charity muggers, Sky TV salesmen and old ladies armed with shopping carts I had dived into the local Boots to pick up three packs of nurofen and some shampoo. When I reached the checkout I was told that it is now illegal to buy more than two packs of nurofen, presumably as a precautionary measure in case I had had a stressful morning at the office and was planning on topping myself on my lunch break. To me this stinks of hypocrisy. Throughout the average day I am bombarded with pessimistic messages designed to cripple me with self-loathing. I am told that my carbon footprint is too big, that I am destroying the planet, that the world is suffering from overpopulation, and that, in some sort of gross parody of chaos theory, by leaving the TV on standby I have set off a sequence of environmental catastrophes, which will lead to the deaths of countless millions of people on the coastal plains of Bangladesh in the near future. The decent thing to do would be to end my life as soon as feasibly possible but society won’t let me buy enough painkillers to do it successfully.

Another problem with society is its fostering of unrealistic expectations in children. This is most aptly demonstrated by the contestants on X-factor, who usually reveal to the judges that they have craved fame and stardom from an early age and that appearing on the show is the fulfilment of their childhood dream. My childhood dream was to dig a large hole in the ground, cover it with sticks and ensnare someone in it. This fantasy was the product of many a happy hour spent reading a weighty tome entitled ‘Forts and Fortresses’, whose latter pages depicted Vietnamese soldiers busily constructing traps for Americans to fall into. I’m glad to say I was able to construct a system of booby traps in the ground of Melford Hall which the Viet Cong themselves would have been proud of, and that I was able to ensnare one of my friends sisters with one strategically placed hole. Setting your aspirations at this level is advantageous, firstly because they are more likely to be fulfilled and secondly because if this country were ever occupied I would have the experience necessary to take part in a guerrilla insurgency.
Work continues to go extremely well, to such an extent in fact that I need to consider getting on the property ladder. Sadly the property market is such that it doesn’t really represent a ladder anymore. It’s more of a long greasy pole, made all the more impossible to mount because those above you keep greasing the section below them. For example, a revolting mock-Tudor semi in Basingstoke, which twenty years ago would have been a candidate for immediate demolition, is now so ridiculously overvalued that it would set you back a lifetimes income just to enter the bidding. Those who own a property can sit smugly in their repulsive accommodation, safe in the knowledge that their concrete hovel has tripled in value in the last year. Those of us not on the ladder, the modern landless peasantry, stare glumly at the raft of property shows on television as Britain’s new generation of self proclaimed ‘property entrepreneurs’ set about pricing us out of the market. I turn to my history books for comfort and find solace in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Perhaps the housing market will collapse as some experts predict it will. Imagine the scene. People will be hanging themselves from their loft conversions, jumping from their ‘contemporary’ extensions in despair and gassing themselves in their conservatories. It’s a pleasing vision but one unlikely to be fulfilled.

Movies are often guilty of glorifying their subject matter. A prime example of this is recruitment. In movies like Oceans Eleven it looks so glamorous. The protagonists travel to a series of exotic locations to assemble a crack team of specialists. One by one they win the more reluctant individuals over to their point of view and off they head to plan and orchestrate some grand scheme. Compare and contrast that to the poor buggers who reach me over the company switchboard, attempting to convince me that the woefully untalented administrators on their books are logistical masterminds on a par with Fredrick the Great. Compare it with the tedious process of wading through sub-literate CVs, chasing obnoxious candidates and fending off the ubiquitous employment agencies who home in on your job advertisements like sharks to a bleeding carcass. Makes one long for the days of the press gang when recruitment was a simple matter of heading to the nearest bar in the city, plying the occupants with alcohol and delivering a swift blow to the head.

I note with amusement that the bill for the Olympics continues to escalate rapidly. We seem to have collectively sleepwalked into subsidising the ‘regeneration’ of East London, although this is something of a misnomer. Regeneration in my experience consists of marginalizing the local inhabitants, putting up row after row of identical yuppie housing and obliterating any trace of culture. New Labour is intent on building a London that looks like those blurry architectural drawings you get on the side of new developments; of lobotomised young professionals drifting listlessly through heavily idealised neighbourhoods of yellow brick and glass. Were IKEA contracted to design hell, it would look a lot like this.

Take the example of Oriental City, a magical place down the road from me which acts as a conduit for London’s Chinese community. They flock there to enjoy its reasonably priced shops, its amazing variety of oriental cuisine and its community events. Unsurprising then, that Brent council is intent on knocking it down and replacing it with a B and Q, after all what this borough really needs is another DIY store. When the Olympic bill is criticised, the responsible minister usually stands up and comes out with some rot like ‘before making these cynical accusations you should consider the hopes and dreams of this country’s children who are so looking forward to this wonderful event’. She then returns to her seat in a flurry of self righteous indignation, as if her comment has single-handedly settled the argument. Of course, seasoned observers will recognise this as the ‘For the children’ fallacy. The reasoning goes like this; ‘P is good for children; children are good; therefore, anything related to children is good; therefore, P is good. It can be used to justify a variety of ludicrous measures, including the flushing away of £9 billion on a glorified school sports day at the expense of the National Trust’s lottery funding. Of course it may be true that the children of this fair city are all awash with excitement at the prospect of the 2012 Olympiad and are busily training to become athletes but I can’t see it happening, unless of course shooting, stabbing, looting and smoking crack are Olympic events.

Corporate Personas and Cab drivers

2007-01-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

Certain companies adopt the corporate persona of what I like to call ‘the friendly face of capitalism’. My DVD rental service ‘Love Film’ for example, likes to portray itself as an amiable friend; the kind who knocks on your door and asks you if there is anything you need and, by the way, would you like the spare toaster they keep in their apartment?. Love Film is always sending me bubbly emails telling me things like ‘not to be a bad santa’ this Christmas whilst helpfully offering me free vouchers, informing me of DVDs I might like to watch and generously offering me discounts. In contrast, my gas and electricity company ‘Southern Electric’ has clearly modelled itself on the rampaging hordes of Genghis Khan. Much like the peaceful townsfolk of medieval Muscovy one is sitting there quite happily minding your own business when a nasty demand for tribute deposits itself through the letterbox. If it is not paid, reads the notice, my gas and electricity will be ruthlessly cut off, my assets abruptly seized and Barnet County Court will sue my remains for good measure. I wouldn’t mind so much but the impertinent bastards at Southern Electric never send me a bill in the first place, instead they choose the ‘zero tolerance approach’ and send me a final demand notice. I had thought that to be ‘final’ by definition, the demand should be been preceded by other demands, but then I’m a stickler for detail. My life would be so much simpler if I simply blocked up my letterbox with pollyfilla. I wouldn’t be able to receive dvd rentals from Lovefilm but it would be worth it for the peace of mind.

In November I was given an interesting lesson in what happens when you attempt to cut corners and economise. It was the day Katie was due to leave for the U.S and we were preparing to leave the flat for Heathrow airport. Traditionally these occasions are a bit fraught to say the least. We tend to leave packing till its almost too late, pile a bunch of stuff in a suitcase at the last minute and wing our merry way to the tube stop weighed down by our worldly possessions like a couple of Kurdish refugees. We were on our way out the door, about to repeat this onerous process when Katie glanced at the sideboard next to the door and noticed a card advertising a mini cab service to the airport for the unbelievable sum of £20. Mini cabs are something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand they are ridiculously cheap. On the other, if you use one you run the risk of being robbed, sexually slaughtered or forced to wear a tasteless orange jumpsuit and ritually slaughtered in an Islamic Fundamentalist’s home video. We decided to ring the number and sure enough a swarthy looking chap showed up on the doorstep and gestured us over to his vehicle. I tentatively climbed into the back seat and was confronted by a repulsive odour, the kind of smell one can only achieve by getting a dog to bathe in its own manure for a full day and spend the night in the back of your car having ingested large quantities of baked beans and chickpeas.

We climbed in and sure enough as soon as we were sitting comfortably, the chap got out of the car and ran off behind my neighbour’s property. I tensed up for a bit; this kind of thing only happens in assassination thrillers when a bomb is planted in the target’s vehicle and his driver is in on the plot. We sat there bemused for about ten minutes before the mini cab driver returned. He was apologetic, sweating profusely and suspiciously doing up his trousers. To my horror and disgust I realised he must have been caught short and had defecated behind the neighbouring block of flats. There was no mistaking the way he had sprinted off; it was the run of a man who has dined well on curry and beer without being mindful of the consequences. Aside from that, the ride was moderately pleasant, interspersed by the odd moment of terror. The car occasionally gave up in disgust and stalled, leaving us stranded in angry traffic. On the road into Heathrow we were inches away from being hit by a car. The ride was cheap, but as happens so often in life, you get what you pay for (although this maxim is often used as a justification for downright extortion).

And so it was on the ride back from the airport, having been in the States for a while we decided to take a good old-fashioned London Cabby home to Hendon. Sadly good old-fashioned cabs do not charge good old-fashioned prices and we were stung to the tune of 70 quid. So often life only offers you a series of bad options to choose from. Either a cab driver shits all over you neighbour’s property or he shits all over your bank balance; there is no happy medium.

Resurrection of the blog

2006-12-03T10:40:00.000-08:00

If you’ve been in London for the past six months you’ll probably be aware that the coming of the 2012 Olympics is being heralded by greedy property developers and over-optimistic government officials as an event akin to the second coming of Christ. The XXX Olympiad, so we are told, will lead to an unprecedented renaissance in east london, transforming the deprived boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Stratford and Tower Hamlets into an urban utophia of smart new flats, hard working yuppies and wholesome young familes. Of course anyone who had the misfortune to travel past Canning Town on the DLR will know that these areas barely qualify as habitable; the architect who designed most of this bleak concrete wilderness clearly took his inspiration from the surface of the Death Star. Both are despicably ugly, but East London’s sci-fi doppleganger has one overwhelming advantage, the lack of a breathable atmosphere which prevents crowds of happy-slapping, workshy youths from concregating and causing trouble. These areas of London would benefit more from a well delivered A-bomb than a glorified school sports day which lasts less than a month but costs 4 billion.

It appears that, much like Scott of the Antarctic, I have miserably failed to keep up a diary. Yet while Captain Scott had the excuse of having frozen to death in the middle of the Antarctic circle in a flimsy tent, my reasons for failing to write up the day to day discourses of my life are far more tenuous. So what was the cause of this long silence, did Nottingham City Council finally catch up with me and force me to eat my own words?. This is a terrifying prospect for me since my words are in digital format and therefore infinitely re-printable. Interestingly enough, there is a historical precedent for this. In the seventeenth century a Swedish author rashly decided to write a particularly scathing thesis on the subject of the Danish occupation. The authorities caught up with him and he was offered the choice between the death penalty and eating his own book. It’s a fate I would very much like to see meted out to Jeffrey Archer, Andy Mcnab and in particular Chris Ryan, author of such masterpieces as ‘Alpha Force One’, ‘Zero Force One’ and ‘The Ultimate Weapon’. In the old days war heroes manfully accepted their medals and settled into a quiet retirement; their deeds only coming to light many years later in the Obituary column. Now they get leapt on by publishers who sign them up to extensive book deals and have them produce volume after volume of literary crap for infantile young men with too much testosterone.

In fact there were numerous mitigating circumstances. Katie accidentally spilt gin and tonic over my keyboard causing my long-suffering machine to emit dada-esque rubbish every time I tried to type something. The struggle of attempting to live in two cities at the same time made contributing to my little corner of cyberspace tremendously difficult. But really the main reason for the demise of my blog has been sheer laziness; I still have plenty of things to moan about.

Life is full of what I like to term ‘delicious little ironies’. For example, on a daily basis I am continually bombarded by enviro-guilt literature informing me that I need to be conscious of my desecration of the environment and must religiously recycle every product I use. I am willing to do so, but where are the recycling bins?; at Brent Cross, conveniently located across a murderous mass of dual carriageways. So to be a good citizen of the earth and recycle I need to own a car, a vehicle which emits around 4.3 tonnes of CO2 a year. Not that this bothers me too much. This idea of every human being having some sort of ‘carbon footprint’ sounds spookily similar to the Calvinist idea that we are all born with original sin of which I am similarly sceptical. I must say it is good to see that the government is now tackling green issues with the stunningly original idea of putting more taxes on us. Unsurprising really since taxation has been the government’s response to every problem since the sixteenth century. I used to look back on the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as a bunch of self righteous tax dodging so and sos but in the light of the taxation fetish in this country they look remarkably far sighted.

In my business we talk about ‘life events’; those seminal moments in someone’s existence where major changes occur such as getting married, buying a house or having your first child. For me seeing how much tax comes out of your first meaningful payslip has to be up there with them. When the state first begins to whisk vast quantities of your income out of your bank account, a sea change occurs in your outlook. Suddenly the society at large becomes an endless source of annoyance. The country transforms itself into a vast caricature of dole scroungers, idle public sector bureaucrats and illegal immigrants and your political beliefs slide alarmingly from the left wing to somewhere to the right of General Pinochet.

Now as my eyes flit from article to article in the morning’s metro I find it hard to keep my anger hidden as I see the myriad of ways in which my tax money is being idly squandered; everything from Welsh devolution to bumper compensation payouts for prisoners who experience stress when their drugs are taken away from them in jail. I do miss the comfy leftie notions of student life but right wing irritation is somewhat invigorating.

Is it Art?

2006-05-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

"Am I being a bit too cynical?", I puzzled to myself as I stared incredulously at the sculpture in front of me. The work of modern art insulting my gaze seemed comprehensively devoid of any merit whatsoever. And yet, I reflected, underapreciation of art has been an unhealthy characteristic of mankind for centuries. Perhaps if the rowdy regiments of The Holy Roman Emporer Charles V had taken a course in art history they might have been a little less eager to sack Rome in 1547. If the merciless hordes of Attila the Hun had held more of an interest in fine art and less of a facination with the contents of their trousers, the Dark Ages might well have been a little brighter. In view of this, one must always endevour to place the work of art within its proper context, to see things from the artists perspective and to shed ones stuffy traditional perspective. This proved decidedly difficult. The artist in question had apparently attempted to replicate Tracey Island from Thunderbirds, and yet its most commendable features such as the sliding swimming pool and the avenue of collapsing palm trees were conspiciously absent.
I decided to delve into the art gallery brochure to discover what the artist had intended; this is what I read.

'Sioban Hapaska's sculptures often hover between abstraction and hyper-real figuration. Her installation 'beach of the restless' presents all the clichés of paradise. However, the glow of sunshine on a white sandy beach, palm trees and the sound of waves gently breaking on the shore construct an Eden that is not as it seems. Her simulation of a tropical island is a synthetic anti paradise. In the centre a fibreglass monstrosity with an LCD screen for a face stands sentinel over a glass cube filled with sand and coconuts. The coconuts gaze warily at the screen, which depicts their kin being violently smashed open on an endless production line of destruction, like victims of state terror.’

In the Baroque period, works of art were enormous oil paintings depicting epic encounters between armour plated Trojan warriors and scantily clad, swooning maidens; all with a sinister Turk lurking in the background for good measure.

Now one can simply throw together a bunch of dirty socks, a used condom and a collection of empty Pritt-sticks and claim this sordid collection "challenges the flawed but alluring tabula rasa of modernism and creates an atmosphere of pathos". Art has ceased to be about the work itself and more about the waffle that accompanies it. Take this rubbish by way of illustration

'Marcus Coates’s work documents his attempts to connect with - or even become- an animal. In 'Finfolk' he emerges out of the freezing north sea in ill fitting Adidas sportswear and clip on shades, his idea of what a seal would be like if it were human'

Surely becoming a seal involves substantially more effort than this, living off a diet of raw fish for example or balancing a toy ball on the end of your whiskered nose. In any case it is highly unwise to imitate seals as you are liable to be clubbed to death by a group of passing Norwegians. In this country clubbing involves donning a shirt, consuming large quantities of alcohol and stumbling around a poorly lit cellar full of scantily clad women for the duration of the evening. In Norway clubbing means sauntering down to the rocks with your buddies and chewing tobacco while you mercilessly whack seals over the head with a sturdy wooden bat. As the HSBC advert says ‘Local knowledge is important’; although in my experience, the only local knowledge HSBC actually possesses is 'Indians callcentres will work for peanuts'.

I couldn’t help reflecting as I paced this dreadful collection of exhibits that the majority of these artists would have failed GCSE art have they submitted them as their final piece. I got an ill deserved B grade in art but I struggled throughout my short-lived artistic career due to a chronic lack of talent. For a while I enrolled in an after school activity group and for long hours at weekends I would sit in pottery class churning out clay sculptures which were then placed all over the family home by my dutiful parents as mantelpiece ornaments. For some reason it is commonly seen as one of the responsibilities of parenthood to highlight the achievements of ones offspring, no matter how dreadful. As I discovered when I was packed off to boarding school, this mantra only goes so far.

The one ‘work’ of mine I remember the best was a clay model I sculpted of the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth. Inspired by the class nativity play, I spent a good couple of hours marking out the bricks and then arranging them into a miniature dwelling complete with a flat middle eastern roof, tiny windows and rustic doorway. When I proudly brought this home my father dubbed it ‘Saddam Hussein’s Mud Hut’ and it was quietly relegated from the Annex Bedroom mantelpiece to the electricity cupboard when I wasn’t looking. Every time I returned for the holidays I would find that another of my clay sculptures had been accidentally ‘destroyed’ by my parents. Some were dropped when mother was dusting, some disappeared without a trace during spring-cleaning; Saddam Hussein’s mud-hut finally met its maker when it was stepped on during a power cut.

As I was leaving the gallery with Katie I pointed to an electrical powerpoint on the wall and jokily asked “Is this an exhibit”. To my horror one of the exhibition staff thought I was being serious and interjected saying ‘No sir, I’m afraid that isn’t an exhibit, the installations are all clearly labelled’. I failed to take this in and stammered something as my face went an unhealthy shade of pink. Instead of cheerily informing her that I was joking I had succeeded in making myself look completely stupid. I had mocked modern art and modern art had wreaked a terrible vengeance.

History and Condom Machines

2006-04-01T03:29:00.001-08:00

For centuries London has acted as the great corrupter. Agents of history, untainted by the risqué values of this great metropolis have arrived through its gates and left with a collection of moral vices and, no doubt, a corresponding quantity of venereal diseases. The young Benjamin Franklin left the shores of America in 1724 to buy a printing press in England; upon arriving in London he quickly realised that his backers had deserted him and that he would have to pay his own way. In his later biographies, Franklin wrote that he had indulged in many ‘foolish intrigues with low women’. By ‘low women’ he of course meant prostitutes, who were described by a contemporary chronicler as ‘lechery-layers of around a guinea purchase’. At the time prostitutes were to be mainly found sitting in hairdressers shops, which were ‘seldom to be found without a whore as a bookseller’s shop in St Paul’s churchyard without a parson’. Presumably the consumers of the time could get a ‘foolish intrigue’ thrown in with their short back and sides.
Upon taking his first job he became disgusted at the habits of his fellow workers who believed that hard work required strong beer. Workers of the time typically drank a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint with breakfast, a pint at midmorning, a pint with the midday meal, a pint in the afternoon and a pint at days end. When Franklin refused to contribute to the beer tab at his workplace he was ostracised by his colleagues who irritated him immensely by inserting errors into his work at every opportunity. When he confronted them about these activities they feigned innocence and claimed it was the fault of the company ghost.

As I write this, I recall a laughable debate about a year ago concerning the implementation of 24 hour licensing. This act by the government, hysterical authorities claimed, would bring about the fall of civilisation as we know it. Such assumptions fail to take account of the fact that throughout our glorious history some of our most important figures have been raging alcoholics. By way of illustration, Prime Minister William Pitt the younger was in the habit of drinking six bottles of port, two bottles of Madeira and a half bottle of claret everyday. He would often appear in the House of Commons drunk and would sometimes disappear behind the speakers chair in mid debate to throw up. Some attributed this to ‘nervousness’ but a quick analysis of his daily alcohol intake gives me cause for scepticism.

Those who moan about the worst excesses of bad taste television should take a look at what passed for entertainment back in the early eighteenth century. A handbill from the time which was displayed at Hockley in the Hole reads:

‘This is to give notice to all gentlemen, gamesters, and others, that on this present Monday is a match to be fought by two dogs, one from Newgate market, against one from Honylane market… Likewise a green bull to be baited which was never baited before; and a bull to be turned loose with fireworks all over him; also a mad ass to be baited, with a variety of bull baiting and bear baiting, and a dog to be drawn up with fireworks. Beginning exactly at three of the clock’

Venereal disease has been a problem throughout the centuries and casting my eye over the pages of the metro on my morning commute I discovered another historical gem. Correspondence released at the National Archives in Kew shows that "a good deal of trouble" was caused by the girls in the West End of London during the second world war. Officials wanted to bring the girls, aged 15 to 17 and from approved schools - a type of care home - under control. A total of 37 were arrested between May 1942 and April 1943 and a Home Office letter to police noted that many girls "frequented undesirable cafes” where they could strike up acquaintances with American soldiers who had plenty of money. These American soldiers passed the girls on to their friends and in a very short time, any one girl could be responsible for infecting a considerable number of people." The letters between the Ministry of Health, the Home Office, police and local authorities show there were 116 recorded cases of gonorrhoea and syphilis among the girls. It quickly became standard practice to check absconded girls for VD as soon as they arrived back at the care home.

Of course such matters remain a problem in this day and age and I can help but think that much of this is due to the impracticality of condom dispensing machines. These contraptions should, in a well-ordered universe, be designed to reflect the situation of purchase. I, as the consumer, merely wish to buy the confounded objects in as quickly and as secretive a manner as possible without incurring too much embarrassment. The other day I visited the pub with the sole intention of using one of these bloody things and was left staring at it for what seemed like an age because I found the instructions for use on the front of the machine to be utterly incomprehensible. The Byzantine set of directions stated that levers had to be pulled, coins inserted and buttons pushed in, all in the correct sequential order as if it were a nuclear detonation device. Having roughly worked out what I was supposed to do, I then reached into my pocket and discovered I did not have enough change to be able to make my purchase. I decided to get some change at the bar and ordered a half of Stowford Press, a most excellent cider. Since the cider was largely superfluous to the original purpose of my visit and I was anxious to get home, I downed the liquid and prepared to head back to the facilities. ‘You drank that quick’ said the barmaid with a air of reproach in her voice. She must now think I am some kind of alcoholic. ‘I’m in a hurry’ I said and left the room to revisit the machine. When I got there I realised with horror that the infernal contraption only took one pound coins and categorically refused to take any other form of remuneration. For a moment I toyed with the idea of asking the barmaid to exchange the two-pound coin she has given me for two one pound coins but eventually thought better of it. Like Alexander the Great, one must occasionally accept that destiny often stands in the way of personal ambition. To fight against it is foolish and one must accept the ruling of the fates.

The Retreat from Moscow

2006-02-02T03:33:00.000-08:00

About a fortnight ago I wandered into WH.Smiths in search of a suitable book to read on the tube. I headed straight for the history section and cast my eyes over the limited selection available. Two books grabbed my attention. The first was ‘1812, the story of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow’. The other was some tome about the First Crusade whose name for the moment escapes me. I weighed the two books in my head, trying to reach some conclusion as to which I should part with my hard earned cash for. In the end I decided on ‘1812, the story of Napoleons retreat from Moscow’ because, as I reflected, ‘more people get killed in this one’. I paused for a second. I had been confronted by one of those moments when a thought enters your head that are so morally reprehensible that it’s hard to understand where they have erupted from. It reminded me of that infamous occasion in 2003 when I completely lost my sense of empathy and supported the Iraq war because ‘there was nothing on T.V’.

I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as having a skewed system of ethics, and yet a cursory glance over my bookshelf would give you the impression I was some kind of a homicidal maniac. The books I own detail the deaths of millions of my fellow human beings; some froze to death in the icy wastes of Russia, some met a nasty end from the black death, others were sent off to war on the promise of glory and ended up decorating the barbed wire in front of the German trenches. These people weren’t the product of fiction, they lived real lives and died grisly deaths; and now the story of their untimely demise is my single source of entertainment during my commute to work. By chapter seven, Napoleon’s army had marched off into the Russian wilderness. Although winter had not yet begun its icy grip, the multinational army had already begun to drop like flies. In the present conflict our soldiers rightly complain when they have to pay for their own body amour. In Napoleon’s grand armee the soldiers were not issued enough rations to survive and the poor buggers in the cavalry had to routinely stick their hands inside their horse’s anal passage to remove blockages; in light of this, perhaps grappling with the photocopier isn’t so bad an occupation. By chapter ten, a few bloody battles had occurred and Napoleon had taken the questionable decision to sit tight in Moscow and dawdle while his army fell to pieces around him. The last third of the book was an almost pornographic orgy of death misery and violence as Napoleon marched his army through subzero temperatures back to Poland. Most of them had perished by the final chapters and, bravely, Napoleon buggers off back to Paris in a warm sled leaving the remnants of his depleted force to freeze to death.
It’s always comforting when a supposed military genius makes infantile errors of judgement such as this. Its also interesting that at the top of an organisation, one can make terrible mistakes that result in the deaths of literally hundreds of thousands of people and yet be hailed as one of the greatest leaders of all time. Contrast this with being an admin assistant where you become labelled as an incompetent moron for the entire course of your employment if you so much as book a meeting room at the wrong time. At the other end of the scale, you can go drastically over budget, waste vast quantities of taxpayers money on an online database system that doesn’t work properly and expend resources recruiting ‘learning champions’ to promote the value of education in Nottingham’s poorest areas, only to find subsequently that most of them are in fact illiterate. This you can do with no threat of retribution whatsoever, whereas those at the bottom with little or no power must live on a knife-edge between public sector drudgery and redundancy. This raises an interesting question, why did those of the Grand Armee who had suffered such torment and hardship at Napoloeon’s account hold him in such high esteem. The answer lies in the memoirs of his soldiers that are littered with anecdotes about the great man. He visited their campfires, he rode up and down their battle-lines, he even kept a candle burning in his window every night to show his troops that he was up and working on their behalf into the dead of night. In return they loved him and died in his service. It’s a lesson that those in positions of power now would do well to heed. The style of leadership in vogue nowadays seem to involve sealing yourself off in an office, treating those under you with distain, keeping them at an aloof distance and writing them patronising emails telling them they need to be ‘more diverse’ and ‘goal focused’.

I completed ‘1812’ in record time and I have now started on the new biography of Stalin by Robert Service. The book is full of fantastic phrases such as ‘As a little boy, Stalin would play with his childhood friend Vassily. In an ironic twist, Vassily was later to be mown down by Stalin’s death squads during the purges of the nineteen thirties. I’m sure Vassily appreciated the irony.

One of the greatest aspects of my new job is the effect my re-branding has had on the way people interact with me. As an Admin Assistant, people in senior positions rarely bothered to learn my name. Instead they referred to me and fellow sufferers collectively as ‘the admin’ as if we both belonged to some servile tribe that had been enslaved to perform routine and monotonous tasks. Now I am a ‘Business Development Manager’ people ask me for my business card and go out of their way to speak to me. I am the same individual I was back in December, but as with everything in the workplace, the over inflated job title you give yourself is the single thing people take notice of. I have gone from the bottom of an organisation to the top of an organisation and now I get to see the cut-throat nature of business in its entirety. It’s a fascinating Machiavellian universe and I have picked up quite a few interesting terms. One of the best is ‘second mortgage fodder’. These are the poor blighters that will buy anything and everything, plunging themselves into vast amounts of debt and taking on financial commitments they cannot possibly fulfil. If someone takes out a second mortgage and fail to tick the right box their details are passed on to any number of sales and marketing organisations who plug as many products to them as possible. It is more than a little alarming to see that modern society is structured around driving people into as much debt as possible though credit cards, crippling interest rates and aggressive marketing. Still, that’s the system we all signed up for and we are just going to have to live with it.

The best thing I can say about East London is that last areas of it are scheduled for demolition. At then end of this month I shall be moving to a flat in Hendon amongst the quiet suburbs of north London. I shall miss the Indian chap in the local Costcutter with whom I have had a good rapport. I shall also miss the gangs of bored teenagers who stalk the streets outside the George V tube stop and with whom I am involved in a constant game of cat and mouse. According to the lady who owns the local chippy, they are partial to the odd ‘happy slap’ and like to prey on unsuspecting yuppies.

I shall also miss the tube now that I will be taking the bus instead. A lot of people unfairly stereotype London as an unfriendly city because they based their impression on their experience of our third world transport system. It’s a place that brings out the worst in humanity. Take thousands of highly stressed commuters, stick them in the kind of cramped conditions you would commonly associate with the black hole of Calcutta, hit them with a barrage of delays and patronising service announcements and watch as people’s moral fibre disintegrates under the pressure. I’ve seen yuppies in expensive suits shoulder barge old women out of the way in their efforts to make it up the escalator. I’ve seen small children pushed aside by rampant commuters as they struggle to make it into the office for nine o clock. As the doors of the northern line service open at Bank open the over-optimistic announcement comes over the tannoy system; “Thank you for standing aside and letting people off the train before you embark”. It’s a fantastically naïve statement, as if pre-empting peoples natural desire to act selfishly can somehow avert the impeding chaos. It soon becomes clear that the single-minded people on the platform have no such intention. Over the next few minutes a violent struggle erupts between the people on the train trying to get out and the people on the platform trying to get in before the doors close. The tannoy bursts into life again; “THANKYOU FOR STANDING ASIDE AND LETTING PEOPLE OUT OF THE TRAIN BEFORE YOU BOARD”. The voice has become imperative, the tone is that of a familiar annoyance. Clearly expecting people to stand aside on the tube is about as realistic as expecting the last remaining passengers on the Titanic to form an orderly queue for the lifeboats.

The struggle to get on the trains has been well documented. Another lesser known skirmish on the tube system is the battle to acquire decent reading material. When people reach their stop they usually leave their copy of the Metro by their seat. For someone like me who usually forgets to bring a book with them, these moments are gold-dust. I sit there studying the commuter like a hunter observing his prey. When he puts his metro down on the seat and gets up to leave my body is already coiled like a serpent, ready to grab the newspaper before anyone else can get their hands on it. Copys of the metro are the lesser prizes of the tube, on a good journey I aim to grab today’s issues of the Times or the Independent, though these are much harder to acquire. Many is the time that I have been thwarted by another commuter who has swooped at the last moment to grab the Evening Standard I observed when boarding the carriage. On these occasions I content myself with swearing at them beneath my breath. Such are the pleasures of the rat race.

Greater London

2006-01-09T03:35:00.000-08:00

As readers of this journal of mine may or may not have realised, I have headed south to join the rat race in the big city. Previously my commute to work took about 10 minutes on a Nottingham City Transport bus. Having handed over my £1.20 to the driver I was usually faced with the traditionally dismal choice of seat partner. On one of my final excursions to the council buildings, I had the option to either share my seat with an intimidating young whippersnapper decked out in a puffer jacket and baseball cap, presumably on his way to be sentenced in the juvenile court, or alternatively, a decrepit looking chap with a bright red nose. I chose the latter option, and upon taking my seat was met by the unmistakable stench of urine. The bright red nose was obviously not due to the festiveness of the season and was more likely the result of chronic alcohol abuse. In my opinion such people should not be allowed on public transport. On another occasion some old woman spent the whole journey lecturing me for standing at the entrance to the bus. The aforementioned bus was tightly packed with bodies and there was no earthly chance of me being able to make my way further down the vehicle without causing someone an injury, but of course it’s tricky to explain these things to the older generation. ‘It used to be, in my day’ she said, recalling some imaginary golden age, ‘people would move down the other end of the bus so people could get off’. Having marked me out as a ‘wrong un’ she fixed me with a disapproving stare. It on occasions like this that you realise why god invented death.

Now my commute takes me along the Docklands light railway and the London tube and I’m treated to the entertaining spectacle of hyper stressed commuters struggling to get on overcrowded tube trains. Veins bulge on the heads of these suited zombies as they stare ahead of them with a look of blank depression; they look as if they are crying out for a terrorist attack to put them out of their misery. The rules of the tube are simple, stare ahead of you for the entire duration of the journey, avoiding eye contact and trying to look miserable and dejected, as if you were on the way to Stalg-Luft III rather than Kings Cross. Occasionally someone breaks the monotony by turning the volume on their I-pod up full blast and inflicting their appalling musical tastes on the rest of the carriage. I enjoy these moments because they demonstrate how human beings can work together despite having no ties of kin or community. Gradually the tidal wave of disapproval builds. People begin to find common cause in hating the scurrilous I-pod owner and finally appoint a representative to tell him to turn the damn thing down. Peace restored, the newly bonded occupants of the carriage turn back to staring at the adverts.

The part of the docklands my friend lives in is a curious place; a semi apocalyptic landscape in which decaying concrete tower blocks sit uneasily alongside sterile yuppie developments. The surrounding area is interspersed with areas of barren wasteland, once imposing areas of wharves and warehouses, now dismal pastures of earth and rubble waiting for the next batch of starter homes. The whole neighbourhood around the George V railway stop stinks like Satan’s cesspit and resembles a set from Blade Runner with its dilapidated high-rise buildings, graffiti and boarded up buildings. The young professionals from the surrounding developments speed-walk uncomfortably through this area in the early hours of the morning, no doubt expecting to be on the receiving end of a vicious multi-ethnic mugging should they linger too long. This is the edge of the ‘regeneration’ zone, and by the looks of it, the wreaking ball can’t come soon enough.
The job itself is even better than I thought it was going to be. It’s hard not to get caught up in the energetic and frantic atmosphere of a dot-com that is finally beginning to close important deals and go places. From now on in I’ll be attending important meetings with potential clients, working directly with the CEOs and doing a diverse range of work within the organisation. The company operates a flat management structure and I’m encouraged to be outspoken when I think one of my bosses has come up with a shit idea. This could be problematic. I’m also treated with vastly more respect than I deserve. I half expect someone to come up to me any minute with a load of pointless photocopying to do, or for some unpleasant specimen of Nottingham’s inner city to ring my phone to ask what freebies they get for attending our pre-employment training courses. Being a public servant isn’t very fulfilling when you hate the public.

Performance Development Review

2005-12-13T03:37:00.000-08:00

Today I received the following communication from someone in the organisation with the rather grand title of ‘Deputy Chief Executive’.

‘I would like to remind all staff that their six-monthly PDR review is nowdue. Some of you will already have appointments with your manager todiscuss this; if not, you should be hearing from them soon. If you do notreceive any communication from your manager in the next few days thenplease remind them. It is in your interests to understand your level ofperformance and to know that the objectives you have agreed are helping theCouncil to achieve its aims and vision.

P.D.R (Performance Development Review), for those of you who are not familiar with ‘bullshit speak’, is the process whereby members of staff are interviewed individually by their line manager. Having answered a series of questions, the manager will produce a patronising two-page document telling them what areas they can improve on. Usually this consists of fatuous comments such as ‘Antony needs to be better organised in preparing his workload’. It never ceases to amaze me how the powers that be insist on treating fully grown adults like children at every opportunity. Since this is my last week at Nottingham City Council, I have produced my own Performance Review and saved it in the relevant folder, thus saving my manager the trouble of producing one.

Name: Humphrey Clarke Position: Badly Paid Temp

1) How well did you meet your individual and team objectives? (Refer back to the original
Objectives Setting sheet). Give examples of particular successes.

This is the first (and hopefully the last) PDR for Humphrey

Humphrey started working at the city council in July and has grown progressively more lazy and cynical as his employment has gone on.

His single success at Nottingham Works has been to create an unnecessarily large and picture heavy B.M.E guide, which crashes Word every time it is loaded. Since then he has mostly sat around looking at the BBC News website, delivering sarcastic comments and printing out pictures of Lord Kitchener to hang above his desk. It is questionable whether this activity is compatible with the aims of this organisation.

2) Which aspects of past performance were less successful than expected? Why?

Humphrey is both the most highly qualified, and the worst Admin Assistant in the organisation. He suffers from a crippling lack of motivation because a third of his wages are stolen each week by the evil -and improbably happy- temping agency he works for. When asked to do work for members of staff he commonly responds with an existentialist comment such as ‘what does it matter anyway’ or ‘its all futile’. Furthermore, as an over-privileged aristocratic bastard who hates the lower classes, his suitability for administering pre-employment training courses has to be strongly questioned.

3) Which parts of your work have given you the most satisfaction/enjoyment? Why? What are you most skilled at?

Humphrey’s only skill is the ability to turn up to work when he has a full-blown hangover. He is largely useless when he finally gets there, so this really isn’t much of a boast. Since his job mainly consists of tiresome mail merges and dealing with Neanderthal morons on the telephone his job satisfaction could be said to be terminal. The only other ability he possesses is to ‘tell it like it is’, but this could be alternately interpreted as rudeness.

What have you enjoyed the least? What aspects do you feel least skilled in?

In his own words, Humphrey feels that ‘his soul has died a slow and painful death’ over the course of his employment. The prospect of another battle with the photocopier compels him to obtain a shotgun, blast the errant machine with both barrels and then turn the weapon on himself. This is troubling because, although the member of staff is expendable, such an action would breach health and safety regulations.

Manager’s comments on performance (team and individual)

Sack immediately and refer to mental health clinic.

Priapus

2005-12-07T03:42:00.000-08:00

Over the past six months I have come to the conclusion that there are certain things a man needs if he is to achieve a modicum of contentedness. These are, in no particular order, a good woman, a well-stocked liquor cabinet and a job title that makes it sounds as if he has enormous genitalia. From January my official job title will be ‘Business Development and Sales Officer’ a label that makes it sound like I have the kind of reproductive organs which the Roman god Priapus once used to scare small children in orchards.

Things at the council have gone from bad to downright lame. Currently my office is suffering from an infestation of fruit flies, this serves only to add to the atmosphere of misery and decay. Right now, the working day consists of a battle of wits between me and the net nanny as I desperately seek to access sites it –rather arbitrarily- brands as ‘tasteless’ and ‘pornographic’. And yet, I can sit at my desk with a degree of smugness because my future is looking a great deal rosier than it was a month ago.

I don’t know how people managed to afford a cocaine habit; right now I can barely afford a tic-tac habit. The measly wages the council pays me are further degraded by the greedy –and improbably cheerful- recruitment agency that employs me. Not content with subjecting me to patronising rules and regulations, the recruitment consultants at Kelly Services siphon off the pitiful sums I accrue at the end of the working week, presumably to fund their crack addictions. Sadly my attempts at job hunting proved strategically flawed. As Katie pointed out, I need to actually follow up newspaper ads rather than simply circling them in biro. About two months ago, a glorious piece of good fortune came my way, a friend of the family steered me towards a company in North London who were looking for a young graduate. I was slightly put off because the advertisement stressed a ‘need for excellence’. ‘Excellence’, as my father will be quick to point out, is not a word normally associated with me. My single role in the Clarke household to date was when my dad appointed me ‘Toilet roll monitor’, not so much because I had shown any sort of merit in that direction, but more because he needed someone to shout at when we ran out of bog-roll. Needless to say, I was utterly hopeless.

In the past year or so, all my adolescent misconceptions have suddenly evaporated. The ‘world of work’, which I used to view with a mixture of dread and awe, I now find to consist of varying degrees of bullshit, stupidity, meaningless jargon and clock watching. The trick seems to be to learn some meaningless piece of management jargon such as ‘strategic task initiative’ and then to drop it into every conversation in order to seem as if you know what you are talking about. Another council scam is to constantly go on ‘personal development’ courses. No only does this cut out a large chunk of the working day but it also allows you to put large numbers of letters after your name. Some of these courses are outright useless. Many a council employee has done a course in using Microsoft Project, only to realise subsequently that it would cost something in the region of £200 to obtain the licence to actually use it.

The New Year will see me starting at Epoq Group in Edgware and saying goodbye to the unwashed hordes of Rottingham-on-Trent. My unsuccessful flirtation with socialism is at an end and I’m now ready to get stuck in to cold-blooded capitalism. I’m now on a pretty hefty salary and the prospect of working hard and actually having something to show for it is an enticing one. Having accidentally left the oven on for twenty-four hours on two occasions this month, it’s going to take a graduate salary just to pay the gas bill.

In the meantime I’m still enjoying my current stint in the dilapidated offices of local government. The latest bit of waste I’ve heard about is that one of our illustrious senior managers went on a trip to Las Vegas at the taxpayer’s expense. No doubt there was a perfectly good reason for this and my cynicism is completely unjustified. Back in the Sixties, councillors went on trips like this the whole time as part of the infamous ‘twinning’ initiatives. For those of you who are not familiar with this particular scam, twinning was the policy whereby the local government of various towns and cities would ‘twin’ themselves with a foreign municipality and then go on numerous expensive ‘goodwill trips’. In the most infamous of these, a councillor of some small English town visited its ‘twin’ in France and, having mixed up his verbs, told the inhabitants in his opening speech that he was intent on having sex with all their women. To me twinning doesn’t seem a wholly pointless initiative. In my opinion Nottingham should twin with Baghdad, a city with which we share many characteristics such as chronic unemployment, endemic corruption and gun crime. The fledgling government of Baghdad has a lot to learn from us. For instance if they followed our current traffic policy - the now infamous ‘turning point scheme’- suicide bombers would not longer be able to drive their vehicles into crowded areas and would simply be diverted into catastrophic traffic jams on the ring road. Baghdad could also take a similar approach to city regeneration to that adopted in Britain. Simply build an expensive new shopping centre, put in an overly trendy and unnecessary ‘waterfront’ development and move in the yuppies. Having priced the proletariat out of the housing market and moved them to run down estates on the city periphery the process is complete. All that’s left is to name the conurbation, ‘European City of Culture’ or some other meaningless phrase.
The only other item on the agenda is that I am ill at the moment. Last night started with me cooking a couple of salmon fillets and ended like a scene from the Exorcist. Despite the feelings of nausia and downright discomfort, this has provided an ideal opportunity to catch up on some property porn and bargain hunting shows. Ah ‘Homes under the hammer’, how I have missed thee.

Diverse Dealings

2005-11-09T03:45:00.000-08:00

This week I’ve been frantically trying to fix the multitude of errors in our online database. We operate an ‘issue tracking’ system whereby I can communicate with the creators of the system and inform them of what exactly the problems are with the interface. The people behind Angry Fish offer further proof –if proof were needed- that one must be wary of the I.T-geek crowd. They may look harmless and unassuming but in reality they are like the Borg, cold calculating and utterly ruthless. They possess the ability to blind you with technical terms and bore you to tears with long-winded jargon; this provides the smoke screen they need to sucker you in to an uneven business deal. Even if our I.T phobic staff actually used the system, it probably wouldn’t work. Right now, for instance, the database reporting system is saying that all the unemployed people we got into work in the first quarter of 2005 were all disabled and from ethnic minorities. If this state of affairs were actually the case, it would be the equality and diversity department’s wet dream. However, I feel I’m justified in viewing these statistics with a hefty degree of scepticism.

I decided to get my haircut a couple of days ago. I say ‘I decided’, in fact these decisions are made for me by ‘she who must be obeyed’. When my hair gets to a certain length she begins a carefully planned programme of ridicule, humiliation and rebuke, until finally I overcome my traditional fear of hairdresser and head down to the cheapest barbers. Funnily enough, the cheapest barbers is just round the corner from me, a rather run down looking establishment known as ‘Khizar’s Cuts’. As I walked in the customers looked slightly startled. I was a little taken aback by this reaction, but sauntered over to the nearest chair and buried my head in a morbidly unexciting issue of ‘Autotrader’. Eventually it was my turn for a trim and I walked over and sat down in the chair. The barber grinned welcomingly at me, his English wasn’t too good and it took some considerable discourse before he understood that I wanted a short back and sides.

‘You first guy….look like you come in shop’ he eventually said, after what had been a slightly uncomfortable silence. ‘really’, I replied, not quite understanding what he meant. ‘yes…..only brothers in here’ he added. Having paid him and exchanged pleasantries I left the shop and walked back to my humble abode. It was then that I realised that he had been trying to tell me that I was the first white guy who had ever been in his shop. I had gone for a haircut and accidentally become an unwitting cultural ambassador. From now on, I’ll always be getting my hair cut there, not because I am interested in building cross-community links, but because he does a damn good haircut at a reasonable price.

There comes a point in a man’s life when he must abandon his socialist principles and stick his greedy snout into the trough of capitalism. With that in mind, I have been applying to various companies in a bid to get on the first rung of the corporate ladder. One rule I have learnt over the years is that when attending a job interview, you must aim to get there around two hours in advance; this is because things inevitably go wrong. A few days ago, I stepped out of the Edgware road tube station and discovered that the map I had earlier printed out from the Internet bore absolutely no relation to my immediate surroundings. Feeling a little confused, I decided to seek some assistance from the locals.

I soon discovered that asking for directions in London is very much like trying to fund-raise for Al-Quaeda on the streets of Manhattan. When you greet the average passer by with a cheery ‘excuse me’ they state back with a look of contempt and quicken their pace as if you are suffering from leprosy. Eventually one good Samaritan responded to me and informed me in no uncertain terms that I was at the wrong Edgware and that the place I wanted was on completely the opposite side of the city. Luckily I had sufficient time to hightail it to North London via the morbidly incompetent Northern Line. I had heard bad things about this service, and these were confirmed when our train reached Golders Green and the driver informed us that we all had to get out because the train was ‘terminating here’. After an interval of about half an hour, I and the rest of the hyper-stressed passengers were told that there had been a mistake and the service wasn’t ‘terminating’ at all. As we shuffled angrily back onto the train I began to understand the pain of the average London commuter.

At the end of the eventual interview I was told that I had ‘ticked a lot of boxes’. If these boxes are labelled ‘team-player’, ‘well spoken’ and ‘self starter’, then I’m in with a shout. If the boxes read, ‘sub-human’,‘sweats profusely when answering questions’, and ‘comprehensively obnoxious’, then I’m going to be checking brio invoices for a good while longer.

Blame and Fame

2005-10-30T03:46:00.000-08:00

I think it was Issac Asamov that claimed ‘Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent’. If he had bothered to develop this thesis further, he would have discovered that the first refuge is Rottingham City Council. It’s a culture that not only encourages incompetence, but also rewards it. For example, there’s a chap in the next door office who has been working for the council for most of his adult life, eventually reaching the higher echelons of service manager. He was made redundant in a previous ‘reorganisation’ and was placed on the Council redeployment register. This is a wonderful device whereby an employee who is axed is placed in a different role when it becomes available. The great thing is, this drop in status isn’t accompanied by any drop in wages. Hence this guy is now getting paid £40,000 a year for a job that should technically pay around £20,000. Whenever I walk in he is sitting contentedly at his computer playing hearts. It’s a pleasing sight that leaves me with the hope that there is a gravy train at the end of it all.

Sitting at my desk in this poorly ventilated building, I cast my eyes fervently around searching for sources of blame. Should we accuse our impotent senior manager, who sits at his desk fiddling with himself while Rome burns around him?. Sun-Tzu, writing in 500 B.C said that the principle elements of leadership were intelligence, humanity, courage, credibility and discipline. Now leadership seems to be based on shifting blame, passing your work off onto other people and writing dull memos to your colleagues as a means of camouflaging your inactivity.

Should we blame the staff of our regional partners, a group of people whose collective I.T literacy is roughly equivalent to that of a pack of mentally retarded Neanderthals?. No doubt the cold, hard eye of the external audit will discover the real perpetrators, but by then they will probably have jumped ship into different jobs.

Rottingham suffers from the same problems as any large post-industrial city, a vast pool of unskilled labour with few qualifications, completely unsuited to fill the jobs that are on offer. The purpose of this project was to approach companies, discover what skills they required in their applicants, and to train our clients to this standard so they could reach employment. My office acts as a central hub for the organisation. We send out information about our courses, the clients read this material and go into the regional offices, the regional offices then send us the application forms and we then enter the clients on the courses. The trouble is, since this is a trial project, and this is public money we are dealing with, every action needs to be recorded accurately in a central database so that it can be rigorously audited later on. It was agreed that a central, online database be developed at vast expense. This database is known as Angry Fish.

I despise the name. It’s something only techie geeks with that kind of irritating ‘random’ style of humour, plundered shamelessly from Eddie Izzard, would find entertaining. We bought this system, at considerable expense, at the behest of our regional partners. The problem is, no one has been using it. Clients have come and gone, enrolled on courses, gained qualifications and entered employment, but virtually none of it has been documented, mainly because the staff of our local partners go into a blind panic the minite they encounter anything more complicated than Notepad. One can partly understand their concerns, the whole program is badly designed - for example, the 'delete record' button is about a pixel away from the 'open record' button.

As a result, our expensive new database is about as accurate a reflection of reality as Al Capone’s tax return. Those records that have been entered have often been duplicated several times or inputted with vital information missing. Of course, come the Audit, the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund are going to want to know what happened to all the money they gave us. God knows what our departmental management will do then; probably move everyone to different desks.

Various writers, pundits and social commentators are fond of telling us that modern society affected by some form of malaise, that standards are crumbling, manners are steadily becoming redundant and we are all descending into anarchy. Casting an eye over the history of the twentieth century, it seems clear that things have turned for the better rather than worse. Sure we seem to have less of the ‘manly’ Victorian values that made this country great, but at least no-one is dying of polio. One thing, however, troubles me immensely. At no point in human history have our inadequacies been rubbed in our faces quite so much. Flicking through the channels on my television set, I am treated to such depressing spectacles as ‘lifestyles of the rich and the famous’, and ’50 things you’ll be too skint to do before you die’. No wonder we seem to be suffering from some sort of collective status anxiety. We exist in a culture in which we are led to believe that we are all destined to live the lifestyle of the super rich. As always, it’s hard to harmonise ideological expectations with cold hard realities.

Watching documentaries about Paris Hilton makes you realise people turned up in their thousands to watch the French nobility being decapitated at the hands of the mob. One more special about the size of Puff Daddy’s new yacht and, come the next revolution, you’ll find me cheering on the steps of the guillotine as the odious new nobility of the modern age are dealt a dreadful, but deserved justice. That is assuming that I haven’t already been beheaded for having an absurdly posh name.

The Madness Of Snooker

2005-10-28T06:20:00.000-07:00

Having watched the snooker coverage –the one sport other than the indoor bowls championship the B.B.C still has left in it’s arsenal-, I can only conclude that the commentary team have one of the easiest jobs in the western world. The game is characterised by long periods where nothing very much happens. Instead of filling this interval with any thing particularly profound, the commentators prefer to say nothing at all. When they do open their mouths it is usually to utter something moronic like ‘If he hits this shot into the cushion, he stands a good chance of hitting the black into the red’. I personally don’t blame them. Their particular universe consists of a green table with a limited number of different coloured balls, six pockets, and a series of generic sportsmen with no real personality or flair. Such an environment only lends itself to a limited range of possibilities. I’d imagine this is fairly claustrophobic, and in some cases, the sense of restraint and endless repetition can drive you mad. The imagination longs to escape the narrow confines in which it now finds itself and yearns to break free from pondering the destiny of coloured balls. For one man, the levee well and truly broke, that man was David Icke.

For many years David Icke led a successful but fairly unremarkable life. He was born and raised amoungst the working class estates of Leicester. Much like the pope, he began his carreer as a goalkeeper, and played professionally for Hereford United and Coventry city F.C, until arthritis prematurely ended his career at the age of 21. Having left football he took up a job at the BBC as a sports announcer and became well known for presenting the late night snooker highlights. Things were about to go badly wrong.

Icke’s autobiography goes rapidly downhill around March 1990. On a fairly boring trip to the Isle of Wight, Icke started hearing voices which, rather unfortunately, guided him to the 'New Age' section of a bookshop he was browsing. Later on, he was greeted by a mysterious woman who told him he had been ‘put on this earth to heal it’. He had been ‘chosen from childhood to lead mankind into the truth’. His career in football had taught him discipline and given him the ability to cope with the disappointment and ridicule he would encounter in speading his message to mankind. Before you could say ‘nutball’ he was off to Peru and was consulting a peculiar shaman who ‘filled him with knowledge and brought about a great awakening’. Just what this knowledge was, the world was about to find out.

Icke had been pencilled in to appear on ‘The Terry Wogan Show’ the following year. Jim Davidson had top billing that night, but his limelight had already been well and truly stolen. There had been rumours in the tabloids all week that David Icke had been acting strangely, and as he wandered onto the stage it rapidly became clear that something was up. Icke was dressed from head to toe in an incredibly tasteless turquoise shell suit. Upon being questioned about his attire by the bemused host, Icke said that he was wearing turquoise because it was ‘the colour of the universe and a conduit of positive energy’.

The warning signs had been there. Earlier, at a specially convened press conference at Gatwick Airport, Icke had let it be known that his spiritual advisor would henceforth be referred to as the Daughter of God while his wife was to be called the Spirit of the Angel of God. He had also predicted the Second Coming and said that the Channel Tunnel would never be built. Best of all, he said that Cuba, the Isle of Arran and the White Cliffs of Dover would all disappear. Now, before the eyes of the nation, he announced that he was the son of god and that everyone who had ever lived would be judged by him in heaven.

Why you?" asked Wogan, it seemed a fair question. "People would have said the same thing to Jesus," David Icke replied. "Who the heck are you? You're a carpenter's son. "He then went on to prophesise Britain’s destruction by Tsunamis and Earthquakes. "When might we expect tidal waves, eruptions and earthquakes?" asked Wogan. "They will certainly happen this year," David replied. This prediction was met with howls of incredulity from the audience. "Why should we believe you?" said Wogan. "I'm saying that these things are going to happen this year," said David, "so we'll see, won't we?" ."And what will happen to you if they don't happen?" asked Wogan. "They will happen," said David. Having left the stage to mass laughter and applause he became the most ridiculed man in the country, it looked like the end. Icke recalls

“One of my very greatest fears as a child was being ridiculed in public. And there it was coming true. As a television presenter, I'd been respected. People come up to you in the street and shake your hand and talk to you in a respectful way. And suddenly, overnight, this was transformed into 'Icke's a nutter'. I couldn't walk down any street in Britain without being laughed at. It was a nightmare. My children were devastated because their dad was a figure of ridicule”

And yet all was not lost, Icke was about to discover the path to recovery. He began to dabble in conventional new-age thinking, spliced with Neo-Nazi conspiracy theories. After a couple of years banished from the limelight he began to write books that proclaimed the world was ruled by a secret group called "The Elite", or "Illuminati," which he linked to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fake anti-Semitic tract. He also alleged that a small group of Jews had financed Hitler, manufacturing the holocaust in order to help the Zionist cause.

"I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War. This Jewish/non-Jewish Elite used the First World War to secure the Balfour Declaration and the principle of the Jewish State of Israel (for which, given the genetic history of most Jewish people, there is absolutely no justification on historical grounds or any other). They then dominated the Versailles Peace Conference and created the circumstances which made the Second World War inevitable. They financed Hitler to power in 1933 and made the funds available for his rearmament."

This attracted the skinhead contingent who began to follow him around on his speaking tours. Perhaps encouraged by this adulation, Icke’s theories got steadily more strange. He wrote that 'the global elite are hopelessly drawn to strange rituals', that they run around in robes and burn giant wicker owls at a secret summer camp called Bohemian Grove in the forests north of San Francisco. ‘Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller are rumoured to be among the be-robed’, he speculated. Icke came to believe that the global elite were manipulating free-trade legislation to ease the world for global domination; their lair was the White House, which contained a secret harem of kidnapped and hypnotised underage sex slaves.

Then in 1999, Icke published his masterpiece, a book claiming that the world had been taken over by a race of lizards. He had apparently discovered primitive cultures that had carved effigies of lizard-men descending from the skies, these reptilians decided to live among humans and control their society from within. In “Children of the Matrix” Icke describes the lizard's agenda,

“The Reptilians and other manipulating entities exist just outside the frequency range of our physical senses. Their own physical form has been broken down and they can no longer reproduce. Thus they have sought to infiltrate human form and so use that to exist and control in this dimension.”

Prominent figures such as the Queen, George Bush, Bill Clinton, the Queen mother and Kriss Kristofferson were exposed as lizards, who shape-shifted into human form and drank the blood of children. Icke said in an interview

“I knew of a guy called Ted Heath, who was Prime Minister of Britain from '70-'74, and I knew that he was involved in some serious horrendous things, like sacrificing children, and all this stuff, because of people who had seen it. But until now, I never suspected him of being a lizard”

Every strata of British and American society was apparently infiltrated. Icke wrote that, according to Christine Fitzgerald, a confidante of Diana, she had believed that the British royal family was connected to reptiles and said they could shape-shift. Icke revealed

‘It is clear that Diana knew about the true nature of the royal family's genetic history and the reptilian control. Her nicknames for the Windsors were the "lizards" and the "reptiles" and she used to say in all seriousness: "They're not human"...The brotherhood obsession with Scotland, she said, was because there are many entrances their into inner-Earth where the physical reptiles live... She said that during the sacrificial rituals the Queen wears a cloak of gold fabric inlaid with rubies and black onyx. The Queen and Charles have their own ritual goblets, inlaid with precious stones signifying their Illuminati-Brotherhood rank. The Mother Goddess says that that queen makes cruel remarks about lesser initiates, but is afraid of a man code-named 'Pindar' (The Marquis de Libeaux) who is higher in the Satanic hierarchy...the main reptilian gene carriers were given names like Lilith, Lili, Lilutu and Lillette. Another version is Lilibet or Elizabeth and this is why the present British Queen is called Elizabeth (El-lizard-birth) and was known to her family circle as Lilibet. She is a major reptilian gene carrier who produced a major reptilian full-blood called Prince Charles. Both are shape-shifting reptilians, a fact that will be supported by later evidence."

Hollywood in paticular had become infested with the creatures and the proliferation of cosmetic surgery amoungst it's celebrities could not be put down to mere vanity alone. According to Icke “Cosmetic surgery is necessary to conceal exactly what is being done to them on a biological and genetic level". The elite would stop at nothing to rob humans of their independence, orchestrating mass shootings to build up opposition to guns, staging the Bosnian war, the lockabie bombing and September the 11th and, worst of all, planning to implant microchips in everyone’s bodies coded with the satanic number “666”.

‘The "mark of the beast", the microchip, is planned to be moved from the smart card to the human body when a story can be hatched to persuade people to accept it. Some researchers suggest that the human barcoding system will include three sets of six digits in the computer - hence 666, "the number of the beast". Once we have agreed to the end of cash and there is no turning back, we will have to accept the microchip implant or we will have no means of purchasing anything when they decide to phase out smart cards.’

On the 10th of January 2002, came Icke's moment of triumph. Two scientists at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, combined light from over 200,000 galaxies within two billion light years of Earth. They discovered that the colour of the universe had in fact been turquoise all along. David Icke was finally vindicated, he declared

‘If a scientist from John Hopkins University says it, he's credible. If an ex-television presenter says it eleven years earlier, he's crazy. Way of the world, I'm afraid....Don't think for yourself, let those with fancy titles and letters after their names do it for you. Go back to sleep, your experts know best. Zzzzzzz....So if a shade of turquoise is the base colour of the universe, wearing turquoise will help to "tune" you to the universe and all the knowledge, wisdom, and intuitive "knowing" that exists there. It will help you connect vibrationally to the Great Infinity of existence by tuning you to its wavelength.’

David Icke now lives on his beloved Isle of Wight and continues to spout crap on topics as diverse as ‘The war on Terror’, ‘Child Vaccinations’ and the Bush family's ‘Reptilian agenda’. He is the author of ten books, which have sold extremely well and continues to be popular amongst the loonies of the world. He has several web sites, an e-magazine, his own publishing house, and at least 9 books and 4 videotapes to his credit. He is constantly on the road, touring North America, Europe, Australia, South Africa, the Pyramids, and elsewhere, speaking to crowds of 1,000 a time. Icke was once the most mocked man in Britain, yet in almost every other way possible, it is he who has had the last laugh.

Official site: http://www.davidicke.com/

David Icke interviews: http://www.freedomfiles.org/davidtv/truthvibrations.htm

Vancouver interview where he claims ‘it would be staggering if the earth wasn’t run by lizards, and gives examples of shape-shifting incidents’

http://www.newsforthesoul.com/icke.htm

Abusive phone call of the year

2005-10-15T05:38:00.000-07:00

One of the many problems with the public sector is that every single trivial action is subject to Byzantine sets of rules and procedures. For instance, to order a new part for the printer, I was required to fill out a number of complicated forms, which were then cross checked by no less than eight separate members of staff. Even answering the telephone is subject to a set of unnecessary guidelines. Last week, my boss handed to me a booklet entitled ‘The Guide to Effective Communication’, a patronising and somewhat repulsive document, offering advice to public servants on how to answer the telephone.

Leafing through the pages of the guide, I learnt that I must be ‘diverse’ in my dealings, and ‘sensitive to the differing needs of members of the public’. This is easier said than done. Some of the clients who ring my telephone have a command of the English language roughly akin to that of Manuel from Faulty Towers. Instead of being mindful of their deficiencies, they frequently get irritated and abusive when I ask them to repeat things.

Since the department was informed of its fate, things have got a little bit slack. Yesterday, the sum total of my work was to draw a couple of Mickey Mouse ears on a picture of Mao Tse Tung. I then added the caption ‘Mickey Mao’ and hung the image above my desk.

Just as I finished doing this the telephone rang ominously. I lifted the receiver. ‘Good afternoon, Nottingham Works’ I said enthusiastically, making a concerted effort to communicate more ‘effectively’. I was confronted with heavy breathing from the other end of the line.

‘I did free driving lessons with you’ came a gruff female voice that conveyed more than a slight sense of menace. ‘Sorry, can you repeat that?’ I said, having not quite heard what she had said. The breathing increased rapidly. She now sounded like an asthma victim who had been forced to climb a steep flight of stairs.

‘FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!, I…took…free…driving..lessons..with..you,’ she replied, demonstrating a lack of what the H.R department have termed ‘people skills’. I didn’t let my façade of cheeriness drop and said politely ‘ah, I see, and how is it I can help you?’. ‘I need the number for East Midlands driving school’ she said with a total absence of warmth or affection. ‘Okey Dokey, let me just look it out for you’ I replied and my boss began to sort through the driving academy file looking for the required information. After about a couple of minutes I could tell that the caller was getting slightly frustrated. She began to snort into the receiver and launched into wave after wave of abuse in my direction. ‘FFFUUUCKK!…….FUCKING HELL, WHY THE FUCK IS THIS TAKING SO LONG!!!!’ she began to scream down the line. ‘Just a moment’ I said diplomatically, ‘my colleague is just looking the number out for you, she’ll have it in just a moment’. ‘FUCK YOU!’ came the somewhat abrupt reply. It appeared that the caller was impatient as well as chronically stupid

Technically I am within my rights to put the phone down at this stage, but working such a dull job, incidents like this are like gold-dust. My boss had retrieved the number and was now reading it out to me from across the office. Unfortunately I was having trouble hearing said number because of the racket emanating from my phone. ‘WHY THE FUCK IS THIS TAKING SO LONG!!, DON’T YOU KNOW THIS IS COSTING MONEY!!!’. It sounded like the caller was on the brink of a prolaspe. I had just received the number and was about to read it to her when she finally slammed the phone down in disgust. It not often you get to deal with people who have the social skills of Attila the Hun after a twenty-four hour drinking binge.

I felt proud, I had followed the guide to effective communication to the letter and done my very best to serve the public. One must be sensitive to the differing needs and requirements of our clients, even if –as is often the case- they happen to sub-human morons.

Downfall

2005-10-12T05:38:00.000-07:00

The German Race have been the subject of contempt amongst the Clarke family since they, rather unsportingly, decided to bomb my great aunt Bertha whilst she was visiting friends in Bristol during the blitz. However, last night as I sat through ‘The Downfall’, a film that chronicles the last days of Hitler, I felt a strange affinity with the ill-fated protagonists. It reminds me very much of my current employment. Its October at the council, and that can only mean one thing…redundancies!. Accordingly, my department has just been informed that it will be axed as part of council ‘re-organisation’. Now, like an SS commando, I cling doggedly to my desk while the whole corrupt and decadent regime collapses around me like a house of cards. Sadly the historical comparison ends here, there’s no chance of senior management blowing their brains out after a last despairing salute to the mayor. This is a cause for some concern. Over the past few months I have come to the opinion that it is right and proper for the manager of a botched department to commit hari-kiri. Failed managers never atone for their disastrous actions; they simply get re-assigned to another position of authority in the council and acquire another department to run into the ground with their incompetence. The next time the councillors contemplate another H.R restructure; they would do well to consider issuing cyanide capsules.

I feel bad for my comrades in arms, who sit around dispirited, browsing jobs websites and playing epic games of solitaire which a scarcely disguised contempt for the organisation that has so cruelly rejected them. We were found worthy of destruction, and yet other drains on the public purse are tolerated. For instance, several council managers recently went on a fact-finding mission to China at an overall cost of around £25,000. I can think of no better way to start World War Three than to send our petty bureaucrats on a subsidised holiday to a touchy eastern superpower. It’s rare that you find an example of irresponsible public spending which is both a careless waste of funds and a threat to world peace.

In this cruel and cynical new environment, it is necessary to find a fresh and deserving avenue for my hatred. I can find no better candidate than ‘Impact’, the council employee magazine. The word ‘Impact’, suggests that within the glossy pages of this magazine, one is guaranteed to find something dynamic, exciting and energising. Instead the publication contains what can be politely termed ‘soulless propaganda’. A turgid mixture of tedious articles and photographs of mysteriously happy employees, all of whom have the same cheesy smile etched across their face; I assume they were airbrushed on later. If you took a snapshot of the average council department, you would capture a total absence of joi de vive; you would find more of a party atmosphere on Death Row.

One of the drawbacks of being a public servant is that I am bombarded with a constant stream of propaganda. In 1946, Lord Haw Haw was tried for war crimes and executed by the Allies. Nowadays, he would be rewarded for his ‘services to spin’, assigned to Rottingham on Trent’s P.R department, and would probably spend his working day filling my inbox with spam. Last week I was treated to a newsletter, that displayed a series of carefully selected newspaper headlines about Rottingham-on-Trent. ‘Rottingham is now ranked 3rd for U.K retail’, they declared. The other headlines from the national media, such as ‘Rottingham is a crime ridden sewer’ had been mysteriously omitted. The next time I get beaten up by a gang of teenage muggers, I shall take solace in the fact that the city has a new TK-Maxx store.

It would be somewhat scurrilous for me to accuse ‘Impact’ of dishonest journalism without a modicum of textual analysis. Here then, is a good example from September’s issue.

‘The sight of so many people enjoying the Test Match in the sunshine at Trent Bridge and on the big screen at Wollaton Park countered the outrageous slur broadcast by a Channel 4 programme last month that Rottingham-on-Trent is somehow the ‘second worst place to live in the UK’. Former England bowler Angus Fraser was quoted in the Evening Post as saying: “Rottingham-on-trent is not somewhere you dread, it’s somewhere you look forward to coming to”, while Australian fan Fiona Sellar said: ”Rottingham-on-trent is beautiful. In fact, I’d like to live here.” Not only is Rottingham-on-trent great for cricket, it’s also great for gardens and parks, according to an hour-long Gardener’s World Special on the city which went out on BBC 2 a few days after the Channel 4 programme’

I saw the T.V program, entitled ‘The worst places to live in the U.K’. It based its assessment on crime figures, house prices and poverty statistics. Impact based its retort on the opinion of a man who probably didn't stray very far from the idyllic setting of Trent Bridge cricket ground. They also used the somewhat dubious testimony of a pissed up Australian fan. Not the most convincing of arguments, but when you have a captive readership, objective reporting is by no means a necessity.

I love Nottingham’s parks and gardens, especially the gloriously over the top Memorial garden that lies about 5 minutes walk from my house. I would enjoy them a whole if they weren’t infested by crack whores who sit around on the grass yelling ‘business!’ to passers by, or those chavic youths who drive round on their mini motos at all hours, tearing up the grass and making a dreadful racket. Some slightly moronic chap wrote in to the Sun Newspaper a while back saying ‘what happened to the Britain of my youth where kids were safe to play in the streets?, now you are afraid to let them out because of all the pedophiles’ (No, I didn’t make that up, I half wish I had). Frankly, I would rather the little blighters stayed in their respective dwellings. Instead, they hang around on street corners, trying to get people to buy them cider from the corner shop and riding their motorbikes up and down the street. Perhaps the answer to this chaos is to spread a rumor that a large number of child molesters are being ‘re-housed in my neighborhood’.

Another thing that annoys me about Impact, and most of the literature produced by the council, is the general insistence on describing Rottingham-on-Trent as ‘diverse’ in every other sentence. The typical piece reads ‘welcome to the diverse city of Rottingham, a European city bursting with cultural diversity, where all the citizens are diverse and there is something for everyone. There has to be another way of saying that the city has a large number of ethnic minorities – or ‘wogs’ as my white-supremacist grandma would describe them. I like living in a multicultural city, but do we have to keep harping on about it the whole time?, its beginning to look like desperation.

One interesting thing did come out of the last issue of ‘Impact’. I noticed a staggering similarity between the last Area Managers Meeting and the Nazi Nuremberg rallies of the 1930’s. By way of illustration, here is a photo comparison. Coincidence?, I think not. Now where’s my P-45?.

The Photocopier, 'Re-organisation and Cricket

2005-09-25T05:40:00.000-07:00

Things really haven’t moved on since Victorian times, I mused as I twisted my hand inside the photocopier, as if I were a vet struggling with a cow's rectum. In the mills and factories of the industrial revolution, small children were often forced to place their limbs inside dangerous machinery in a bit to stop it from clogging. Now, in these supposedly more enlightened times, I am regularly called upon to risk my fingers extracting troublesome paper jams. I hate the photocopier. It sits there smugly, blinking its lights at me as it stubbornly refuses to do my bidding. I instruct it to print double-sided A4, it laughs in my face and prints the document in extra small size on an A3 sheet of paper. Since I held no great desire for the thing to transform the minutes of last weeks meeting into an optician’s chart, I find this habit immensely irritating. Most of the time it jams after several copies and buries the paper within its deepest darkest recesses, refusing to continue until it is removed. The photocopier-repairman’s union obviously had a word with the manufacturers and the equipment is notoriously difficult to manipulate into clearing the blockage. Often the offending scrap of paper remains tantalisingly out of grasp. As well as having the work ethic of a truculent teenager, the photocopier also fancies itself as a minimalist artist. I am often asked to reproduce a document 200 times, only to discover on my return, that the errant machine has reinterpreted my original vision with a series of criss-cross black lines over every copy.

I often describe myself as ‘the photocopier’s bitch’, yet I've come to believe this is a slightly too simplistic analysis of our relationship. In truth, I could easily switch to the more reliable photocopier downstairs. However, like a bad relationship, I just keep coming back to the 3rd floor copier, no matter how badly it treats me. There is a certain comfort in familiarity.

I want to kick the damn thing, but sadly it’s higher in seniority than me. As the last temp in the office I am living out a precarious existence, placed on a knife-edge between wage-slavery and redundancy. Were it to be discussed at a departmental meeting whether to get rid of me or the cardboard cut-out of Darth Vader that stands imposingly in a corner of the office, I would almost certainly get the chop, or ‘reorganised’ as it is termed at Rottingham-on-Trent city council.

‘Re-organisation’ is occurring all across the exchange buildings at the moment. This process occurs at public authorities when higher management feel the need to do something to show they have a purpose beyond writing waffle-ridden memos to each other. ‘Hey!’, ‘one will say to the other’, this office needs a shake-up so we can improve communication and efficiency within the team’. ‘What a great idea’ the other will say, ‘how can we achieve this?’. ‘We’ll move everyone to different desks’ the other will say, uttering the words as if they are somehow akin to the revelations of Archimedes.

Management have been having this eureka moment for generations it seems. ‘I’ve been moved six times in the four years I’ve been here’, moaned our poor finance officer, as he engaged in yet about round of ‘musical chairs’. Such re-organisations are counter –productive since many important documents are lost as everyone moves to the next desk along and tries to get to grip with their new surroundings. Perhaps more could be achieved if the entire department was axed altogether. Rottingham-on Trent’s unemployment problem could be far better solved by extensive carpet-bombing of St-Anns.

I cant help feeling that as spiritual beings with a limited life span, we should be spending our days pondering the nature of our existence and engaging in hedonistic pleasures. Instead we spend vast quantities of our precious existence staring at a computer screen, compiling boring -and often highly inaccurate- stats and being patronised by ‘Council initiatives’. The latest ‘initiative’ from senior management is that we must answer the telephone within six rings. If this target isn’t met, then there will be serious consequences when the next quarterly review comes around. Given that half the department are getting laid off before the next quarterly review, I’m surprised senior management expect anyone to give a flying fuck about their pointless proposal. I have little interest in answering the telephone. When I lift the receiver, I usually find myself talking to a member of the public, a vast proportion of whom, appear to be ignorant and rude. ‘Humphrey’, said one of my colleagues on my first day, ‘as you’ll soon discover from working here, quite a lot of these people are unemployed because of their obnoxious personality’. I may be a servant of the public but that doesn’t mean I have to respect them.

One of the more contemptible practices of the English is our habit of taking ancient and established local pastimes and turning them into boring, overcomplicated sports, saturated with unnecessary rules, regulations and codes of ‘etiquette’. In medieval times, the sole premise of football was to get a sheep’s bladder to the other end of the village whilst causing as many injuries to the opposing team as possible. The Victorians took this noble pastime and converted it into the shambles we see today. By far the worst of the sports created on these fair shores is undoubtedly Cricket.

Whilst I applaud the efforts of my fellow countrymen in wrestling the ashes from the Australians, I feel I also have to condemn it. Generations of school children, including me, have been forced to play it against their will, and frankly this process is equivalent to child slavery. At school I launched a one-man boycott of cricket because I felt it was wasting valuable seconds of my life that could be better spent engaged in less futile activities. This attitude was sparked by one infamous incident. One sunny afternoon at the crease, I went to slog a ball and was hit firmly in the bollocks by the bowler’s delivery. As I slumped onto the ground in agony, I was disgusted to hear the other team appeal and the umpire accordingly raised his hand to send me back to the pavilion. After that, I refused to play and I was subsequently put in charge of the scoreboard. Since I never bothered to learn the rules, this rapidly descended into a farce and the board never had any sort of link to what was occurring on the pitch. This left me the subject of some scorn and I recall my master shouting at me:

'I think its disgraceful that a lad like you is going to my former boarding house at Uppingham when you clearly have no appetite for the 'gentlemen’s game'

(This isn't a working class hardship story)

Since I was often relegated to the sidelines, I had the advantage of pondering how utterly worthless the game is. Cricket is essentially a battle between the bowler and the batsman. Everyone else in the team is rarely called into activity and is effectively excluded from the proceedings. Occasionally the ball comes to you, you throw it back, that’s the sum total of your participation.

It’s very much an allegory of life, large periods of suffering and boredom in which nothing very interesting occurs. When something exciting does happen, you are rarely involved. Cricket is the most boring, over-complicated, field sport ever conceived, and to claim that it could ever supersede 'the beautiful game' is farcical in the extreme'. Any movement to establish it as the national sport will force me to turn to terrorism.

Upheavals

2005-09-11T05:40:00.000-07:00

My boss sauntered over to my desk as I was reading the BBC news online page for about the 20th time that morning. ‘We are just having a bit of an office reshuffle, would you mind moving back over to Amanda’s desk’ she said. I always seem to get moved on from desk to desk in this fashion as if I’m a particularly troublesome family of Travellers. I’ve subsequently learned that this seemingly innocuous sentence is actually management speak for ‘we have just sacked your best mate in the office, get over there and keep quiet or the same thing will happen to you’. I had been wondering why my unfortunate comrade had been sitting there in floods of tears for the best part of the morning – I had assumed it was just that the drudgery of mail merging had got to her. Eventually she could no longer take it and stormed off home in distress.

‘Did she leave her security pass when she left’, my boss asked. This seemed a tad insensitive until I realised that this is simply the way of the workplace; we are all expendable cogs in the bureaucratic machine and must routinely blame all our mistakes on other people as a method of survival. The office is similar to that show ‘Big brother’, and as a temp I am constantly up for eviction. I learned subsequently that there was a debate over which temporary employee to sack and I came out on top - no so much survival of the fittest, more survival of the fattest.

Apparently Amanda was sacked for being incompetent. This seems to me to be a tad harsh as the entire organisation is founded on incompetence. Instead of putting some money towards improving our abysmal crime statistics that are wreaking the city’s reputation, we are spending £300,000 on hiring a bunch of P.R people to spread propaganda. Crime in Rottingham-on-Trent is both troubling and hilarious. Apparently my neighbourhood is infested with a bunch of louts called ‘The Waterfront Gang’. This explains why there is infantile graffiti all over the place saying things like ‘WFG tru soldiers for life’ and ‘P.C Johnson is a black bastard who smokes crack’. One of the gang members who is being tried for the Danielle Beccan murder, apparently had his postcode tattooed on his head. It goes without saying that this is incredibly stupid - what happens if he moves to a different area?. The only possible advantage I can see it that when you get whacked in a drive by shooting, or something of that ilk, you can be posted back to your neighbourhood. Its incredibly silly, but I suppose that’s what happens when you spend your days sniffing glue and pretending you live in south central Los Angeles and not a sleepy English suburb called ‘The Meadows’ – its not the most ‘Gangsta’ sounding placename.

Another thing to come out of that meeting is that the council employs a rather KGB-esque group of busy bodies, whose task is to spy on our Internet history and make sure we aren’t sending any dodgy emails. They seem to have twigged that the working day of me and a large percentage of my colleagues consists of playing solitaire and googling random stuff on the Internet. The truth is that my job involves a lot of mindless data entry and I need something to keep my brain going, hence I read encyclopaedia articles in between rare bouts of activity. If I didn’t do this I would probably go insane, declare an ‘office jihad’, scrawl ‘Help Me’ on my chest in biro and set about attacking my colleagues with the Referrals folder. This, I suspect, would be more of a barrier to productivity than me wasting time on the internet.

I’ve been trying to think of ways to fight back against ‘the machine’. The only plan that I’ve come up with so far is to send normal office emails such as ‘Here are the stats for quarter March 05 – August 05’ but to give them snappy titles like ‘Anal Hardcore Action XXX’. This should fox those nosy parkers who spy on all our correspondence, or get me fired.

The Scent of Summer

2005-08-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

As I wandered happily through the Meadows, I found myself temporarily filled with Joi d’ Vive. A gentle breeze rustled through the trees and the air was filled with the scent of summer. True, on the odd patch of pavement, this consisted mainly of the smell of petrified dog turd, but in the main, my nostrils were filled with the odour of cut grass, sizzling barbeques and ice cream. As always in the city of Rottingham on Trent, this mood is often the prelude to the appearance of something abysmal.

As I wandered along I recalled in my head the eloquent verses of William Blake’s ode to summer

‘O thou, who passest thro’ our vallies in
Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat
That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer,
Oft pitched’st here thy golden tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy, thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair…….FUCKING PERVERT!!!!!!!!’

My train of thought had once again been cast asunder by a barrage of expletives. Usually these come from hooded teenagers outside the Bridgeway centre, but I sensed these came from something altogether more terrible. I turned in the direction from which the shouting had come and beheld the ugliest creature I had ever seen. Its head was completely bald except for a few straggly threads of hair and it was wearing what appeared to be a tea cosy. It’s ears were red in texture and pitched forward so that its face was oddly reminiscent of a dormouse. It wore a stained T shirt and ripped jeans, its head was held rigid in what appeared to be a neck brace. In it’s right hand it clutched a bottle of carbon white, the low budget alchie’s tipple of choice.

‘FUCK OFF, F F F F FFUCKING PERVERT’

The woman -at least I thought it was a woman, the thing appeared to be genderless- staggered ever closer, as she approached I detected that delightful cocktail of aromas that occur when you relive yourself in your underwear but can’t be bothered changing. I found it hard to determine whether she was addressing me, it seemed not to matter. Hurriedly I sped up my stride and wandered home as quick as I could. Later Katie saw the creature flashing her breasts at the bus stop, putting beyond doubt the question of her sex, and later investigations revealed her name to be Rita. Apparently she is a local resident of some note.

In the Office kitchenette, the laws of the frontier apply. Pathetic attempts to establish the rule of law through reproachful messages, such as ‘Please stop stealing our milk’, are completely ignored. Some of the more deluded members of staff attempt to protect their milk using the flawed policy of writing their name on the carton. In my view, this displays a tactical naivety not seen since the Mexican general Santa Anna decided it would be a great idea to make his entire army take a siesta in the middle of a war zone. The reality is that in the shared kitchen, any system of ownership is frowned upon and I have enthusiastically adopted the methods of plunder demonstrated by my colleagues.

And yet, the kitchenette has a certain set of regulations. When sharing this space with another person the unspoken rule appears to be that you must stare blankly in front of you and make no attempt to communicate whatsoever, all the while shuffling uncomfortably like a priest who has inadvertently wandered into a sex shop and found himself face to face with the Archbishop. I have noticed that this is also the correct procedure to follow when you are standing in the lift.

The main rule of the workplace is that you must be as incompetent as possible throughout your employment. A brief glance at the upper echelons of management in any office clearly demonstrates that being bad at your job is no barrier to promotion. Since it is against the law to write a bad reference, you need not also fear that your mistakes will linger like a black mark against your name. If you show even the tiniest shred of ability then you will inevitably fall foul of the process of ‘delegation’, whereby people higher in the office food chain than you, will heap all of their work on your desk and expect you to merrily plough through it. I find myself wishing I had worked out the peculiarities of this system before falling foul of it. I have decided that in the future I shall emulate the emperor Claudius by pretending to be a hopeless halfwit; who knows, In the topsy turby world of the council this might even earn me a promotion and an upgrade to a scale 2 salary.

The phone next to me rang ominously and, upon lifting the receiver, I found myself on the receiving end of a bollocking from a certain Mr Gentle – not the most appropriate of surnames, Mr Arsehole would have been far more suitable. The main focus of his complaint was that I had spelt his name as ‘Mr Grentle’ during one of my epic mail-merges. ‘It doesn’t say much about your organisation if you can’t even get my bloody name right’, he ranted down the line at me. Although I still have a certain amount of fear of answering the phone I have learned to deal with these situation by simply imagining that the person on the other end of the line is a truculent genie who has become inadvertently trapped in the receiver. ‘Oh Dear’ I replied, trying my hardest not to show even a shred of remorse. The letter I had sent him had asked him to write a reference for one of our clients and it was this, I detected, which was the real reason behind his anger. ‘Well what do you expect me to do, I’m far too busy to write a reference!’ he droned on incessantly. I felt this last statement was hugely ironic in view of the fact he had enough time on his hands to phone me up and complain about my badly spelt mail merge letter. After some negotiations he clamed down and the conversation ended with some attempt at a meeting of minds, namely that we both detested each other. The next series of phone calls I took came from outraged companies who were complaining that we had not only misspelled their name on their ‘Celebration Event’ invitation, but changed it beyond all recognition, and, as they rightly pointed out, we not did have the right to arbitrarily rename their company. Since these are the same companies we are trying to impress so that they take on our clients, this is somewhat unfortunate. Its amazing how much outrage a incompetent mail merge can create.

Invoices for Biros, and other exciting stuff

2005-08-21T05:42:00.000-07:00

As I unenthusiastically turned the pages of budget number 14560039, I found myself wondering whether I was meant for greater things than inspecting invoices for biros. This is the nature of modern life. Unsatisfied with our dull and uninteresting existence, we construct more exciting destinies for ourselves. 16th century French peasants had few ambitions beyond owning a small plot of dirt and a rusty pitchfork; we in these enlightened times refuse to accept the fact we are condemned to mediocrity and accordingly, plunge ourselves into vast amounts of debt in order to achieve that impossible dream.

‘50 biros –large, engraved with project logo’ read the almost comically unexciting piece of paper, and yet in the bureaucratic nightmare that is working for the council such documents are often clamoured for by over zealous auditors, eager to expose the slightest modicum of corruption.

Of course, all they have to do is look at the story behind the invoices to expose the wastage that goes on in this department. For example, most of these logoed biros are now completely useless as publicity material because some bright spark decided to change the name of the entire project to ‘Ideal Opportunities’ after the branded stationary had been ordered. The council is surprisingly frugal in some areas, refusing to buy us plastic cups for the water cooler, but squandering vast sums of money on a glossy council magazine that most people simply chuck in the bin as soon as it arrives through their letterbox. Rightly so, because these magazines are carefully honed instruments of propaganda and about as truthful as an ‘end of year update’ letter from the Goebbels family.

Then there is the ironically titled ‘celebration event’ at the end of this week where we are wasting a grand of tax payers money on a party for those students who have successfully completed our courses. Our project has a noble aim, to give people the skills they need to get back into the job market, and yet simply offering to pay all the course fees, childcare and travel expenses isn’t enough to get people to enrol and better their lot. In addition, we have to offer £100 vouchers to our student when they successfully complete 80% of the course; these are to be handed over at the ‘Celebrating Achievement’ event. The result is that many people simply turn up for most of the course and then drop out when they are entitled to their voucher. This, of course, is hardly the Socialist dream; in fact my political views are rapidly becoming more Victorian as the weeks go on. I used to believe in a generous welfare system, now I find myself subscribing to Malthusian notions of letting the excess population of the United Kingdom simply starve itself out of existence.

My colleagues in the office have a demeanour that, I imagine, is strongly reminiscent of the inhabitants of old Muscovy, when informed that a large horde of bloodthirsty Mongols were approaching from the eastern horizon. Apparently the - rather too idealistic- ‘ideal opportunities’ program is being shut down come March because it is a complete waste of money. Hence my comrades are displaying very little of the protestant work ethic and mostly seem to sit around playing solitaire and browsing the Internet looking for other jobs. Our management have reacted to this crisis by bravely going on holiday; with such inspiring leadership its hard not to reach new heights of cynicism.

In reaction to this climate of poor motivation, I have set about making myself useful by designing motivational posters that will inspire me and my admin team-mate Amanda into Herculean feats of office administration. The first poster I made bore the inspiring logo ‘TEAM ADMIN’, resplendent in front of a flaming background. After struggling to think of a suitable motto, I decided to write ‘No problem too big, no task too futile’. Then, deciding the poster was looking a little drab, I included a picture of Lord Kitchener, who declares through a speech bubble that we are ‘mail merging for a better tomorrow’. This was received fairly well in the office, and, emboldened, I decided to work on something a little more controversial. An email had earlier been circulated that displayed a photograph of the fattest cat I had ever seen. This, I thought, was the ideal mascot for the City Council. After a swift, and rather amateurish, foray in photo-shop, I scattered bundles of money at the cats feet and gave him some bling to wear. Having added the Rottingham-on-Trent city council logo, my inspirational poster was complete. ‘Wasting public money for a better future’ I added at the bottom. Having shown this to my colleagues they expressed their approval, but told me in no uncertain terms that it would be prudent to banish this creation to the darkest reaches of my desk drawer. The Admin logo has been a success however, and I have taken to adding it to the phone messages I have to write down for people; now the header reads ‘Team Admin – Because we can’t afford an answering machine’.

There are many things that I have an opinion on, but a cucumber isn’t one of them. If you asked me to discuss the tactical flaws in ‘Operation Barbarossa’, then perhaps I would be able to hold my own in a discussion, however, vegetables inspire no strong emotions in me whatsoever. I find that this makes shopping with Katie a tad problematic because I am often asked to venture an opinion on supermarket produce; my failure to do so is usually met by a tidal wave of resentment. One thing I do have a very strong opinion is this new fad whereby some person –usually a big brother contestant declares something along the following lines

‘I don’t bitch behind people’s backs, If I don’t like someone then I tell it to their face’

This is often said with a certain degree of pride, as though it is somehow an admirable quality. Well, if you subscribe to this dogma then let me enlighten you, telling people straight out that you don’t like them is just being extremely rude. It’s as simple as that. In contrast, bitching behind peoples back is both a noble and a necessary part of belonging to the human race because it allows us to harmlessly expunge the negative views that pop into our heads on a regular basis. If this process did not occur then we would live our lives as seething cauldrons of hatred, ready to explode at the slightest pretext. As an illustration, if you applied this moronic ‘telling it like it is’ principle into the world of diplomacy then we would be bathed in nuclear Armageddon within seconds, and deservedly so.

Feedback frolics

2005-08-03T05:44:00.000-07:00

I winced as the shrill sound of the office phone disturbed my peaceful daydreaming. As I lifted the receiver I cursed the long decayed corpse of Alexander Graham Bell. My most famous ancestor, Robert Whitehead, was largely responsible for inventing the torpedo, a weapon the Germans later copied, dubbed the blackhead, and used to sink millions of tons of British shipping. His creation was unfairly given the moniker ‘the devils device’ yet I feel this adjective has more resonance when it is applied to the telephone, that most loathsome of instruments that connects me with the outside world.

‘Good morning, Ideal Oppotunities…How may I help you’ I recited robotically into the headset. I had uttered the words with about as much passion and enthusiasm as man who has been sentenced to life imprisonment in a Siberian Gulag. ‘Hi there, I was just enquiring about the retail academy’ came the voice on the other end. I hurriedly pressed the recall button and redirected the call through to one of my superiors, the whiney voice on the other end stuttered briefly and then stopped abruptly as the call was patched through. I sat back with a sigh of contentment: my phone had been temporarily exorcised of annoying members of the public asking questions I haven’t the foggiest how to answer. With the click of a mouse I went back to reading the BBC news website and counting down the seconds until 5.00, so it goes in the modern workplace.

In the beginning there was the working class, strong, noble and defiant, the very engine of the British Empire, toiling and sweating to produce goods that would be sold around in every city of the world. Then the manufacturing sector collapsed, jobs moved elsewhere and the long established professions of the lower classes became worthless amidst the new service economy. And so, the powers that be looked down and said ‘look at all these new office jobs being created, and look at all these unemployed people, if only those people had the skills for those jobs, then all would be well in this country!’. A great idea had been conceived, the problem being that most wonderful ideas - communism, universal health care and freeing Iraq from tyranny- are somewhat flawed when it comes to the actual execution.

Working in an office requires some basic fundamental ‘skills’ such as the ability to work in a team without causing vast amounts of friction, a basic understanding of Microsoft Office, and to be able to communicate ones views without offending everyone in the building. Quite a few of the people that get selected for our courses shouldn’t even be remotely contemplating working in an office because they can’t do any of these things, and yet that is what the job market dictates. Hence I now find myself drafting patronising ‘feedback reports’ for these poor buggers to tell them exactly why they failed the assessment: it’s a somewhat tragic task but, with my cynical outlook, its also one I thoroughly enjoy.

I find writing these things very similar to those awful school reports I was subjected to throughout my pre-university education. My father insisted on reading these out to me on the sofa, purposefully adopting a woeful tone of voice, that made every achievement sound like a disaster and every bad comment sound like he was announcing the death of a close family member. ‘Humphrey….has been improving in maths’ he would read, dragging out the ‘has’ in order to extract every ounce of cynicism from the sentence possible. ‘BUT THERE IS ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT IN HIS GRASP OF ALGEBRA’ he would continue, dramatically, as if this phrase alone were enough to put an everlasting stain on my character. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and I find myself writing these ‘feedback reports’ for grown adults: whoever said it was childhood that held the most pleasures.

On the assessment day one woman in the ‘teamwork exercise’ had been thoroughly rude, shouting her ideas out over the rest of the group and staring with a look of outrage and disgust at any other team member who dared say anything. You would have thought the word ‘teamwork’ would have given her some clue as to what was required. We had had a meeting after the assessment to determine which of our candidates would be selected for recruitment; the notes I had taken for this particular client read ‘domineering, rude, arrogant and overbearing’. I struggled to think of subtler wording to convey this to her. Having pondered the matter at length, I decided upon ‘In her enthusiasm to communicate her views, the candidate dominated the discussion at the expense of other team-members’. Then I added –laughing my head off as I did so- ‘Effective collaboration within a team requires listening to the points of view of other members of the group and encouraging them to contribute’. I was beginning to spout Human Resources like a born bull-shitter.

The next failed candidate I turned to proved more problematic. My notes read ‘clearly mad, started talking about “crystallisation”, rude in the team exercise’. I struggled for something nice to say and decided upon ‘Throughout the assessment, the candidate was pleasant and approachable’, this, I find, is an incredibly useful generic term; heck, even Idi Amin was pleasant and approachable if you were on the right side of him. I then advised the blighter to ‘develop his communication skills’; not going on insane, psychedelic rants during the interview stage might be good place to start. Hopefully work will throw up yet more opportunities to be a patronising bastard.

Disclaimer: All characters and events in this story are fictitious, and any similarity to a real person or city council, living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintended by the author.

My Garden

2005-05-29T05:48:00.000-07:00

To me, gardening had always seemed much like holding in a fart, a futile and pointless attempt to halt the true course of nature. Much better, thought I, to let the land lie fallow and see what happens. As a result, when presented with a patch of land by my parents to garden as I pleased, it rapidly turned into something resembling a Viet Cong sanctuary. My old age has brought profound changes in my demeanour and I’ve finally begun to take an interest in the great outdoors, or more specifically, the tangled mess that confronts me every time I step outside to dump more rubbish in the back shed. Once this was a nice little garden, tended by a sweet old lady with an appalling taste in tacky garden accessories. Then, the rugby girls moved in, and the garden rapidly degenerated into an urban jungle, infested with snails, small bugs and weeds. When I first cast my eyes over the thicket at the rear of my property, I saw its potential. Like a pioneer settler could see myself carving something out of this wilderness, a place where I can sit out in the sunshine and be at one with nature. I learned subsequently that nature has other ideas.

My backyard contains several items I have selected for extermination. A small but offensive pond is the principal offender; once upon a time it may have contained goldfish, now it appears to have become infested with putrid green algae. Towards the rear of the garden are some bizarre multicoloured sticks that look much like psychedelic toilet brushes. These rated extremely high on the bad taste scale and I swiftly banished them to exile in the shed. The Peruvian wind chimes were scheduled for a similar fate but they seem to have grown on me. In one corner is a tall wooden seating arrangement that has clearly seen better days. A large section has fallen to the ground and, judging by the foul stench, I deduce that the local tabby has marked his territory on it. I repaired this structure with twine and sticky tape but the roof subsequently dropped on my head when I sat down to ponder the fruits of my labour. Having uttered several unpleasant, but original expletives, I came to the conclusion I should have paid far more attention in woodworking class and learned the basics, instead of making battleships out of plywood and staging mini recreations of the Battle of Jutland. Another object I’m not keen on is the ‘passion flower’ that dominates a small corner of my garden. It is supposed to be a moderately rare plant but it looks like something from ‘Day of the Triffids’ as it spreads its tentacles around the flower beds, suffocating all in its path. I’ve cut this back but it can’t be long before it stages a renaissance, if I does, the parrot beak is at the ready.

It may sound as if my garden resembles a scene from ‘Heart of Darkness’, but it’s a small corner of paradise compared to the awful backyards of my immediate neighbours. The people who live on my right were clearly inspired by Le Corbusier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier); their garden consists of a square of cracked concrete, broken only by a large phallic washing pole, a motif presumably meant to convey ‘a complex understanding of modernity’s impact’. To the rear of the property, my neighbours seem to have gone for a mixture of bad taste and urban gothic. At first glance, their garden only seems to contain a couple of grotesque garden gnomes, concrete slabs and a small, unimposing flowerpot. Its main feature becomes only too apparent when I head out into my garden for some peace and quiet. The aforementioned neighbours appear to have a ravenous beast of Hades chained to my fence. I can hear it clawing at the wood, dying, no doubt, to launch itself at my testicles and tear them to pieces with canine relish. The barbed wire on the top of my fence –although aesthetically repugnant- is clearly there for good reason and I’m starting to appreciate the P.O.W camp chic. The neighbour to the left has gone for the wild look, and his hedge boundary is steadily uprooting my wooden screen and claiming more and more of my territory. Previously I marked out the snails infesting my garden as second-class citizens who must be subjected to a programme of forced emigration. I decided to retaliate against neighbour number three by pitching them into his garden; a primitive form of biological warfare you might say.

Katie and I have temporarily joined the ranks of the unemployed, this situation requires living on a budget and living off Tesco’s ‘value’ produce. The Tesco’s value bread must have unusual chemical properties. It goes stale as soon as it comes into contact with the air and deteriorates rapidly over the next 24 hours. By the following morning, it has transformed into a putrid block of fungus – very useful for medicinal purposes no doubt but scant use when you want to bake a cheese toasty. The milk, on the other hand, has provided good value for money -in fact it appears to have transformed itself into tuna over the past week. Upon opening the container this morning I was greeted by a fishy aroma. Efforts to pour the substance formally known as milk into my coffee proved fruitless, as it rapidly solidified and formed a layer at the bottom of my mug. ‘Value’ seems to be an inappropriate adjective, ‘shite’ would be a more worthy substitute.

Richard and Judy and the 'Mail Order Bride Technique'

2005-05-24T05:59:00.000-07:00

img src=" http://www.biography-clarebooks.co.uk/usrimage/richardjudy.jpg" alt="Evil" />

One of the many things that keep me in a state of perpetual outrage is ‘The Richard and Judy Show’ on Channel 4. Its one of those programmes that always seems to be on the box when I take leave of my senses and turn the damn thing on. I hate everything about it, especially the self styled ‘first couple of television’, that smarmy Richard Madeley and his hideous wife Judy, whose face seems to get lumpier by the day. I even hate the title sequence; the camera sweeps across the landscape of Britain, through twee villages and small towns, over terraced houses and onwards into urban sprawl, until finally it zooms into an individual household’s television set. The inference –that the entire nation both watches and loves the show- I regard as a personal insult. This arrogance is unjustified when you consider the content of the programme. It consists of bullshit astrologers pontificating about ‘celebrity star signs’, the odd insane guest with a baseless claim to be the illegitimate son of Princess Margaret, and turgid discussion of current issues such as ‘can we hear the voices of the dead in the static from our T.V’ and ‘how is the war on terror going to affect middle England’. Surely there must be more important matters to contemplate than housewives superstition?. The last episode I watched featured the loathsome presenters sniffing the armpits of male guests to determine if they were gay or not. Needless to say this ‘experiment’ was an outright failure and achieved nothing except to provide further evidence of the death of modern culture.

A similar technique was adopted by one of Richard’s music teachers, a woman who by all accounts had well and truly lost it. At the beginning of each class she would make her pupils assemble in regimented lines and perform unusual finger exercises to ‘loosen up’. On one of these occasions an errant pupil decided that this would be an opportune moment to violently break wind and did so to much amusement. ‘Who was that !?’, screamed the teacher, her face turning purple with rage. Her question was met with silence. ‘Right’, she proclaimed, ‘I’m going to find out who it was if it’s the last thing I do’. To the amazement of the class, the teacher bent down and smelt the behinds of each pupil in turn. This unorthodox technique actually worked, and she was able to pick out the guilty party, although it’s questionable whether this triumph was worth the loss of dignity.

Déjà vu is mainly caused by a neurological anomaly, however, it commonly occurs as a result of going through the same tedious experience again and again. One of the more irritating side effects of having committed your body and soul to a person for the rest of your life –and beyond, existence of the afterlife permitting- is that you get subjected to interrogation on a regular basis. People ask all sorts of awkward questions about rings, wedding dates and all the other matrimonial accessories, forcing you to regurgitate the same subject matter time and time again. The fairer sex in particular, seem highly fixated in the whole rigmarole, often the questioning gets intense and it becomes incredibly difficult to extricate yourself from it. You go down under a flurry of enquires, ‘where is the ring’, ‘what does it look like’, ‘how did you propose’, ‘where did you propose’, all coming so rapidly that you barely have time to catch your breath. There is a way to avoid the whole unpleasantness completely by strategic deployment of what I call ‘the mail order bride technique’.

‘I hear you are getting married’, said one girl at a party I was at a couple of weeks back, I could see the whole process starting again. ‘Why yes I replied’. ‘Oooh, how exciting’ she said ‘where did you guys meet?’. ‘On the internet’ I answered, deploying the first stigma. ‘Oh.. really, in a chatroom or something?’. ‘No actually, I saw her advert on a bride website’. I was beginning to wring the romance out of the conversation. Seeing she was looking a bit deflated, and feeling slightly guilty about the whole thing, I decided to give the game away and delivered an implausible comment, ‘yeah… her name is Lo Wing Ping and she is from Thailand’. I looked over at my victim; I thought I had spoken with sufficient sarcasm for her to twig, apparently not. ‘Yeah’ I said, ‘she’s coming over from Bankok in a few days and then we can get married, Thai women are great you know’. I then went on a chauvinistic rant about how Thai women are less tainted by feminist values than western women and are more compliant when it comes to housework and child rearing. Surely she would understand I was joking. Instead she beat a hasty retreat to the next room, presumably to tell her friends that I buy women on the Internet. Again, it remains questionable whether this triumph was worth the loss of dignity.

Working Man

2005-05-24T05:45:00.000-07:00

I don’t know Ali Mbomba, but I detest the blighter. At the time of his birth in the war torn jungles of Angola, it was by no means evident that our paths would cross. Then he made the decision to leave, and somehow made his way across the dark continent, sailed the clear blue waters of the Mediterranean sea and arrived on the shores of Britain. At the end of this long journey Elizeu ended up amongst the red brick terraces of Rottingham-on-trent, far from his native land. Having tried unsuccessfully to find work he decided to apply to the Council for funding. Meanwhile, in another corner of the same city, a lowly temp by the name of Humphrey Clarke struggled unsuccessfully to input his badly drafted personal information into a poorly designed database. The form before him looked as if it had been filled out by Guy Fawkes after a lengthy session with the torture rack. Having stared quizzically at this illegible document for a good hour -partly in an attempt to decipher its contents, and partly to waste as much of the working day as possible- I concluded that I had incorrectly spelled his name when I had entered his records earlier in the day. This meant I was going to have to go back through the entire system and painstakingly correct every single entry.

Fate had offered a limited range of options, either stay unemployed and lose brain cells watching ‘The Trisha Show’, find some explosives and blow myself up in the name of Islam, or whore my services out to a temping agency and earn some much needed cash. I now work in the Economic Department of the main council building.

Working for Rottingham-on-trent council provides a startlingly relaxed atmosphere. Looking around my office I can see a half dozen people whose only role in the team is to play solitaire and read ‘The Metro’. However, the work does involve a hideous amount of bureaucratic nonsense. In the real world, if I fancy going to the pub, I simply pick up my coat and my wallet and head down to the local brewery for some much-needed sustenance. Were I doing this as part of my employment with the council, I would first have to submit a ‘Pub application form’ to the economic department stating my reasons for this action and a financial breakdown of all the money I intended to spend. This form would have to be produced in triplicate and sent to other departments on special headed notepaper, with one photocopy retained for filing in the records. The entire request would then have to be logged in two separate computer databases in case of an Audit, and could only be acted upon after being the subject of a departmental meeting. By the time the request had made it back from head office, it would probably be closing time and too late to go to the pub anyway. Newton’s third law of motion states that ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’; when you work at the council, every action creates a mountain of paperwork the size of the Eiffel Tower.

In theory, my job is to help people with no skills or qualifications find employment; in practice, I tend to sit around looking baffled and confused, attempting unsuccessfully to avoid becoming the ‘Office bitch’. This isn’t easy when you have an Admin role, as part of your job description is to perform any task that a member of permanent staff feels is too demeaning, dull or downright futile for them to do themselves. The aim is to train ‘disadvantaged people’ by offering courses in an area like Admin or Taxi driving, at the end of one of these courses we guarantee them a job interview and hopefully get the poor buggers into employment. Easier said than done. Despite offering them free travel to the college, complete funding for their course and £100 gift vouchers if they make it to the end, even then, some of them still can’t be arsed to turn up. This leads me to conclude that Jesus was a tad naïve when he said ‘blessed are the meek’, some of them are clearly scum.

Last week I attended an employment assessment day. The aim of this event was to put some of our clients through a series of tests to determine whether they would be offered a job interview later in the week. I found myself sitting awkwardly in a meeting area, surrounded by unfriendly faces. I began to wish my colleague hadn’t left the room; years on the dole had seemed to foster a demeanour of resentment amongst some of these people and they looked on at me with distrust and antipathy. I realised with horror that I was running out of things to staple. This had been my pretext for avoiding eye contact, now I was going to have to take the plunge. Looking up from my files, the whole room appeared to be staring at me, as if they expected me to juggle for them or perform an assortment of amusing card tricks. A rather twitchy looking chap was sitting close to me and I decided I should make some sort of an attempt at conversation. ‘Where have you come from today?’ I said. By the look of disgust on his face you could be forgiven for thinking I had asked ‘are you in the habit of fornicating with your sister?’. ‘Where..have I come from?’ he replied. It had seemed a simple question, It wasn’t as if I was asking him to reveal his entire ancestry. ‘Er….what part of Rottingham?’ I replied, seeking to clarify what I had said. ‘Brexstowe’ he said, as if he were delivering a cutting insult. Conversation is a two way process, if the other person isn’t willing to play ball then there’s not a great amount you can do. After saying ‘Oh…’ I decided not to continue talking and looked for other things to staple.

My colleague returned, ‘Humphrey is just going to take your photograph for our files’ he informed the assembled company. I, looking embarrassed, picked up the camera and motioned the first person over to the wall so I could take a Polaroid of them. To my dismay, I tugged on the film too hard and the contents of the camera spooled out onto the floor. ‘You should take that out of his wages’ said the twitchy chap, helpfully; deciding to stay professional I contented myself with muttering, ‘I hope you never get a job you bastard’ under my breath.

The day having drawn to a close we began the process of selecting which candidates had made it through to the final stage. This yielded a chance to see affirmative action at its very best. Having spent a while sorting the candidates into ‘yes’ and ‘no’ piles based on their test results, we came to the sudden realisation that most of the ‘nos’ were ethnic minorities. A swift reshuffling, and political correctness was restored. A tad unfair perhaps, but very ethical.

There was one fellow on the assessments who I could tell was slightly mad and this fact became steadily more apparent when looking over his in-tray exercise. In reply to the question ‘A female co-worker has cut her hand badly, what priority should this be given?’, we were expecting our candidates to simply regurgitate a load of health and safety stuff. The mad fellow had written ‘this situation may require some personal diplomacy, but all will be right in the end, at any rate it is not in the least bit urgent’. Beside the scenario ‘The chief executive has arranged a meeting, what priority should this be given’, he had simply written ‘You ignore the word of the chief Executive at your peril!!!!!!!!’. We decided, on reflection, to let him through to the interview stage. Sadly he failed to make it through because during the interview he refused to discuss the questions at hand and instead went on a bizarre rant about ‘crystallisation’ and ‘energy flows’. I don’t think he is the maddest person to ever be on one of our courses. Whilst flicking through one of the files the other day an application form drew my attention. It was filled out in a large, erratic scrawl; under ‘why should you be considered for the course’ it read ‘I WANT JOB’; under disabilities it read ‘SCHIZOPHRENIA’. Attached to the back of the form was a letter, which read ‘during the course, this students behaviour has been unusual. He sits in class, writing on himself in biro and mumbling, some of the student have complained that he often tries to steal their chocolate’. Getting such miscreants into work is going to be challenging to say the least.

Disclaimer: All characters and events in this story are fictitious, and any similarity to a real person or city council, living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintended by the author.

Warballs

2005-05-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

Eighties revival is in full swing. Duran Duran have reformed, stupid haircuts have once again become de rigour, and now bomb attacks in central London are back with a vengeance. Yesterday morning, with the better half safely off to work, I settled down for my customary diet of daytime television. To my dismay I discovered that ‘Houses under the Hammer’ had been cancelled in favour of that curious phenomenon of the modern age, a death and destruction T.V marathon. A bunch of terrorist rascals are evidently bent on destroying my way of life once again. Since my way of life currently consists of sitting on my fat arse watching ‘The Trisha Show’, a part of me feels this isn’t such a bad thing after all.

There is a British code of etiquette for these occasions, perhaps best encapsulated in one of the concluding scenes of ‘Carry on up the Khyber’. Whilst under siege by the angry forces of the Khazi of Kalibar, Sir Henry Rough-Diamond and his entourage decide to carry on as if nothing is happening and hold an impromptu dinner party. With parts of the room exploding and spear wielding tribesman rushing into the room, they maintain a stiff upper lip and carry on as if they are oblivious to the events unfolding outside. The advice given by President Bliar, was to ‘maintain our resolve’. Unhelpfully, no explanation was given as to what this entailed. I decided the best recourse was to keep my upper lip as stiff as possible, to which Katie retaliated by stiffening both lips in a bid to out-stiff me. The competition having reached a stalemate, we settled down to watch the many hours of news coverage.

It seemed as if a lot of the sound bites had been robbed directly from one of those Pathe Pictorial newsreels from the nineteen forties, a sort of a modern rekindling of the Blitz spirit. After a while the endless Churchillian rhetoric got rather wearing. I knew I had watched far too much of it when I uttered the moronic words, ‘Isn’t it a bit unfortunate that that news reporter’s surname is ‘Bombs’. I had mistaken the news title for the reporter’s name, and had been under the foolish impression he was actually called ‘London Bombs’. Too much suffering on the box evidently has the effect of frying the brain.

The atrocity is apparently set to become the new 9/11, yet the date is a bit unfortunate; 07/07/05 doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue in quite the same way. The easy solution is to jumble the date up so that it reads 007/05 and forms a more stirring rallying cry for the struggle ahead. I attempted –briefly- to do my bit for Britain by finding Osama Bin Ladin’s cave on Google’s new satellite imagery program; after about half an hour of staring at badly pixelated Afghan hillside, I decided my efforts were better directed elsewhere.

It appeared that the best thing to do under the circumstances was to head to the brewery to sink a few patriotic pints down at the Castle Lock Brewery. Things were fairly normal until a strange man dressed in a cowboy costume strolled up to the bar. His dress rather reminded me of Chevy Chase in ‘The Three Amigos’ and he appeared to be completely insane. ‘Look mate’, ‘I’m not going to serve you!’, shouted the indignant bar manager. The man stared back at him like Clint Eastwood in ‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly’; ‘Why won’t you serve me?, because I’m a cowboy!’ he replied. He then concluded that the chap behind the bar did not exist because he wasn’t smiling and left the pub to be mad elsewhere. I love nutters, they add colour to a drab neighbourhood.

During the odd free moment I have been scouring the Internet to find out what some of the fuckwits of the world are saying about the attacks. The neds on Bawbag.com gave a characteristically sensitive response to events in London

‘it wisnae terrorists it wis me, GIT THEY ENGLISH CUNTS TAE FUCK.. they terrorists arnae daein it fir ther beliefs, ther daein it as a favour fir us’

The conversation then turned to what the ned response would be to a terror attack on their Glasgow hovels.

‘fukn paki bastards!…..aye there durty fukin cunts,see if the even think about any bombins up ere,theres about 30 ov us going on a rampage dunn the shaws n govenhill n banglashields,every fukin mosk hing is gettin it’

I'm getting the impression that the message of the 'One Scotland, many races' campaign got lost somewhere along the line.

‘The government have no one to blame but themselves for yesterdays bombings, if they hadn't let the paki bastards in the country in the first place this never would have happened. Get the pakis out to fuck, couldn't trust the dirty wee bastards as far as i could throw them….. were gettin sum spray paint n hittin banglashields at the wkend’

The Nazis on Stormfront seem to have a very similar mindset

‘The white race traitor lemmings are just as much to blame for this as those who planted the bombs. Those lemmings that have sat by for the last fourty years on their rear ends and done nothing constructive while our country was flooded by the turd world.’

Lemmings are actually very active creatures that shun hibenation, you would be very lucky indeed to find one 'sitting on his arse'

‘David Duke spoke again today in his broadcast, that the muslim problem is only as a result of jews controlling our governments and media. But wow, some dickheads continue to dismiss what David Duke is on about and they further dismiss the jewish problem as 'conspiracy theory'. People who dismiss the jewish problem are shabbos goys, and they play into the jewish hands with their 'anti-muslim' rants. The more you bash the muslims, the more laws our traitorous governments will introduce to ban WN.

* The jew in his daily media rant says - "o'h look at these nasty islamic terrorists, their bombing your'e White people!"

* The dickhead says - "get the muslims, burn them out!"

* The WN says - "hold on a minute, it was you jew who let them in the first place! GET OUT OF MY COUNTRY JEW!"’

Ah, so the Jews are behind it somehow, glad they cleared that one up.

Ikea, Reading on the toilet and Live H8

2005-05-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

‘Life is a mixture of suffering and boredom’ wrote Nietzsche; I presume he was assembling a piece of Ikea furniture at the time. Over the years I had managed to avoid this thankless task. I loathe those adverts the Ikea company puts out, urging the population of this Sceptred isle to ‘be less British’. Being Swedish evidently involves exhibitionist nudity in saunas, being cowardly and neutral in major conflicts and selling iron ore to the Nazis. I’ve long been suspicious of the Scandinavians since, during a documentary about pagan culture, I noticed a piece of Swedish cave art that depicted a man on skis having sex with an elk. This view became further entrenched when my cousin Tammy began dating one, a delightful chap named Ulrich. During one awkward moment at the dinner table he uttered a particularly memorable anecdote. ‘Der vere zese three students who vent camping in der vilderness and they camped down for der night….. then a polar bear came and ate them’. He then broke into a big booming laugh, which was greeted by a bit of a stunned silence from the rest of us. I guess you had to be there. Taking all this into consideration, I think I shall stick to being British and intensely Xenophobic. None of this changes that fact that the stuff is cheap and more convenient to install than anything else on the market.

Convenient but not easy. Last nights shenanigans quickly resembled the jigsaw puzzle from hell. To save time and money the Ikea company has decided to dispense with producing proper written instructions and has instead provided a series of obscure drawings showing bland robotic figures going through the motions of assembly. They remind me very much of those imaginative ‘Home Safety’ manuals from the Cold War, which showed you how to construct a nuclear shelter out of a couple of bin-bags, a door and a bucket for ‘human waste’. Working out just what these figures are doing is incredibly difficult for many reasons. The screws are numbered to allow them to be easily identified, the trouble is the numbers are eight digits long and about as easy to memorise as the bible translated into binary. This resulted in serious delays while I attempted to recall which hole screw 01998485 goes into. Having assembled the base of the sofa, I was directed by the instructions to flip it over and, to my horror and disgust, the entire thing then collapsed faster than a democracy in West Africa. This happened a further three times, before finally I realised that screw 12949598 was in the wrong hole. After a further hour of heaving, straining and issuing of expletives I finally managed to complete the damn thing. It was tempting to deconstruct the thing with a sledgehammer for putting me through blood, toil, tears and sweat. Luckily I restrained myself. I need somewhere to plant my oversized behind when I’m watching Big Brother.

It has been suggested in some circles that if you work hard to build something then you feel a sense of fondness for it. This is simply untrue. Right now I hold about the same amount of affection for this sofa that Allied P.O.Ws must have felt for the Burma Railway.

A few years ago I was disgusted to read that more people voted in the Big-Brother election than in the General Election. This year I failed to vote for any of the parties in the election because I was too lazy to walk to the polling station. Last night I voted to evict Maxwell from the Big Brother house. I hate becoming part of an embarrassing statistic, but I despise that egotistical cockney bastard and I’m sick of him polluting my television screen with his repulsive presence. I only wish they would hold a similar referendum on ‘Diagnosis Murder’ so I might expunge that from the airwaves as well.

The household is something of a minefield of humiliation. I have taken to tripping over the futon with appalling regularity and end up hopping around the house like a landmine victim. On another occasion, I was enjoying a refreshing drink of Fanta from what I thought was a trendy glass. Katie helpfully pointed out to me that I was drinking from the top to the carpet cleaner. She disapproves of some of my habits, most of which I not only believe to be normal, but fundamental elements of an Englishman’s daily routine. The foremost of these is reading on the toilet. For me, going to the toilet involves far more than answering natures call; it is an intellectual experience. Most of my books at some time or another, move from the bookcase into a haphazard pile next to the W.C. I see nothing undignified in this activity, and yet every tome I read on the toilet is referred to my better half as a ‘poopy book’ and regarded as if it is somehow tainted. You have a choice when wasting precious seconds of your life straining to relieve yourself. Either stare blankly ahead of you, or dip into a good P.G Wodlehouse; I prefer the latter and I am better educated because of it.

I viewed Live 8 with a mixture of youthful idealism and outright cynicism. For the odd moment, I felt myself drawn into the energy of the event. ‘Surely’, thought I, ‘if we all band together in one glorious purpose we can achieve a revolution in global trade and save the dark continent from barbarism and poverty’. Then my idealism evaporated. ‘Nah, never gonna happen’. This sea change in my attitude was caused by the idiotic statements of the artists, who got a bit overexcited by the occasion and began seeing themselves as world statesmen instead of moronic imbeciles who can bang out a good tune occasionally. The word ‘historic’ was used with infuriating regularity, and while I appreciated having something to listen to while I painted the kitchen, the concert certainly wasn’t ‘the greatest achievement of humankind’. One comment annoyed me immensely. Some chap –I think he must have been a drummer- stared into the camera with intellectual conviction and said ‘you know what, if it was the other way round and the west was in need, then Africa would come to our aid'. I tried hard to imagine Mugabe, Gaddafi and the rest of those tin-pot African dictators holding a benefit concert on our behalf, but it seemed to be stretching credibility somewhat.

I’ve read subsequently that Idi Amin actually set up a ‘Save Britain’ fund when our economy was in difficulty during the oil crisis of the early seventies. By this time Amin was feeling a bit miffed with Blighty and was calling himself ‘The conqueror of the British Empire in Africa and Uganda in particular’ and, bizarrely, ‘King of Scotland’. In 1973, seeing the potential for a wind-up, he sent a telegram to Britain saying

‘In the past months the people of Uganda have been following with sorrow the alarming economic crisis befalling on Britain. The sad fact is that it is the ordinary British citizen who is suffering most. I am today appealing to all the people of Uganda who have all along been traditional friends of the British people to come forward and help their former colonial masters.’

Amin was not deterred by the lack of response and went as far as to organise food aid to be sent to Britain. In a further telegram to Whitehall, he said

‘Today, 21 January 1974, the people of Kigezi District donated one lorry load of vegetables and wheat. I am now requesting you to send an aircraft to collect this donation urgently before it goes bad. I hope you will react quickly so as not to discourage Ugandans from donating more.’

Perhaps I was being too hasty in dismissing the philanthropy of African

Sod the Children

2005-05-05T06:03:00.000-07:00

As I looked into the mirror this morning, I saw the faces of the children I’d left behind. They were no longer smiling and laughing; their once happy countenances were now forlorn and sorrowful. Horrified by this spectacle of abandonment and, with feelings of shame washing over me, I was forced to turn away. My selfish actions had ruined everything.

On a pleasurable jaunt through Nottingham city centre in the midday sunshine, I was waylaid by an earnest looking woman armed with a clipboard. She had long flowing blonde hair, and large eyes that seemed out of proportion to the rest of her face, she reminded me rather of a rabbit with myxomatosis. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?’ she said, and I decided that, for once, I wouldn’t rush past and ignore her. ‘Sure, why not’ I said, deciding on reflection that I had nothing better to do. She then told me a heart-wrenching story about some village in the Sudan -or some other god-forsaken sun baked wilderness- that had no water supply, forcing the inhabitants to walk over miles of desert every day for a cup of moisture. The settlement was on the brink of starvation, until at the last minute, a British charity had stepped in and rescued them. Two thoughts occurred to me at this juncture, why the heck would anyone build a village out in the desert with no water supply in the first place?, I should have thought it was a necessary pre-requisite. Secondly, what did all this have to do with me?. I could sense I was getting drawn into a ‘guilt ambush’, but it was too late, I would just have to ride the blows as they came. ‘Anyway, if I could just have your bank details, then we could set up a direct debit to Save the Children’. I retreated in horror, how had it come to this?. ‘Its only 70p a day’ she proclaimed reproachfully, seeing that I was trying to slip away from her grasp. A surge of guilt came over me, had I not just spent £1 that morning on a short bus ride when I could just as easily have walked?, had I not spent a tenner last weekend getting sloshed in ‘The Orange Tree’. Moments later I found myself filling out a purple form and signing away my hard squandered wealth on starving African children. ‘Thankyou so much’ the wide-eyed lady beamed at me, and I continued on my merry way.

Two weeks later I signed up to Internet banking and inspected my accounts. The direct debit had not yet came into effect and was sitting there in my ‘transfers section’. ‘SAVE THE CHILDREN’ it read, but to me it seemed like a big bloodsucking leech, sipping away on my bank statement. £15 pound a month, £180 a year…. I reflected on what other uses I could put that cash to, and my mind turned to an image of me and Katie sitting in the beer garden of ‘Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem’ holding pints of real ale –the very image of happiness. My inner cutthroat capitalist had spoken, and I quickly purged my account of the evil presence. Later on, I imagined a throng of Somali children sitting at the side of the road, waiting expectantly for the help that never came. Slowly they realised that they had been deserted in their hour of need, and trudged off miserably back to their mud huts and an uncertain future.

It’s a terrible shame, but I’m no longer in a position to give handouts to charity, Bill Gates I am not. Save the children is all very well, but feeding the fiancé is far more important.

Summer

2005-04-22T05:49:00.000-07:00

I think I understand why all these South American countries are always having bloody coup d'états, it’s because of the hot weather. The short walk into town is rapidly turning into a re-enactment of the Bataan death march as I shrivel under the suns rays and sweat profusely from the nose; this most awful of seasons sends me praying for rain like Jean de Florette. Throughout this week’s expeditions to the Victoria centre with Katie, the sweltering summer heat sent my patience to an all time low and left me consumed with hatred. Even the sight of small babies with happy, chubby faces sent me into raptures of loathing and it was all I could do to stop myself from launching a shopping jihad. The general response of the Clarke’s to hot weather is never a happy one, as evidenced by our family holiday to Crete where we retreated en-mass to a cave and sat there like lizards while bronzed Italians sunned themselves on the beach. Certain people look good in this type of weather, I try my best, but its hard to look presentable when you are sweating like Gary Glitter at an S-Club Juniors concert.

An unfortunate side effect of the summer time is that it motivates wankers to play their music at full blast. One of my neighbours has been indulging in this particular sin on a regular basis. This wouldn’t be much of a problem if their C.D collection consisted of soothing classical music; in fact I would even take Jean Michael-Jarre over the rubbish that’s been polluting my eardrums for the past few hours. If I had a piss-poor music collection I would be more inclined to keep it under wraps; sadly, other people are not as inhibited as I am. One track in particular has wound me up like a cobra in a basket. It starts off as a moderately irritating rap, but matters take a turn for the decidedly worse when it reaches the chorus; suddenly a high pitched voice chimes in, singing ‘Lonely, I’m so lonely, got nobody….to call my own’. To compound matters, it’s voice then ascends to an even higher pitch, as if it its originator had suddenly been violently grasped by the testicles. I presume this crap was produced by the same axis of evil that created the ‘Crazy Frog’. The arrival of this new threat to my sanity has caused me to relax my stance on terrorism and conclude that it is justifiable in certain contexts. I would love to post a letter bomb to those responsible for these ring tone adverts, provided I could be sure that the Royal mail wouldn’t mess up its delivery and stamp it with ‘return to sender’.

History is replete with dietary madness. I recall the Ethiopian emperor Menelik II, who thought that he could combat illness by eating pages of the Old Testament; in the end he choked on a particularly indigestible mouthful. My particular vice is that I tend to fixate on one particular food product such as pesto and pasta, which I ate nearly every day of second year. During one particularly infamous week I lived solely off a block of my flatmate’s cheese. The girl who was the tenant living in this house before us has moved on to pastures new, leaving us enough tuna to last through a nuclear holocaust and, were I living alone, I would have taken this opportunity to exist purely on a diet of tuna salad. I have however, been restrained by Mrs Clarke, who informs me that if you consume too much of the stuff, you die a slow and painful death from mercury poisoning. I can see much pathos in this manner of snuffing it, but perhaps it’s a little early to resort to that.

Luckily, none of my dinner guest choked when I invited them round for a barbeque last night. The only unpleasant aspect of the whole affair was the amount of preparation the house needed before my friends arrived. In the old days I would not even have bothered to move my dirty laundry from the settee or buy more bog roll in anticipation of a house visit, but I am now living under feminine rules. Under this new regime my undeserving guests are to be treated like the Olympic committee, and every inch of the house must be scrubbed and swept before their arrival. Every time I find this process tiresome, I cast my mind back to the days of Lamond Drive and House 43 Albany park, the hairy toilet and the pubic wall, the floor strewn with pizza boxes and rotten food, the mice in the kitchen and the mound monsters we discovered in the coffee mugs. Maybe being civilised isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Movin on up

2005-04-17T05:53:00.000-07:00

Certain dubious sources inform us that the human race was never meant to be monogamous. If this is the case, then why was I born without certain crucial faculties?, such as the ability to cook chicken without getting food poisoning.

Raw chicken is something of a nemesis of mine. Three years ago, after a night’s expedition to the nightspots of St Andrews, I woke up in my Gatty bed-sit with something of a dodgy stomach. As if on cue, Calum entered my room and said ‘Who the hells been eating my chicken???’. Staggering over to the fridge I beheld the spectacle of a chicken breast that was unmistakably uncooked. Some rash fool had evidently taken a bite out of it. ‘Well it wasn’t me!’ said Eugene. ‘Well it wasn’t me either said Steve. ‘Well who was pissed last night???’. I looked guilty and beat a hasty retreat into my room, slamming the door behind me. In my English tutorial that morning my colon resembled one of those wind tunnels they use in laboratories to test aerodynamics. I recall that it was incredibly hard to concentrate on ‘Paradise Lost’ when my stomach was howling like the Hound of the Baskervilles. The identity of the Chicken Scandal culprit was all too obvious.

Another attribute I seem to lack is the ability to remember people’s birthdays. Why the hell is it I can remember the exact date every major war of the 20th century started, but not when my mother’s birthday is?. Hopefully the next world war will start on my mum’s birthday. It will doubtless be a catastrophic waste of human life but it will serve as a fantastic ‘aide de mémoire’.

I could list more but I think I suspect I would be here all day. All this leads me to the inescapable conclusion that moving in with my girlfriend is not –as is portray in men’s magazines- the beginning of my downfall. True it requires remembering to put the toilet seat down after I go to the bathroom and washing every piece of cutlery multiple times to guard against hordes of malignant germs. The appearance of an arachnid in the household is no longer a trivial incident, instead it is greeted with screams of ‘Humphrey!, there’s a spider in the bathroom!!’. I am now required to sally forth like Achilles to crush the offending insect -this feels slightly ridiculous but it does make one feel slightly heroic. After all the trials and tribulations of this year I finally feel the content I felt at St Andrews, plus that nagging feeling that I should be somewhere else has evaporated.

Whether I am moving up in the world is certainly a subject for debate. I have moved from the worst area of Nottingham (St Annes) to what is supposed to be the second worst area of Nottingham (The Meadows). This isn’t so much moving up as moving sideways. However, a cursory glance around my new neighbourhood tells me that whatever reputation this area has, it certainly isn’t deserved. My new home lies on a quiet Victorian terrace. The ‘Palais De Clarke’ is next to a vast playing field dotted with children who seem to all be playing cricket rather than sniffing glue. About a hundred yard walk from my house is the river Trent, which snakes its way along a pleasant tree-lined embankment. A little further along this route, and you come to well-maintained memorial gardens with fountains and rose-beds. If this is supposed to be a ghetto then my name is 50-Cent. I am far more likely to see joggers, Asian families and old biddys on my daily walk than I am to see crack-whores, gangstas and chavs -compared to St Annes this place is Beverly Hills.

‘Don’t forget to pack a bullet proof vest’, quipped the boyfriend of the girl who we are replacing as tenants as me and Katie left for an evening stroll. Later he was back, to store his valuables in our house for safe keeping because his house had been raided by pikey kids. Living in a ‘decent’ area is all very well but your stuff is much more likely to get nicked. In fact it seems to be something of an amusing pastime for the local criminals to rush across the Trent to the affluent West Bridgeford, steal a number of items and charge back again. The spirit of Robin Hood lives on it appears, and I for one am glad that I’m living amongst the merry men. As Voltaire would say, ‘everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’.

Various rantings

2005-04-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

There is nothing more tedious, depressing and downright annoying as a woman who has taken leave of her dignity and formed a distressingly deep attachment with an unsuitable male. In the futile hope that the intended will one day see the error of his ways and come round eventually, the deluded female brings his name into every conversation, describes boring anecdotes about his character in meticulous detail and, when drunk, spends hours shunning the general conversation to send progressively more creepy text messages to her beloved. The first time I encountered this phenomenon was with my flatmate of two years, who lusted after this guy she had had a week-long relationship with in my first year at St Andrews. By the sounds of it, the brief love affair had consisted mainly of sleazy sexual encounters, followed by a dismal cocktail of backbiting and recriminations. Nonetheless, good old Gordy would sometimes pay a nocturnal visit to my housemate, promise to call and make his merry way back home. My flatmate would sweep around the house in joy, spring-cleaning and phoning her mates to tell them the wonderful news. Predictably, the roguish fellow would prove about as reliable as the 16:12 from Liverpool Lime Street. Weeks past and no phone call came. Gloom descended upon our happy household. After this had happened a dozen times I was beginning to see that she was never going to cotton on. Love is blindness, but in some cases it amounts to outright stupidity.

Another time I encountered this phenomenon was when I was trying to hit it off with one of my friends in Second year. Instead of telling me how great I am -or some other suitable topic of conversation that could have been a prelude to drunken snoggery- she insisted on talking about her nauseating ex in a way that made him sound like a cross between the marble David and St Francis of Assisi. ‘I admired him for his honesty’, she would witter on, as I rolled my eyes, ‘for instance, he would always tell me if I happened to be looking ugly that day’. This is a common feature of the obsessed female; they will take some despicable characteristic of their idealised former lover and twist things around to make it seem like an adorable quality. The ex began to pop into every conversation and I began to grow sick of hearing it. ‘I saw him playing football the other day’, this girl would announce, as if this were akin to witnessing the second coming of Christ, ‘I think he might have looked at me, but I wasn’t sure’. Here also we see the capacity for self-delusion, as the woman constantly looks out for omens like an 8th century monk. Every trivial gesture becomes magnified into something far greater, a mere wave in her direction or a passing mention of her in conversation, becomes a sign they are going to settle down together, have kids and get married. Usually, this is about as likely as a sequel to ‘Mein Kampf’.

Another feature of this type of woman I should mention, is their irritating habit of saying ‘I wish he (the unsuitable male) was a nice guy like you’. I do not believe that nice guys exist, it is far better to see them as potential bastards. Similarly, it is easy to preach freedom and equality when you are a small time rebel hiding in the forests of the interior, however it’s hard not to resort to megalomania when handed the keys to the presidential palace. Women who prostrate themselves in this manner, are subjecting themselves to the fickle mercies of the disinterested male, it’s a position of power they finding it all too tempting to exploit.

My room overlooks a school playground, a vantage point that has given me a valuable insight into the problems with the education system in this country. Children are no longer forced into freezing cold class forms and given endless amounts of Latin grammar. Instead they seem to have perpetual break time, given leave to spend their school days running around outside my window and screaming their little lungs off. Much more of this and I shall turn into a Daily Mail reader.

In other news, my intellectual powerhouse of a fiancé has attained some ridiculously high ‘grade point average’ and won a scholarship to Nottingham. In about 19 days time I shall begin moving my stuff from the cells of Blenheim hall into the more homely surroundings of my friend Sarah’s house. I now need to get a job from somewhere, a venture that requires returning to the infamous application forms and sending the fictionalised version of my life contained in my C.V to various employers. The ‘real world’ is approaching fast.

Call me old fashioned, but what the hell is the point of this??????

http://www.boyzshop.com/gay_sex_toys/ec123.html

The Ku Klux Movie Database

2005-04-01T05:56:00.000-08:00

Ever wondered what goes through the mind of a Klansman when he goes to the cinema?. Well wonder no more, the Stormfront message board has a ‘movie reviews’ section and I’ve copied and pasted their views on a series of cinematic features (no this is not satire, but I wish it was). Its amazing the amount of racial connotations that I never noticed before.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

‘My opinion on Harry Potter: A bunch of lefty propoganda. The bad guys could be compared to WN's, and the protaganists and associates could be considered liberal multi-culties. Take Voldemort or Malfoy for instance. What are they and what are they trying to accomplish? A wizard world for Wizard Nationalists. No muggles, no mud bloods, just wizards. Now in comes our Harry Potter, whose parents were killed by Voldemort, who could be compared to a leader of the movement, and Harry is out to try and stop the WN's (Wizard Nationalists), thus making him a magical traitor! Everybody tries to get him to become a mysticalist again, even that hat thing, but since he was sent off to live with his muggle parents, they made him think it was okay to be accepting of muggles and mud bloods. They abused him and he knows that something's not right, but he doesn't want to admit it! Unfortunately, when he gets to school, he's still all for magic-mixing and the like. Hell, you could even call him a wuggle. And now, here is a couple of crappy pictures of Malfoy depicted as a WN. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to try to put a flight jacket on the boy in this pose’.

'Harry Potter series:
Nearly all White clique promoting "purity" led by Aryan poster boy= evil
Multiracial clique promoting "diversity" led by shaggy Beatles poster boy= good'

Terminator Three

‘Considering any kind of stereotypes or memes the flick contains. Of course it's stupid to look for deep meaning in such film. But one thing that should be noticed is few non-whites. The only nig who occupied remotely noticeable screen time was a tiny episodical role and all he did was dying in a pathetic way (hehe). Some mestizos were also just dying real quick, as far as I can remember. Now of course I realize that many "White" people may actually be jews, but since I'm not expert in telling jews by looks nothing bothered me in this department. AND(!!!): considering realism, this time around, when they show scientifical laboratories, FINALLY, all (or almost all) are WHITE. What an improvement over T2 with a ****ing nig genius.

The story is about White people meeting and learning to accept destiny and fighting for survival, discovering their own potential in the course.’

Lost in Translation

‘Nothing much happens but it is a good movie, with style and caring and it's a White movie of Whites in Japan, Japanese are alien, but not hostile…..And, the best part, I notice the complete absence of Jews anywhere. Can't feel or sense the Jew in direction, in actors, in the characters around. I guess that was why the film was set in Japan.’

Alien Vs Predator

‘I just watched the movie. I almost bursted out laughing at the female mulatto Negress and the other mulatto Negro male, who nearly sound White by their lack of ebonics. How many of those do you see everyday? Not very often. But movies like this, which try to portray Negroids as highly intelligent human beings--when combined with the same type of conditioning in other movies and in all other forms of media 24 hours a day--leave White lemmings with the impression that the average Negro is our intellectual equal.

The movie begins with a scene of the Negress climbing a steep cliff of ice in the middle of snowy nowhere, all by herself, just for fun. Again, how many Negroes can tolerate cold weather, much less climb the side of an ice cliff with a pick? I live in Alaska, and Negroes make up 3.5% of the population, and I've never seen a Negro do this.

Jewish Hollywood, of course, provides that her character cares more about the others in the movie, as demonstrated by her prior refusal to accept the assignment on the grounds that she's had insufficient time to train everyone in the art of artic survival (incidentally, all of the characters under her guidance were grossly under-dressed for antarctic sub-zero temperatures), and by her constant leadership efforts throughout the film. Also, out of all of the other specialized genuises assembled on that team, it was she--the Negress--who was the last human to survive, as though to suggest that Negroes have a sharper degree of common sense than Whitey. One looks at Africa for signs of these elevated character traits, but we see Blacks consulting "witch doctors" to cure AIDS. Again, how many of Negroes like this do you know?

It is also the Negress who is "adaptive" enough to form an alliance with the Predator in order to defeat the Alien, even though the Predators murdered half of her crew. Naturally, the Predator is so impressed by her courage and her fighting abilities that the Predator dons her with the warrior mark on her cheek; and at the end of the movie, the Predators give her a weapon as a symbol of their respect.

The movie shouldn't be called Predator V. Alien. It should be called Negro V. Reality.’

The life of Brian

‘This is a great movie and it works well from an Alfred Rosenberg, positive Nordic Christianity which would take the teachings of Christ and leave out all the Jewish intrigues of Paul and Peter. The Python movie only has Jesus in it for about 30 seconds and he preaches strong, positive religious message - the audience is a bunch of Jews now living under Roman rule.... the Jews are idiots, mixed up, conspiring Jews. The movie shows the truth that White Roman rule brought the benefits of White western civilization to these Jews, but the Jews were too selfish and egocentric to appreciate the benefits.’

The Incredibles

The superhero Mr. Incredible is a metaphor for the white male. Lots of spoilers so go see it before reading on, I highly recomend it.

Mr. Incredible saves lives, his power is hurculean strength and invulnerability, much like white America back in the day. Unfortunately one of the ingrateful people that he saves sues him with the help of a jewish lawyer, and he is forced to hang up his cape. Although his methods were destructive at times he was ultimately doing the right thing, but because of a change in his culture Mr. Incredible can no longer be a Strong White Male, he is relegated to a mundane job, being ordered around by a boss who is not even close to half the man he is, his self esteem is lacking and he gains weight and is out of shape. His lovely wife Elastic Woman metaphorically todays White Soccer Mom, thinking she is doing what is best for her husband constantly stands in between Mr. Incredibles man hood by demanding that he no longer does what he was born to do, save peoples lives. Mr Incredible in due course forbidenly starts becoming a hero again. As soon as he does this his manhood returns, his happiness is restored, his health recovers, and his physical relation with his wife heats up.

His wifes transformation is just as important, her journey lies in her letting go of control of her man and trusting in his morals and his strength, and there is this great scene where her ignorance of her husbands will to protect her leads to her finally understanding that as a mans ego is a neccesary tool that he uses to defend his family, and she poignantly convinces him that she understands this and that together with her participating equally they can protect each other.

Basically what this movie is about is societies unhealthy roles for man and women today, and how they lead to unhappiness, it also touches base with societies drive to reward the mediocre, and punish the superior, or the Incredibles.

Napoleon Dynamite

‘This is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. Not only was it completely stupid, it was filled with blatant propaganda. The pansy White nerd main character befriends a Mestizo, his queer-acting brother meets a Negress from the Internet, and she transforms him into a wigger. The nerds' grandmother is portrayed as a butch dyke who rides dirtbikes over sand dunes. The principal of the school is potrayed as a facist racist for making fun of the Mestizo Napoleon befriends. The Mestizo's cousins are gangmembers seen as good people. The blatantly Nordic children are made to look evil and selfish.A blond girl rejects the Mestizo's invitation to the prom, and we're supposed to feel sorry for him until the White nerd girl accepts his offer. The Mestizo later wins the school Presidential election in front of a cheering all-White crowd against the wicked Aryan cheerleader, after Napoleon dances like a wigger to the Negro music given to him by his race-mixing brother's new black girlfriend. The underlying message seems to be if you act queer, race-mix, and befriend minorities you'll be sucessful. If you're White and proud you will fail and be viewed as unpopular’

Zulu

‘This film is part of my crews and grandsons' basic training. One of the very few movies actually worth paying for these days, and well worth at least taking the trouble to record when it appears on television.’

Ygg's WN movie list is jam packed with movies of this quality, and is worth checking out. Christmas is coming folks. And I'm dreaming of a White one!

I also used to love the Patriot and Braveheart. Then I realized that Mel Gibson was just stereotyping the English as a cruel and ignorant ethnicity. I used to be a celtic nationalist who worshiped Mel Gibson. Then I saw Zulu. Irish, English, Welsh, Scottish, Dutch, and even Swiss men working together against waves of savagery. This made me realize that it was more important to be proud to be white and not worry about conflicts from the 13th centuary. I just finished watching this movie for about the twentieth time, and I swear, it NEVER gets old I just love it, something about thousands of savages getting slaughtered just tickles

*sigh* How I long for the days of the British Empire...’

XXX2 The state of the union

'My personal summary of reflection on the movie XXX2 “State of the Union” 2005: is that this film is nothing more than another Hollywood trash movie which echoes and mirrors the empty collective Jewish race soul. In this age where Jews continue to climb in power and where globalized capitalism is coming to its zenith, the Jews unceasingly create nothing but mass produced conveyer belt style movies with empty substance, poor dialogue and expensive eye candy. I guess in some ways I can’t blame them, money is the God of the Jews and considering the world is becoming a multiracial globalized plantation these kinds of movies are bound to extract some cash from the ignorant MTV attention span masses.

How do I put this succinctly? This movie is pure Jew Multicultural Garbage with lots of the usual Jew themes like mostly white people are bad and black people are good. Blacks are glamorized as car thieving criminals, not looked down on but as heros who save the day. In this movie Blacks are smart people who can build super elite tricked out cars as they are wise engineers. Not one negative roll for blacks in this movie, even the car jacking negro criminals are glamorized into champions of the day. A Gang of car thieving negros team up with ice cube to invade the most secure government buildings in the world to neutralize a presidential coup attempt by evil whitey, even though these buildings are guarded by untold military people and resources.

For the most part, but not entirely, White people in this movie play back stabbers, white female seducers who entrap innocent negros, evil plotters, incompetent extras, college boy lackeys and other types of subtle but negative images and characteristics among the whites. Not to mention the movie appeals to the very bottom of the IQ spectrum with lots of matrixesque Jew gibberish and cheap dialogue. Samuel L. Jackson, who can undeniably be described as a good actor slips to new cheesy ghetto lows in his acting and dialogue.'

The Day After Tomorrow

‘So get this... The scientists somehow conclude that we all have to run South of the Border to escape the coming ice age. How ironic that after years of Mexicans and other South American immigrants coming here illegally, now the white man is illegally crossing the Mexican border. And why is it illegal? Because the Mexican government at first refused us permission to come into Mexico(!) Yes, after sending us millions of illegal immigrants, they now tell us to go pound sand in our time of need. Finally they tell us that we can come there if we relive their debt. As if we couldn't take their little sandbox from them with sheer force with our military! But wait, at the end of the movie, the president tells us how grateful we should be of the 3rd worlders who helped us all out.

Speaking of propaganda, they had to have a black scientist at the beginning of the movie who kisses his white wife goodbye and their mulatto child too. Oh yes and some feminist calls Nietzsche a "chauvinist pig" in one scene.

This movie has the typical cornball Hollywood soundtrack and picks a few random people to follow including some Jew and a girl who he is chasing, a homeless negro and a few scientist. Oh yeah, I forgot the Jew's dad and a guy and a Chinese woman (you are left to guess if they are a couple, but it is implied). It has lousy acting, an assinine story and propaganda of the blatant and subtle variety. Oh yes, and it has a happy ending too. Even the president, who they thought died, lives to give his stupid speech lauding the 3rd worlders.’

Meet the Fockers

‘The whole thing was a propaganda piece for jews and anti-entertainment. It tried to make the whites look foolish and uptight; while the jews as these loving, accepting, free spirited intellectuals. In the end the whites were overcome by the persuasiveness of the jews arguments and saw their lovely daughter become a race traitor. I keep to myself out in whiteland and was disgusted by how truly ugly BS and Hoffman really are ! Yes churn and retch.’

Kill Bill

‘That movie was great.A white woman killing hordes of gooks and 1 nigger.
Im still in shock that a 'strong black woman' was killed.I was thinking that she would whip the bride and they would team up or some bs like that. I also had to set with loud blacks.After the film was over I remarked to a friend that it was about time a white woman killed a black on screen-in front of them.they werent to loud after that.’

The Passion

'Just got back from the theater! I think The Passion really exposed who really killed Christ. However some scenes were deleted that would have really rubbed it in. Still it was the most anti-semitism I have seen in a LONG time in a public place. The theater was packed! I could hear some anti-semitic conversation going on, in front of, behind, and to my right. I imagine several people to my left were seeing a good dose of the truth as well.
Our natural enemy has taken a good solid hit, that wont heal for a while now. The main part of the plot line that got alot of stress was that although the Romans did the deed, they were forced to by Jewish politics much the way an American Governor would be today, being put under pressure to "crucify" someone of thier (the jews) enemies.'

'I will have to make plans to see this movie some time in the near future. To hear that good, decent, bible believing white christians are seeing this movie in droves is a sign that Jewish decadence in the movie industry is finally weakening. Note how piece of crap, interracial love-fests like "O" and "Save the Last Dance" always seem to bomb at the box office, while a movie like the Passion is being raised to epic-like proportions. It shows that some segment of the American population still want quality in their movies, and wont tolerate Jewish propoganda any longer'

The Terminal

I must say that I was very disappointed that yet another decent movie concept and story line had to be cooked up and sautéed bland Semite style by lightly and gently sand spraying this dish with Jew bytch glatttt-kosher diarrhea and then finally topping it off with a sprinkling and smidgen or two of slimey hymie matza ball dingle berries. Good job Slimeberg on taking a movie you could have finished strong with, and then ultimately ending it on a half-note ? and when I say half-note, I?m not referring to the worlds smalled book: tasty and delicious Jewish cooking as I discussed early in this paragraph, no, instead I?m referring to the love story aspect that spewberg jew boy?d in the end.

Now let?s get down to shoah businitz about this movie.

Despite the usual Jewish feces injected into this movie, like most Hollywood movies, I would like to state that this movie ?The Terminal? was an interesting story with enjoyable character development offering some nice giggles and baby tear jerk or two from mama zetas hopeless rom-antics."

"The movie is staring the mildly Jewish looking Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones (married to a Jews), with a whole slew of rag tag multicultural actors, including lots of chubby but noble smarty art negro policemen and staff, you know those can do no wrong noble types. Indeed, not your typical violent street apes that infest every major city on earth, but those pudgy, cuddly, noble and friendly Hollywood smarty art negros that are harmless and you would just love to have on your team. The head kike in the movie is an up and coming slimey hymie who becomes the head of homeland security honcho. Throughout the movie, the Jew who plays the sort of bad bureaucratic kike changes at the end of the movie when he redeems himself, by letting victor (tom hanks) go after a 9 month pseudo-prison sentence in an airport. How could slimeberg let a narrow eye?d fleshy nosed jewboy not finish strong? Bad Jew? Never! And to top it off? A little interracial fantasy marriage spawned in the way cheap trash dive novels drool for, you know that spontaneous I-never-knew warm and gushy way, but with a silly twist of a minimum wage making fork lift driver who is your international man of mystery falling in love with a negress desk jockey, it was Victor Divorce-Sky (tom hanks) as your match maker ? see you in 2 and 2."

Shrek 2

I was ready to throw up for most of it. The reason here is because the race mixing propaganda and the completely anti-white outlook of the movie was so well sublimated into a palette of emotion-evoking situations that most folks can relate to (or have been taught to relate to). Every traditionally positive influence was portrayed as scheming, diabolical, murderous even (the king pays a killer to whack Shrek while acting idiotic and petty and is actually a frog, the fairy godmother is diabolical instead of wise, etc.). In one classic anti-white scene, all the best old classic romantic fairy tales like sleeping beauty, Cinderella, etc. are thrown on a table while the fairy god mother says no ogres in all of them. In other words, they are all wrong, un-pc, bad. (that's the take-home message anyway). Anything exclusively white and with white ideals is bad or illusory at best--that is the total message of the movie.

The entire purpose of the movie seemed to be to destroy white ideals, to condition us not to resist our destruction. That was the take-home message of the movie deeply planted into the emotional brain. Even when Shrek and the princess have the chance to be more European-looking, they choose not to be as "the right thing to do". The movie is utterly destructive. I looked around at al those white children watching and thought of how utterly horrible it was that they were sitting there innocently taking in the monstrous, sickly sweet propaganda of the destroyer and deceiver.

The real destruction comes later--in an inability to see what is wrong, an inability to see the true differences between peoples of the world. They will be delayed in their development, they will be turned from the path of truth to the path of destruction, their lives will have been taken over and their souls stolen by the agenda of the destroying Jews."

Cold Mountain

‘The jews stole our Confederate heroes and turned them into peacenicks wondering about war and such, with the plot bouncing between a woman and her ambiguous lesbian lover, and the wandering deserter who tramps across the south long enough to come across every steretypical southern cliche ridden character. From the evil baptist preacher to the inbred traitorous hillbilly. The only southerners who seem to be of anyworth in this 3 hour brainwash are the women this sop meets. Needless to say the strong male character must die in hollywoods sub conscious wish to see all western males dead, but before he goes he impregnates his love with a female child (who would have guessed). The movie ends with only the women around, accompanied by two gelded brow beaten men to do there whim around the farm. I have a feeling that who ever wrote this movie was merely a front for the ghost writer Ellen Degeneres.’

Hero

Anyone who appreciates the work of Leni Riefenstahl or Sergei Eisenstein should see this movie. It's artfully executed nationalist propaganda with popular appeal. The film is unlikely to stir the emotions of a white person the way it would a Chinese, but the pro-nation message should be apparent to anyone. Plus, the action is great and the aesthetics are out of this world.

As I was watching the movie (and thoroughly enjoying it) I kept thinking to myself, "****, we're eventually going to have to fight a war with these people and they're going to care about it more than us." Hero did very well in China, while American equivalents like The Patriot are widely lambasted for being "ham-handed" or "cheesy". It's a statement about the relative levels of patriotism (and therefore fighting spirit) in the two countries

Black Hawk Down

‘Anyone going to see the film Black Hawk down should take particular notice of why the Somalians actually won despite their many obvious weaknesses - being less technically advanced, too emotional, taking far greater losses, far more corrupt, disorganized, etc.

They won because the White Americans (mostly) underestimated them. And those White Americans also undervalued the strategic advantage of having widespread support in a large community, or even controlling just one neighborhood as a base.

Additionally the White Americans went up against a hardened MILITANT CULTURE created in that community of contrasting pro-revolutionary views, which united into one force when their beloved community was invaded by outsiders. In nature, by the way, the defenders of living space always have immense psychological advantages.

Now instead of being led around by the nose by the New World Order that got those White soldiers into that mess - with narrower thoughts about the skinnys, niggers, or Muslims - let's see what we can learn from such opponents in a more cool headed way.

Transfer the principles of COMMUNITY and CULTURE building to the peacetime conflicts of this country and you'll soon realize that White Americans are getting clobbered here too because they lack sufficient COMMUNITY among themselves.’

Alfie

‘The focus of this movie is about a male human dog played by Jude law, who goes around having sex with anything that will open its leggs.

Items 1 through 10 are glamorized, made sexy and fashionable.

1. Interracial Sex glamorized and promoted
2. Interracial Babies created
3. Cheating wives everywhere
4. Cheating girlfriends
5. Alcohol and substance Abuse
6. Empty Materialism, multiculturalism
7. promiscuous sex, impotence etc...
8. manipulation to rise to the top
9. endless back stabbing
10. Lying, cheating and betrayal.

Items 1 through 10 are glamorized, made sexy and fashionable.

This is a sick empty movie created by the jew world order for the further pollution of the minds of humanity. Endless empty and mindless decadence.’

The Lion King

‘A good thing with the movie being animated: you don't have to see the voice actors. And the fact that convicted drug addict and socialist Whoopie Goldberg does the voice for a hyena only lifts the movie in my eyes.’

Panic Room

just rented Panic Room this evening and thought I would post a review about it. It stars lesbian Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam, and ofcourse (wouldn't be a movie without one) negro Forest Witaker. I will let you you guys for homework, figure out if the others are jews or not and find out how many jews were pulling the strings behind the scenes anyhow...

Rather then go on and on about the plot, I am going to get right to the points that interest us, the white nationalist. It was a typical black is good, white is bad jew propagander movie.

The villians were two white guys and one negro. But, did you notice how the whites were portrayed as stupid, immoral, corrupt, and had zero redeeming qualities? Where as the nog was only in it for money to pay his custody battle bills? Gee, I didn't even know "father" was a word they even understood. Anyway, to make this even more anti-white, the nog was played out to be the brains behind the operation and also the one that designed the "Panic Room". He was the resourceful one, the one that was coming up with the good ideas but at the same time remaining moral. Just like in real life.

Later in the movie, when Jodie Foster's daughter is sick due from diabetic shock and needs her shot of insulin, the negro (being the kind ape the he is) makes sure she gets her shot while the white villian (Dwight Yoakam) is screaming about how he will cut the girl's throat.

Lastly, during the ending of the film, we see the the noble simian come to the rescue of the white family (Jodie Foster's ex-husband tries to aid them towards the end of the film, but turns out to be useless, he can't even shoot a guy 3 feet infront of him) and shoots the remaining white villian right before he is about to smash a sledge hammer into Jodie Foster's head.

One more scene I would like to mention, wouldn't be a jew produced movie without a scene such as this one...during the early part of the movie we see Jodie Foster sitting on the toilet and hear her urinating (Jews are sick people), now was this really needed to further the plot or be in the movie in the first place? Of course not, but jews enjoy such scenes.

So what does Joe and Jill sixpack conclude about all of this? What does a lemming think after viewing this anti-white garbage?

1. White men are weaklings, evil, corrupt poor hard working intelligent black men into a life of crime, beat children (i.e. Dwight Yoakam punching the 12 year old girl in the face), etc, etc.

2. White family structures are not needed, strong woman can handle themselves better then men accross the board (promoting feminism) Males (except for the negro) were shown to be useless and weak.

3. Black men are intelligent, hard working, caring, and moral people if not corrupted by evil white men.

I have been racially aware since a kid, but up until I started reading movie reviews on VNN by Mark Rivers, I never really noticed all of this stuff. We need to start pointing this stuff out to friends and family.

Collateral

"The movie is great! Aside from the heroism of Foxx's character, which I am skeptical is prominent in a Black man, better yet, a taxi cab driver, the movie shows the perversion that is the modern day. Cruise is shown to be an intelligent, capable and highly-dedicated person. Foxx is displayed as cowardly and obedient. I'd consider that relationship to be accurate."

"At least the movie didnt have race-mixing in it. The ape likes that female ape, im suprised, you would think it would be white chick. The guys in the alley were wiggers so that didnt really matter. Ill agree there was alot of propaganda in the movie though, like the ape saving the day, ya right."

"This would have to be the most anti-white movie iv'e seen in a long time. Everything from when the black cabbie takes the negress on a fare and tells her his life plans but when the white bloke gets in it's "mind your own business". Every villian in the movie was white, the gang of thugs in the alley, the main character, and of course the bumbling cops and menacing sercurity hitmen in the club. There's plenty more examples and i know this is nothing new but, AAHHHHHHHHHHH i can't bare it anymore. Tom cruise should know better."

Wimbledon

‘At one point in the movie they visit the public tennis court at which the Bettany character first learned to play. It was all torn to pieces and strewn with trash.

At the end of the movie the Bettany-Dunst team returns to that blasted public court with their two children to introduce them to the game. In the background there is a group of Negroes playing basketball in one corner - informing us of the source of the destruction of the courts, and by implication, of a threat to their future way of life. It is a deft touch!

This is the first movie I have seen in a long time in which a dominant white male gentile over six feet tall is cast in the role of a romantic lead. For that reason alone it deserves special recognition, as the inner party simply does not allow that sort of thing in Hollywood. Gone are the fifties when we had Gary Cooper, Troy Donahue, and Tab Hunter, and many other physically dominant gentile romantic leads over six feet tall in our movies.

To sum up, we have two whites who learn to be assertive, to win, to fall in love and to reproduce.

It is great romance and a great sports movie, and a model of outcomes to which all of our children and grandchildren should aspire.’

Apparently Hollywood is run by Jews ( http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-entertainment-folder.html ) who have a three pronged agenda:

"A. Getting us to accept and feel comfortable with the Hollywood image of ourselves as stupid, incompetent, insensitive, boorish, promiscuous and cowardly - all as a means of getting us to submit to our subordinate role in the multi-cultural scheme.

B. Getting us to accept and feel comfortable with the notion that we are not valid human beings unless we are in the company of negroes and being supervised and managed by the Hollywood image of the all-knowing and wise negro.

C. Getting us to accept non-whites as attractive sexual partners by constantly portraying interracial laisons, and especially, by promoting the Hollywood image of the inner party male as the only sensitive and understanding partner for White females, and by promoting the Hollywood image of the black male as the only verile, agressive and masculine partner for White females."

And if you really want to isolate yourself from multicultural society, you should only watch the movies on this list ( http://home.ddc.net/ygg/cwar/movlst.htm ). They seem to have a thing for Mel Gibson.

Neo Nazi Nonsense

2005-03-29T05:57:00.000-08:00

Whilst trawling the highways and byways of the World Wide Web on an afternoons revision break, I stumbled across what might be aptly termed ‘a sewer of hatred’.

http://www.stormfront.org/

The Stormfront message board is hilarious and disturbing in equal measure. It is run by a former klansman and appears to be mainly populated by fanatical neo-nazis, Holocaust revisionists (deniers) and conspiracy nuts. Of course a chatroom can only be as good as the people in it; normally the details included in the public profiles of internet users are an exercise in banality, containing details such as ‘I am 14, I like to listen to Destiny’s Child and I think Matt Damon is sooo cute’, on Stormfront they are rather more interesting

‘I live in South Florida where iam the last outpost down here. By one side which is the southwest region i have illegal mexicans and on the other side which is the southeast is nothing but cubans and south americans.I truly live in a horrid nightmare. For a person to interbreed with another from another race is racial genocide by throwing away your great Aryan genetics to the sub humans’

I suspect this is the kind of person who has sexual relations with his sister in order to preserve his bloodline. The topics of conversation range from ’60 reasons why I hate Black people’ to the celebration of ‘Germanic values’ such as ‘Truth’, ‘Honour’ and ‘Perseverance’ – they seem to have left out ‘invading other countries’, ‘pinching the sun-beds’ and ‘being beastly to the Poles’. There is even a poetry section, most of which appears to be anti-Semitic with titles like ‘The Jewess’ and ‘A Jew in your heart, a bullet in your head’. It purports to have been set up for those that want to reclaim their heritage and unite against the immigrant hordes that threaten the survival of what is loosely termed ‘the white race’. Apparently the Jew run media controls everything, even the movie ‘Revenge of the Sith’ has anti-white connotations.

“Let's start at the beginning. Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi are the first Jedi introduced in the saga. Both are white males, but Qui-Gon dies at the hands of Darth Maul, who, with his black and red tattoos, obviously represents the anger of the oppressed blacks and Native Americans. …There is not one single white person on the Jedi council. In fact, the two people running the show are Yoda, an elderly cinematic shilling to the idea that the older generations are smarter and more capable than the younger, and Mace Windu, a black man. In fact, so important was Darth Shaft that he was given the only purple lightsabre in the galaxy. While we're at it, let's take a closer look at lightsabers. The blades themselves are a core of white light surrounded by color. As if to say that, while white people may be in power, we are surrounded, and it's only a matter of time before we are usurped by people of color. …Darth Vader - the blackest man in the galaxy - bossing around stormtroopers, who are the biggest collection of white folks the world has ever known. Is this meant to promote the idea of blacks enslaving whites? ……as a side note, the beautiful green female Jedi* is played by a beautiful white woman named Amy Allen (unless she happens to be Jewish)”

According to the music section, Ozzy Osbourne is a ‘race traitor’, ‘Birth of a Nation’ and ‘Zulu’ are the greatest pro-white movies of all time –although Lord of the Rings is a close runner up because there’s not ‘not a black or yellow face in sight and plenty of heroic strong white characters’-, and Kylie Minogue deserves to have breast cancer because ‘she defiled her body with non white, and is a homosexual oracle’. Other highlights include agony aunt style threads such as ‘My sister is dating a Jew’:

‘Her boyfriend/partner/whatever, though, I don't like. We have arguments frequently because he doesn't listen to me, and he point-blank refuses to do anything I ask of him… Tonight we began talking together about our ethnic heritage. He asked what we were and I told him we are 100% British including English, Irish, Welsh and Scottish (in that order, btw); to which he responded by saying that he was Polish. This surprised me since his surname is an English one; so I said, "surely you mean you are *partly* Polish" to which he agreed. What he said next left me speechless "My mother's grandparents were Polish Jews who escaped the Nazis by coming to Australia," he said. I must confess: I lost the plot. I said some things without thinking. I said, "are you quite sure about that? If this is true, I don't want you even touching my sister. You should find out whether it is true." I said to my sister, "if this is true, I don't want you ever to have children with him; you'll destroy our bloodline forever. "My sister then went to the phone and rang my mother to tell her what an "evil nazi" I am. And then I said, goodnight, and logged onto stormfront.”

The whole thing resembles a sort of a ‘Dear Deirdre’ for Nazis; when I pointed out to him that in fact he did sound rather like an ‘evil nazi’, I was met by a chorus of disapproval and was accused of being a subversive Zionist.

I am also regarded with varying degrees of scorn on the ‘Holocaust Revisionist’ threads, although that might have something to do with my multicultural avatar, which depicts stick figures of different races holding hands. According to the self styled experts on Stormfront, the whole event never took place. But isn’t it the best documented genocide in history?. Apparently not, it was fabricated by the Zionist high command and the Allied powers to draw attention away from their own atrocities. So let me get this straight, in 1945 all the most powerful Jews managed to win the cooperation of the world's greatest military and political powers, forge thousands of documents in record time without being detected, and create physical evidence attesting to an annihilation programme, all that and convince the Nazis on trial to come up with the same story about gas chambers that didn’t exist. Doesn’t that seem an incey wincy bit unlikely?, well not to a bunch of Nazis suffering from a permanent suspension of disbelief. Apparently the mountains of historical evidence can be cast aside because of factual inconsistencies, the findings of various forensic reports (all discredited and all written by badly qualified revisionists) and the fact that S.S confessions were extorted by torture (there is no evidence for this). Revisionists appear to be highly schooled in the ‘la la, I can’t hear you’ method of arguing and most are so infantile it’s hard to believe they are being serious.

One chap in particular is my particular candidate for moron of the year. His main characteristic is to declare any evidence presented to him ‘inadmissible’. I showed him a gas chamber blueprint and his idiotic response was something like ‘that’s not a gas chamber, it could just as easily be two robots fucking’. ‘Where are the bodies?’ he keeps insisting. When I told him they had been reduced to ash in crematoriums and cast into rivers or used as fertilizers, he then informed me he was unconvinced and wanted all the ash collected and examined. I was incredulous

“What the hell do you expect me to do to convince you?. Go out to Poland with a bucket and spade and start digging for ashes and ground up bone?, and then come round to your trailer park with tons of ashes and have you count it. You know what you would say then?, 'Inadmissable”

In reply he called me a ‘whiney little bitch’ and told me to ‘grab my balls’ and admit that I could not provide any evidence of mass exterminations. When I did, he ignored it and said that he had ‘put a wig’ on me ‘slapped’ my ass and called me ‘Sally’. You’ve got to love this standard of debating, not even A.J.P Taylor would have been as offensive as that.

I see in the papers that the Yorkshire ripper believes he will one day be released from jail because he intends to use the clichéd defence that voices in his head told him to do it. I have always found this concept a tad puzzling. Why do the voices always say bad things like ‘kill that guy’ or ‘get your hammer from the toolshed and club that prostitute to death’. Why do they never say nice things like ‘make your mother a cup of tea’ or ‘the chrysanthemums look like they need watering’. And even if they are saying nasty things, why the hell should you listen to them. Right now there is a voice in my head telling me I should procrastinate but I suppose I should get back to work.

Democracy, 'Ultimate Drivel' and saying the wrong thing

2005-03-08T06:03:00.000-08:00

Isn’t democracy wonderful?. I read the manifestos, I went to various ‘fact-check’ websites to compare the truthfulness of the parties and I even sat through the interminably dull political debates that were ever-present on the television. In the end I was torn between the Conservatives and the Socialist Alliance. The Conservatives seemed a decent choice because they will fight for my right to butcher small animals on horseback, the Socialists seemed to be complete loonies, but their hearts were in the right place. I was due to make up my mind at the polling station, but in the event, I was too goddamn lazy to actually walk to the place. One more I have failed miserably to be a good citizen.

A general election is much like the national lottery, you make a small mathematically insignificant contribution once every four years and win precisely nothing except higher taxes that put you out of pocket. Politics is all about silly sound bites such as ‘our party is the party of hard working families’. As far as I know, every family in the country would consider itself hardworking, even the ubiquitous ‘dole scroungers’ that always seem to appear in The Sun newspaper when there’s no other news around. By the time the parties’ manifesto has filtered through to the general public it has become ludicrously distorted like Chinese whispers, and people just seem to end up voting according to their natural prejudice. I guess this is understandable, repeating the redundant mantras of the nineteen eighties is far more exciting than examining boring facts and statistics. The only choice now seems to be between a pro-war Thatcherite party that dishonestly manipulates statistics, and a pro war Thatcherite party that dishonesty manipulates statistics, with a few token left wing policies tacked on to make them seem like the party of the people. We may yet see the Conservatives return to power, but not until they have repackaged themselves as ‘The New Conservatives’ and elected a leader who has a full head of hair. Only that will satisfy the shallow electorate.

Tonight’s episode of ‘Ultimate Force’ was without doubt the most pathetic hour of television I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. The whole show resembles an episode of the A-Team minus the irony and the humour. This time, Ross Kemp's SAS unit was sent to Chechnya to help the Russians destroy a terrorist clan run by an I.R.A gunman. When I saw this miserable excuse for a ‘plot’ laid out in front of me in ‘The Sun’s television supplement, I nearly choked on my dinner, and uttered several unrepeatable expletives. The whole episode looked to have been filmed in Epping Forest, which looks about as similar to Chechnya as Basingstoke does to Baghdad. The lowest point came when Ross Kemp, using the ingenious tactic of hiding in a pile of leaves manages to wipe out an entire company of Chechen rebels. The I.R.A man inspects the bloodshed and remarks, ‘this was the SAS’. ‘How did you know that?’ exclaims his second in command. The I.R.A man turns to his and says ‘body-count’, I grimaced in horror and wondered how anyone could write such drivel. Remarkably, Kemp managed to keep the same facial expression throughout the entire show, which must be some kind of record. Things took a turn for the bizarre when, upon encountering one of the oil-worker hostages the SAS had been detailed to rescue, Kemp decides that he should be executed for fear of ‘giving away our position’. If this is supposed to be based on real SAS tactics, then I for one won’t be mourning the fact that our armed forces are due to be reduced by cutbacks to a couple of rusty u-boats, half a dozen nukes and a troop of cub scouts. Eventually the poor chap was spared, but cowardly gave away the British armies position later in the programme, because of course, everyone who works for Esso is a morally repugnant capitalist. Mercifully, the plot was abandoned in favour of long drawn out gun battles in which the bullet-proof SAS slaughtered never ending hordes of tactically naïve Chechens. Eventually Ross Kemp’s team called an air strike in on their own position, purely in order to run away from the resulting explosion in cheesy slow motion. I didn’t think it was possible to produce a worse series than ‘Seaquest DSV’, apparently I was wrong.

Thursday night was the G.D.L ball and a very good occasion it was too. The venue was a real dive and the jazz band consisted of a geriatric with a keyboard, but this merely added to the character of the evening. One rather unfortunate aspect was that several of my tutors were in attendance and I had to have my wits about me in order to avoid an embarrassing faux pas. Sadly my efforts were to be in vain.

‘Do people like me, I’m afraid I’m not popular?’ mumbled my drunken ‘Trusts’ tutor. This seemed the kind of question an insecure teenager would ask, not a 40 year old lecturer at a premier law school. My alcohol addled brain wasn’t working properly and I wasn’t sure what I could possibly say in response to this. Eventually I decided upon, ‘Hey…I wouldn’t worry about it’ and then ‘You know…if you teach a subject as boring as Trusts you have to expect a bit of stick…I’m sure its not personal’. She seemed a little offended, and I realised that that probebrly wasn’t the best way I could have put it. Hopefully she won’t remember it. As with so many other occasions, I fail to say the right thing to women.

Being happy

2005-03-04T06:04:00.000-08:00

Seven years ago, I sat in a top floor chemistry lab in the Uppingham school science block; if my memory serves me correct, I was heavily engrossed in drawing a Yorkshireman copulating with a sheep on my science folder. The unfortunate animal had an expression of shock and horror on its face, as if it had been happily grazing and unsportingly caught unawares. Suddenly, into the room walked Dr Roberts, my form four chemistry teacher and notorious hothead. I discovered later on that he was in the midst of an extremely messy divorce, but back then I wasn’t to know. He began to converse with the teacher who was taking our class. All of a sudden he stopped abruptly and shot a death stare in our direction. ‘Be quiet, stop giggling!’ he shouted. Clearly the science department was to be no place for sweetness and laughter. I looked up from my bestiality drawing, I was proud of my creation and I believe I had a smile etched across my face. It was an unfortunate expression to have at that juncture. I could see that something was up, Doc Roberts had turned a rather unhealthy shade of purple and was staring with a look of pure hatred in my direction. ‘Get out’, he screamed, ‘GET OUT, GET OUT GET OUT’. It was clearly time to excuse myself from the assembled company, I gingerly hoisted myself off the uncomfortable wooden stool I was perched on, and walked out as quickly as I could. Standing outside in the sparsely decorated corridor, I hoped against hope that Roberts would calm down before he next saw me. I was to be disappointed. The door to the laboratory opened with a bang, and out stormed the indignant teacher. He ushered me into an adjoining room and pinned me against the wall, I could see he was still livid with anger. ‘Do you realise who I am?’ he shouted at me, drops of phlegm raining from his mouth, the veins on his forehead nearly bursting at its seams. I concluded that this was not a question that was meant to be answered and decided to stare back in silence. ‘You’ll regret this’, he went on, ‘I’m going to make your life a living hell!’. Being a happy person clearly has its penalties.

I could have told him that all he needed to do to achieve this was to continue teaching me chemistry, to force me to sit in the science block amidst the pungent vapours that are the result of years of pointless schoolboy experiments; to make me perform fruitless investigations into the nature of solids and to ponder the hopelessly abstract concepts of chemical bonding and electrolysis. To be forced to watch sterile educational videos –all filmed in the early eighties- that detailed the ins and outs of Britain’s doomed coal industry. To waste precious hours of my adolescence attaching wooden clips to the teachers lab-coat when he wasn’t looking. At the end of the lesson I would have drawn impressive diagrams of circles and crosses interacting with each other on my sheet of paper, but I still wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what was going on. Parent’s evenings were usually disastrous. ‘Humphrey is a strange boy’, the schoolmaster would recall with considerable contempt –as if he were describing a particularly vile strain of bacteria. ‘He generally sits there in silence, staring at the periodic table, occasionally you can see dribble appearing at the corner of his mouth’.

In truth I have never been very good in class, I prefer to sit back and let other do all the boring discussion for me. My only ability is to be able to absorb large amounts of information and store it in my brain over a 48-hour period, this proves extremely handy when it comes to exam time. I need to be on top form in the next month because I have to take seven three-hour exams in June, on a series of monotonous and dull topics that could bore, even an Althussarian Marxist into submission. If I fail, I will have waste a considerable amount of time and effort and will no doubt be forced to commit Hara-kiri with my grandmother’s fencing sword. If I succeed, then I can continue building my C.V of extra-ordinary magnitude that will aid me in my quest to suck greedily on the udders of capitalism.

Law has served a valuable purpose. There’s something about reading tedious amounts of contract law that concentrates the mind, and makes you focus on the important things in life, that strengthens your resolve to break out of the cycle of monotony and strive for the things that really make you happy. Life stretches out before me with all its possibilities, and the path to happiness is clearly visible. All I need to do now is strike down the obstacles in my way and tackling Land law seems to be as good a place to start as any. Time to grow up.

The T.V Licence, and the art of taking a piss

2005-03-03T06:18:00.000-08:00

On odd occasions I come down to the pigeonholes in the Blenheim lobby to discover I have yet another letter from the T.V licensing body. This particular piece of threatening correspondence usually sets out in detail the nasty things they can do to you if you are caught in possession of an unlicensed television, and presents a series of alarming statistics showing impressive numbers of ‘successful prosecutions’ and ‘detection rates’. I’m a sucker for this kind of psychological warfare. The licensing body has taken on the same role in contemporary society as ‘the four horseman of the apocalypse’ did in the early modern period. They are usually referred to in hushed tones by students at the start of every year and are attributed with implausible powers of perception. The picture one gets of them, is that they drive around the streets of Britain’s cities in state of the art ‘detection vans’, armed with enormous satellite dishes that can pick up guilty households on their radar. They can also smell fear, and produce categorical evidence that you are lying when you tell them you don’t possess a television. ‘That’s funny’, they would doubtless say, in a Columbo-esque kind of way, before proceeding to pick your alibi apart with consummate skill. I tried not to pay my licence, but somehow the guilt kept eating away inside of me and I ultimately relented.

Into my head came nightmarish images. I would be sitting in my Blenheim cell at night, watching Friday night porn on Channel five in a zombie like stupor. Then, suddenly, the door would burst open, and into the room would leap two officers in ski masks and carrying assault rifles. ‘T.V licence board, get on the fucking ground!’ they would shout, and I, terrified, would spread-eagle myself on the carpet as they inspected my T.V. ‘I just use it to play my Xbox’, I would stutter, meekly, but these specially trained operatives would see through me at a glance and issue me with a hefty 1,000 fine. In reality, I suspect the TV licensing board is a somewhat impotent body. It probably consists of a single computer with a mail-merge system that routinely sends out nasty letters, effecting compliance by maintaining an atmosphere of terror. In essence it’s the same technique that was used during the purges in Stalinist Russia. I complied earlier in the year, my two flatmates didn’t and there has been no visit from the B.B.C ‘Cheka’. I need to face up to the fact I am weak.

The public urinal is the last battleground of masculinity. Deprived of large-scale war by the nuclear deterrent, and restrained from butchering our neighbours by the rule of law, we now divert our energies into more trivial areas of competition. One of these is to torment people with nervous bladders, the phenomenon where one finds it impossible to perform an ‘act of nature’ when one has reached the appropriate venue. I do suffer from this affliction on occasion, and it is pretty annoying to say the least. One stands there squirming in embarrassment, praying for your bowels to get their act together and cursing the sequence of events that brought you into this situation. The chap next to you usually displays one of two reactions. Either he gets suspicious and suspects you of having ‘George Michael’ style motives for your expedition to the public urinal, or he revels in the position of power in which he now finds himself and takes as much time as possible in order to prolong your discomfort. Defeated and dejected, one sometimes has to admit that one is beaten, and retreat to the confines of a nearby cubical. Alternatively, you sometimes find yourself playing the opposite role and find yourself next to someone who suffers from the same defect. You stand triumphant while the poor chap struggles to function, taking your time, and considering the adage that sometimes ‘life ain’t all that bad’. Life is all about the small victories.

Speaking of which, i've just won Aprils 'rant of the month' at 'Have a Rant.co.uk' for one of my old posts. Sadly all I seem to have won is a virtual certificate and 15 rant point, yippie fucking-doo

http://www.have-a-rant.co.uk/har/viewtopic.php?t=202

Dr Who

2005-02-15T06:22:00.000-08:00

‘Why the hell do you love this shitty program so much?’, I recall one of my friends saying as I stuck on my video of ‘Day of the Daleks’ for about the sixth time in as many weeks. I didn’t bother replying, the scenes of robotic monsters destroying Audley End house with ray guns spoke for themselves, and for a hyperactive twelve year old the format was perfect. Star Trek was distinctly sub-standard. The whole show was essentially an allegory for the Cold War, with the U.SS Enterprise cruising the galaxy in search of planets to purge with American values and show them ‘the Earth thing called kissing’. The Klingons represented the U.S.S.R, humourless aliens with Cornish pasties on their heads that one could respect but find it incredibly hard to co-exist with because of their warlike culture. The appearance of one on the bridge of the Enterprise in ‘The Next Generation’, reflected the new atmosphere of perestroika and glasnost (see also the speech at the end of ‘Rocky IV’, and ‘Red Heat’). The Vulcans seemed to represent the Europeans, beings full of wisdom and logic, but whom nobody ever listened to. The Romulans were the nations of Asia, whom no-one from the western world can ever really understand if Manga is anything to go by. The last time I watched one of those infernal cartoons, it featured a ‘penis monster’ with phallic tentacles, spaying semen everywhere and impaling innocent bystanders. I think that particular piece of ‘light entertainment’ proves once and for all that there is such a thing as an over-active imagination.

Doctor Who more reflected the British ‘Island’ mentality and the fear of invasion that belies our national xenophobia. The universe was full of menace, from alien races bent on destruction, giant maggots in coalmines, and the threat of nuclear annihilation from the squabbling superpowers. The shows premise was simple but effective, take a machine that can travel anywhere, one eccentric hero and a couple of gormless companions, and stick them in a claustrophobic environment with a monster. In black and white, the creaky sets and the piss-poor special effects were masked by the monochrome, and the episodes were able to convey the same sense of horror as serials like ‘Quatermass and the Pit’. With the transition into colour, the cracks were there for all to see, but somehow it didn’t matter a jot, watching aliens smash up seventies Britain was just too much fun.

And now to the new series. I didn’t get around to watching it for ages because Saturday night is normally reserved for cheap Stella and traipsing round the streets of Nottingham in search of a pub that stays open till one. When I finally did watch it, I had this to say

‘I don’t want to seem like a ‘fanboy’, that slightly sad being that rants on endlessly about ‘the inner meaning behind Star Trek episodes’ and who studiously memorises the script of each and every episode of their chosen T.V series. The fact is that I am like that, my brain is full of worthless information about the Tom Baker era and I wasted vast amounts of my teenage years reading the plots of every single episode. I’m not proud about it but I did. And now I feel incensed about an issue that I strongly doubt anyone else will care about: upon returning from lectures and settling down with the News of the World, I read the following and nearly spilt my coffee

“They’re the hardest baddies of all time of all time, but today we reveal just what’s inside the Daleks’ tough outer shell – a gooey, one eyed blob!. (big deal, that was revealed back in ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ in the seventies). Things look bleak for the world in 2012 when the last surviving Dalek breaks loose from captivity, drains all power from the state of Utah and becomes a genius by memorising the Internet(!). As it goes on a killing rampage the doc and assistant Rose played by Billie Piper (worst piece of casting since Bonnie Langford) arrive by Tardis to do battle. But when Rose touches the Alien it soaks up her DNA and DEVELOPS FEELINGS(!!!!). An insider told us “It can’t last, but incredibly the Dalek stops exterminating and just sort of opens up to Rose”.

When the F**k did Dr Who start turning into Dawson’s Creek. The Dalek is a British institution, it supposed to be the most evil being in the galaxy and convey a sense of menace in the way only a Neo-Nazi dustbin armed with a sink-plunger can. What next, cuddly Cybermen?, Sea Devils go through the menopause?, Davros has a mid-life crisis?. And how the hell can anything turn into a genius after memorising the internet. The net mostly consists of Porn, miss-information and turgid blogs where people post pretentious song lyrics and witter on about how ‘creative’, ‘artistic’ and ‘misunderstood’ they are (for a prime example of this, go here ). This is a situation that’s only going to get worse by 2012. Last week I had to put up with farting aliens with a vinegar allergy and the most improbable piece of hacking since ‘Independence Day’, and now pacifist Daleks. Much more of this and I’m going to smash up my T.V.’

Certain things should not be tampered with, Nelson’s Column, the lyrics of ‘Jerusalem’, the Queen’s minge, the tax dodging status of elitist public schools– if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Careers, Catholicism and Crapness

2005-02-14T06:22:00.000-08:00

Aren’t Careers advisers great?. I could have gone into that interview -having stopped on the way to butcher several small children, taken dangerous amounts of intravenous drugs in a bus shelter and pissed in a charity shop- confessed all to the man, and I still would have come out feeling all rosy and good about myself. I could have been Charles Manson, and the chap would still have said something like ‘you have great people skills’. Apparently I have ‘a fantastic academic record’, I ‘attend the best law school in the country’ and I managed to get an interview without having worked in a law firm, which shows that I have ‘great commercial experience’. We shall leave aside for a moment, the fact that I am a bit of a twat. The main thing I was told, is that for the purposes of job-hunting in the immediate future, I must cease to be the Humphrey Clarke we all know and loathe. I shall become a career focused professional, my life planned out with Prussian precision and my C.V brimming with invented positions of responsibility and business ‘buzzwords’ like ‘portfolio’ and ‘focused’. Things like my chronic fear of using the telephone, my tendency to slack off and my lack of serious ambition can be swept under the carpet, I am the personification of ‘Business’ once again.

Television really has gone downhill recently. Upon turning on the ‘Devils Device’ a couple of nights back I was confronted with the spectacle of a naked pre-op transsexual, with oversized breasts and a giant wedding tackle. The next scene in the program showed the member being sliced apart by plastic surgeons. Lets look up ‘entertainment’ in the dictionary shall we. Entertainment ,‘Something that amuses, pleases, or diverts’, isn’t it stretching the definition a bit to call seeing someone’s fruit and veg being cut up entertainment?. What’s next, one wonders, celebrity autopsies?, abattoir game shows?, televised badger baiting?. Maybe I should become the next Mary Whitehouse, and pen a series of letters to Channel Five, expressing my ‘outrage’ and ‘indignation’, although that would probably make me the very defintion of a self-righteous prick.

As I look back over my former entries, I see that I have been a bit harsh on poor old John Paul II, I mean just because someone takes a contrary position to you doesn’t mean you should rejoice in their death. I suspect I was irritated by the sickening amount of adulation poured in his direction from most of the world’s media, I felt similarly peeved when Diana died and became the patron saint of dysfunctional women. Now we have a pope who holds the same views and is intent on following the same policies as John Paul, and yet he is being scorned because he isn’t very charismatic. If the last pope was so great then what’s wrong with a carbon copy. As I think I’ve said elsewhere, I never understood why the Catholic Church can’t preach abstinence and say that use of barrier contraceptives is ok. In my opinion, condoms actually promote abstinence because the infernal things are so hard to get on. By the time you’ve extracted the instrument from its impregnable packaging and rolled it on, you have usually lost your erection, your dignity and, worst of all, the intended recipient has lost all interest. This is not only incredibly irritating but pretty sound theologically I’d imagine. Besides, casting my mind back to my Religious Instruction lessons, Onan’s sin appears to have been his failure to conduct the levirate, not the coitus interruptus. It seems ludicrous to be preaching abstinence to the Africans, a large number of whom are in the habit of walking round in not very much at all if the pseudo-pornographic National Geographic is anything to go by.

My dad sent me to this Catholic School to put me off religion, and I found that most of their doctrines were unsound. During a classroom discussion we were informed by my R.I teacher (pictured below) that the theory of evolution was completely wrong. ‘But sir’, I piped up, ‘Its in all the scientific text books’. ‘Completely wrong’ the teacher sagely replied, ‘I mean if you took a squirrel and threw it in the ocean, then it wouldn’t just suddenly evolve gills and swim away would it’.

His argument was brilliant. To this day I get amusing images in my head of him standing on a boat and chucking squirrels in the sea to see if Darwin was really right. Being an atheist makes more sense to me. All you have to do is mock other peoples superstition, make belated comments occasionally about ‘believing in something’ to make you feel better about your steadily ebbing mortality, and then, miraculously find Jesus on your deathbed. Halleluiah.

I finally got to see the new series of Doctor Who last week and was horrified to discover it was full of flatulent aliens. Does anyone else find fart jokes chronically unfunny?. Maybe years of boarding school where I was perennially held down and farted on, have conditioned me to be un-amused by this form of humour. The expulsion of stomach gas from the rectal cavity, followed by an irritating noise, comic genius.

Predictions

2005-02-06T06:24:00.000-08:00

As I chewed miserably on my half cooked rice I pondered the irony that there are people in third world countries with far better diets than me. The reason for their suffering is that they are poverty stricken, and must walk many miles over a sun baked plain to fetch water and receive U.N handouts. The reason I am consuming such an unappetising meal is that I am too lazy to walk to Tescos. I could have stolen my flatmate’s food but decided against it, one must purge idolatry by suffering it’s consequences. Having replenished the meagre supplies in my cupboard this morning I have come to the conclusion that the George Foreman fat reducing grilling machine is a con. Since setting the damn thing up in my kitchen I have become consumed by irresistible urges for bacon toasties that I am too weak to resist. As a consequence, my fat intake has risen sharply, making the title of the product something of a misnomer. Tonight I shall reverse this trend of culinary incompetence by cooking a Tai stir-fry, and this time I’ll try not to burn the bloody vegetables.

I love it when people make appallingly wrong predictions. I recall listening to this audiotape about mysterious happenings and psychic prophecies back when I was a highly-strung pre-teen. Part of the narrative concerned a famous 16th century woman mystic, Mother Shipton, who had made hundreds of forecasts for future events, many of which had mysteriously come true. She was also famous for being unbelievably ugly, her nose was said to be "of disproportional length with many crooks and turnings.......her stature was larger than common, her body crooked and her face frightful", she had great goggling eyes and her wreck of a nose also gave off a faint luminosity. In the artists impression below she looks disturbingly like Nobby Holder.

One of her prophesies gave me the willies, an actress on the tape with an unnaturally deep voice whispered, ‘but beware, an end to the world will come, in nineteen hundred and ninety one’. Of course, now that I have a modicum of maturity I would be less inclined to swallow this bullshit uncritically and would realise that this lady had chosen the date 1991 for the end of the world, firstly because it happened to rhyme easily, and secondly because it was far enough in the future for her not to get any bad press for centuries. Back then however, it gave me the willies. At this point in life I was so superstitious that I was still sleeping with the covers over my head, because of a Sherlock Holmes story I had read where a snake is forced down a bell rope onto an unsuspecting victim, this might give some indication of my gullibility. Throughout 1991 I became extremely nervy and would peek nervously through the curtains in the belief the apocalypse would arrive at any moment. After all, I reasoned, didn’t the idea seem plausible?. If god were planning an apocalypse he wouldn’t have it on a year that was a round number like 2000, he would have it on a numerically boring year when no-one would be expecting it. In the event, the 1991 Judgment Day theory turned out to be the worst prediction since ‘it’ll all be over by Christmas’ in 1914 and I became a confirmed sceptic.

Last year, a friend of mine was insistent that scouse hostage Ken Bigley was working for Al Qaeda. ‘Think about it’ he would say, ‘in every video the hostage takers release he tells the British government to give in to their demands’, ‘he speaks Arabic and he has connections with the area, its extremely suspect, he’ll turn out to be an Al Qaeda agent, you wait and see’. When events proved him wrong he was unapologetic and next week was telling me the Nick Berg killing was faked by the F.B.I.

Often the most erroneous prediction you can make is ‘I don’t fancy staying out for long, so I’m only going for a couple of drinks’. Nothing proves this better than the story Richard told me about his mum’s birthday. Shopping for one’s parents is always difficult, but there are certain fail-safe gifts one can turn to if things get desperate. Having ferreted around in the bookshop for a while, Richard decided to get his mother a book on bird watching and began to walk back to his house to wrap it. Then his mobile rang, it was his mates inviting him down to the local drinking spot for a couple of pints. ‘What harm can a few beers do’, I imagine he thought and, bag in hand, he wandered off down the road. Eight pints later, and things had gone spectacularly wrong as they are wont to do in this scenario. When reaching the pub, it is extremely hard not to be seduced by the sirens of cheap Stella, good company and high sprits. Feeling nauseous, Richard picked up his bag and puked violently into it, all over the book. Unsurprisingly he was asked to leave the pub and staggered drunkenly back up the hill clutching his bag of vomit. Upon awaking, he discovered that he had fallen asleep in the woods next to a small stream. Horrified, he realised what he had done and inspected the bag and its disgusting contents. Then a moment of inspiration, he took the book out of the bag and washed the soiled pages off in the stream. Having dried it off on the radiator at home the book looked almost presentable and he decided to wrap it up and give it to his mother the following day. The situation had been rescued, and he remained in his mum’s good books until, one night, he came back smashed and woke her up at three in the morning to tell her he was going to convert to Islam.

This week I predict I shall get the majority of my morbidly dull project written. I predict that I shall become an expert in ‘the legal implications arising from the Higgs Report’, and that I shall learn how to cook food without ending up with stomach cramps and indigestion.

Pink Castles, Factions and bad humour

2005-01-29T06:25:00.000-08:00

The cruellest month has arrived once again and I feel myself consumed with hatred. This is a sign that I have excess energies and they need to be channelled into something more productive than launching a pointless jihad against the ‘Murder she Wrote’ fan-club. Were I at home, my father would note this change in my demeanour and send me out on some futile expedition into the garden to stack bricks and purge these emotions with the Victorian work ethic. If I do not deal with this aggression then it will fester inside me and cause me to go off the boil at the slightest pretext. In between bouts of doing my project I try to think of suitable distractions, yesterday I considered trying to make Ricin out of household ingredients but thought better of it. The young Ivan the Terrible’s method was to throw live dogs off the roof of the Kremlin to ‘observe their pain’. Given my experiences with Abi’s dog I feel this might be rather therapeutic, but I don’t want the RSPA breathing down my neck just at the moment.

Most of my loathing over the past couple of years has been reserved for the actor Jeremy Irons who has offended me deeply by choosing to paint his castle pink.

I have a strong concern for the national heritage of these islands and consider this act an outrageous violation. Jeremy Irons has insisted that his intention is to restore ‘as near as possible the original architecture and style’ and that pink is ‘a traditional shade to paint’. Where he got this idea from I have no idea, perhaps he has been referencing Disney movies under the mistaken impression that the Cinderella castle is based on historical fact. A castle should always be battleship grey to present an intimidating sight to any would be attacker and make them cower at the prospect of having to launch an assault. Painting a castle an effeminate colour completely emasculates it and leaves it looking very sorry indeed. An army that beheld this pink castle would fall about laughing and come to the conclusion that the occupier was of an inferior calibre, in this case they would be entirely right. I am aware that the chances of an besieging army arriving in Cork are a tad remote, but when restoring a local monument such as this, it is right and proper to remain true to its original purpose.

I have no idea why a simple thing like arranging a set of eight people to sit on one table for the G.D.L has to turn into a full-scale diplomatic crisis. My theory is that sometimes life can get so dull and monotonous that it sometimes helps to introduce a bit of unnecessary drama into the proceedings. So it is, that we are unable to get Richard onto our table because one of the other girls doesn’t like him. Her reason for this is that he said that she couldn’t be Scottish because she comes from Hong Kong. This conversation took place on a somewhat disastrous evening to celebrate Matt’s birthday. I first suspected that Richard had drunk a bit too much when he attempted to walk out onto a bowling alley in pursuit of an errant ball that had become stuck in the gutter. It had escaped his mind that the surface of the alley was greased to allow faster movement of the ball, and he promptly fell violently on his arse to the great amusement of the assembled company. Later at the meal at Pizza Express he announced to the entire table that the girl next to him had the shits and that the English had never conquered Wales, a rather dubious historical thesis I might add. Such a declaration constituted a bit of a conversational faux pas and I was politely asked to escort him home.

As a consequence of this encounter, the aforementioned girl refuses to sit on the same table with Richard and this information has caused a bit of a schism in our social network. I see no reason for this, Richard is a perfectly pleasant chap when he feels like it. The way the girl went on you would have thought he had the culinary etiquette of Shih Hu, the Chinese emperor famed for beheading a girl from his harem on the eve of the banquet and serving her butchered torso up to his dinner guests. In any event, me and Richard have decided not to attend anyway and feel the funds required for the entrance fee can be better invested in a more down to earth evening in the Horn in Hand or by settling down with a few beers to watch the election. Such an occasion would be free of factional infighting as well as the torture of having to swan about in a dinner jacket.

Upon my last visit to the St Annes Londis to return a video, the Indian behind the counter decided to make an attempt at humour. He called me over saying ‘excuse me zir, you pay 3.98 for the DVD’. I paused and got ready to indignantly defend myself. ‘What do you mean!’ I said, defiant in the knowledge that I had returned the damn thing on time. His crooked teeth broke into a smile, ‘joke’, he said at length. It was hardly comic genius but I laughed and felt glad at this improvement in our relationship. Practical jokes are far more welcome than death stares.

Americana

2005-01-01T06:31:00.000-08:00

‘I have nothing to declare except my genius’ said Oscar Wilde smugly when he appeared at the New York Customs house early in the last century. I suspect if he tried the same trick in this day and age, he would be strip searched, accused of being an Islamic extremist and slung out of the country on his ear. Airport security have never been renowned for their sense of humour and now that the mythical ‘war on terror’ has erupted they have seized the opportunity to enact their Gestapo fantasies upon the unsuspecting general public. I suspect these people wanted to be in the F.B.I as kids, but something went badly wrong along the way. They spent great swathes of their early adult life watching episodes of Colombo, reading trashy spy dramas and perfecting the art of interrogation on their younger siblings, but ended up harassing innocent tourists. As I looked across the immigration desk to the bald headed buffoon with the ‘my hobby is groping children’ moustache I felt I was staring at a lifetime of failure. ‘What is the purpose of your visit?’. ‘To see my girlfriend’ I replied, tired and bored after 24 hours of continuous travel. He posed a few more questions and then asked me something that I failed for a moment to comprehend. ‘I see Mr Clarke, and are you visiting the States for business or for pleasure?’. In the context of my previous answer this seemed to be a rather stupid query. ‘Pleasure’ I answered after a short pause, I hope I never get so warped by capitalism as to regard seeing my nearest and dearest as a commercial venture, but they say that’s what happens to relationships over time.

And so I proceeded through the airport terminal to take a ride in Katie’s dad’s car. I recall a friend of mine who used to sit in her room with the lights off most of the time, not because she was a vampire or mentally disturbed but because she felt that a little goes a long way in helping preserve the environment. The Martin-mobile was the very antithesis of this dogma, a large red truck that greedily consumed vast quantities of gasoline as we sped through the Airport tunnel. This project is apparently leaking, not in a bathroom tap kind of way but more akin to the Titanic after a rather too close encounter with the Arctic Circle, I was much happier when we reached the opposite side. Having listened to the radio I discovered that the U.S.A seems to be pre-occupied with whether a woman who has been in a coma for seven years has the right to dribble. This kind of thing simply wouldn’t happen in the U.K. The N.H.S need the bed-space far to badly and would simply remove the tube when no-one was looking or prescribe a hefty dose of morphine. I have always suspected that the motive behind making Euthanasia legal in this country is to alleviate the pensions crisis by reducing the post-war bulge. For this reason I’m slightly wary of it.

It seemed to have escaped everyone’s attention that a rather disturbed chap had wandered into a high school out west and decide to practice ‘Death Wish’ style justice on his classmates. When interviewed about the massacre, most people seemed to say something along the lines of ‘well that’s those damn Indians for you’. When you consider the fuss they made about that little snowball fight cum shootout in Boston back in 1775, this seems a bit thick. The poor Native Americans have attracted a disproportionate amount of abuse across the centuries. Consider the words of the famed 19th century French naturalist, the Comte De Buffon, who claimed that America was a land where the water was stagnant, the soil unproductive and the animals without size or vigour, their constitutions weakened by the noxious vapours that rose from the rotting swamps and sunless forests. Of the native Indians he said ‘They have no beard or body hair and no ardour for the female’, their reproductive organs were ‘small and feeble’. Another naturalist, one Comille de Pauw described them as ‘So lacking in virility, they have milk in their breasts’. If that was the opinion of the leading minds of Europe one can only imagine what it was on the American frontier.

My principle issue with American television is that there are so many traps I fall straight into. For a start I keep thinking that the hour long infomercials are some form of documentary and –naïve and oblivious- I sit there watching for a considerable length of time before realising my mistake. The one I kept tuning in to involved one of my fellow countrymen displaying his new blender to an implausibly fascinated group of party guests. ‘Simply add margarita mix, lemon and ice, and then blend and voila!, Margarita’ said the repulsively ugly ex-pat in a mock-cockney accent. The guy couldn’t sell the Big Issue in the U.K but some Americans seem associate a British accent with authority and wisdom, a myth I strived to quash during the course of my visit by acting like a moron. The whole scenario seemed highly unrealistic. For instance, if I invited large numbers of my friends round to demonstrate my George Foreman grill, I doubt they would ever return and most would probably disown me.

My vacation gave me an ideal opportunity to catch up on what is possibly the greatest entertainment around today, the paternity tests on Maury. I’m not sure why these fascinate me so much, they always go exactly the same way every time. Enter the dissolute father, usually he is pictured sitting in a basketball court and has a peculiar inability to talk without waving his hand up and down.

‘Hey Maury, listen up dude, it aint ma kid man, I been talking to J-Zee and the so-simple crew down on southside and they been telling me ma woman been cheating. There aint no way the kid is mine, he don’t look like me man, he ugly’.

The camera pans back to Maury who is sitting with the girlfriend, she sits in tears as the screen behind them shows a picture comparison of their baby and her boyfriend, the two usually look identical.

‘Ah don’t understand Maury, he’s been callin me a dirty ho and sayin ah cheated, but I aint done nothing wrong, it’s his little boy but he don’t see it’

The father –for he clearly is- walks into the studio making V signs at the audience and strutting with a confidence that seems misplaced when you consider he is relying on the testimony of a bunch of other crackheads. He struts up to the monitor and points at the face of his son.

‘Exhibit A, this muthafucker don’t have the same nose, he don’t have the same forehead, he ugly, he aint mine, no way hose’

The envelope is opened with the D.N.A results, ‘Leroy, you are the father’ exclaims Maury with a complete lack of any surprise. The girlfriend erupts in triumph, ‘Ah told you so you retard!’. Leroy appears un-phased, he waves his hand a little more agitatedly and makes silly poses on the studio floor before retreating backstage. Later on he is pictured cradling the child he previously disowned and saying ‘ah he’s a cute little bastard’, the transition to fatherhood is complete.

Sadly I could only stay a week and am in the process of returning to my cell in Nottingham. Only spending a week with Katie and having to go home again is rather like those dreams I used to have at St Andrews. The ones where I would win a million pounds and then awake to discover I had a crippling hangover and my keys were missing. Please tell me someone else gets those.