Bonhomie

The fact that this blog has finally lost its treasured Triple A rating is in no way a cause for a change of direction. All it means is that I am more determined than ever to continue with the current difficult course of action. Even though I have repeatedly stated clearly that the loss of this rating was the single most important measure of my success or failure, I now maintain that I have succeeded more successfully than if the AAA rating had remained. One could say (and that is just what I'm going to do) that the downgrade is actually an indication that I have exceeded expectations. Not many people can be as tough as I am in the face of so many difficulties, but I will not stray from the path, which is the right one, even though it leads straight off the edge of the biggest cliff you have ever seen.



Now that the biting political satire is out of the way, it's on to the bloke who hands out copies of City AM outside St. James's Park station every weekday. For those unfamiliar, this particular rag is yet another free sheet, with a focus on 'City matters' (and I don't mean Manchester City, either) rather than the celebrity obsessed drivel that graces the Metro and the infuriating and unreadable comment of the Evening Standard. The man at the station makes a point of saying good morning to every person who passes him as they enter or exit. His staccato tone is impossible to miss, as is his unremitting cheerfulness:

"Good morning sirhave a nice daythank you very much. Good morning sirhave a nice daythank you very much. Good morning madamhave a nice daythank you very much..." as he hands over his free fucking newspapers.

There are a couple of things which really wind me up about this. One is the constant barrage of jolly, forced customer service white noise which forms such a backdrop to the modern world. And he's only giving away a paper FFS! The other is the falseness of the greeting, ejaculated a million times a day. Perhaps curmudgeonly of me, but I find myself gnashing my teeth every time I walk past him.

Hopefully, gnashing of the teeth, along with wailing and rending of cloth, will not be a part of the experience when we travel up to Brum on Monday. A good win over Chelsea on Sunday in the end (though thank Christ Joe saved that pen) which should give us some confidence. A win there is vital to keep the rampant Spurs at bay just as it is vital to keep the tiny spark of the championship challenge alive. My prediction: 2-0 City. Sadly (for Stephen Fry as much as anyone else) I don't think the Rags will have much to do to beat Norwich, although they may be tempted to insult the East Anglians by holding back the cream of the crop for the Madrid tie. Still hanging in there, by the most gossamer of threads...

Paper World

A happy 2013 one and all.

It's quite instructive to try and imagine what it must be like to be inside the mind of a Daily Mail journalist (or should that be 'Editor'?). I've been searching for something to rant and rave at since the Guardian changed the settings for its reader feedback, and the IE browser I use became redundant for many of the Comment is Free features - such as actually reading the comments. It's been a bit of a struggle, and I realise now how much I actually rely on what's BTL for my news enjoyment. The comments for Mail online articles are still visible, and I 'enjoy' reading the insane spluttering views of some of the readers, while also relishing the anger excited in me by the repulsive tripe of Peter Hitchens or Richard Littlejohn.

As a part of my sado-masochistic experiment, I've been indulging in one of the paper's obsessions: the decline of the country due to the dissolute nihilism of our alcohol-fuelled youth. Interestingly, a policeman from Shrewsbury decided to tweet his experiences 'on the beat' in the town as the New Year festivities really got underway. I declare an interest, and so could not resist looking through the piece. Now, take just these couple of sentences from it:

"Across the country, it was the night revellers brought shame to the nation at the end of its most glorious 12 months for decades. After Diamond Jubilee patriotism and Olympic triumph did the country proud, hordes of alcohol-fuelled party-goers turned the clock back to show the world a familiar, sickening portrait of modern Britain...."

Clearly, the writer (quite possibly at the behest of the proprietor) is inviting us to join him in feeling a bitter-sweet sadness at the way in which the young pissheads of Broken Britain have let us all down with their loutish behaviour. The image created by these drunken hooligans and slags* is 'familiar' and 'sickening'; and the tweeting Superintendent wistfully asks us to consider the moral dimension of this hellish bacchanal, his inane ejaculations milked for every sensationalist headline possible by the breathless journo. No matter that the pictures used are not from Shrewsbury, but are taken in Newcastle, Liverpool, Cardiff... and no matter that one of the pictures is captioned 'the Shropshire town centre', which is wilfully moronic in that a) Shropshire is a county for fuck's sake, and b) the picture is of a quiet street in Bridgnorth with a van parked on it. Of course, the Mail doesn't care for such details, sticking admirably to the old adage of never letting the facts get in the way, etc., etc.

Ultimately, this is what Paul Dacre's organ is all about: young girls salaciously pictured - camera lenses pushed like snouts up hems - with skimpy party dresses riding up their legs in grotesque parodies of the celebrity shots which plaster almost every corner of the site, accompanied by the most hypocritical moral outrage. Compare and contrast the bit above with a piece of fluff about Tamara Ecclestone elsewhere:

"Dressed in her usual blingtastic style, the daughter of Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone looked in need of a few pints of water as she headed home to rest her aching feet and no doubt sore head. Tamara is one person who must have been glad to see the back of 2012. The socialite's relationship with businessman Omar Khyami imploded after the discovery of a leaked sex tape."

Blingtastic? It is, let's face it, a bizarro world with which we are presented, and the realities of this world are indeed stranger than fiction. Armies of paps are stationed around Caribbean islands with ultra long lens cameras, capturing (millions of) images of sometimes famous, always rich, women in bikinis while hacks sit at computers typing screeds of meaningless drivel to accompany them; indignation about gay people, and education, and immigration, and benefit recipients; and drugs and knives; catty sniping (no doubt from male hacks, shamefully repeated by the paper's readership) about women's wrinkles or body fat, or other imperfections. Shut it down now.

And now, sports news. A surprisingly routine win for us over the Potters, but once again trumped by Van Persie and his Rag army. I thought Tony Pulis would squeeze a bit more out of his boys, but he didn't. Kun is such a marvel, and could have had a hat trick, so will be sorely missed v Arsenal, if not so much against the Hornets, while Yaya is already in the Veldt with Kolo. After Chelsea were surprisingly stung by Sweep and Harry's Hoops, their threat is diminished somewhat, but there are still a testing few weeks ahead if we are going to keep United in our sights. Let's hope Ed and Carlos (and dare I mention Mario?) can step up to the mark.

* Ironic usage

Cash in the bush

First of all, a small apology for slagging off City. A couple of good goals and a nice win rounded off the Austrian visit nicely. Now it's off to China and Arsenal, and I really do appreciate the updates from @MCFC, especially when I have no other means of keeping in contact with the boys. Now let's get the Van Persie thing over with, shall we? So, on to today's rant.

Reluctant as I am to fuel this specious 'debate' about the 'morality' of cash-in-hand payments, I do think the whole thing illustrates the way in which politism - or journalics if you prefer - operates today.

A junior minister is asked a question about cash payments (knowing that his bullshit will be picked up and propagated by what passes for the Press in this country) and responds in a way which will deflect attention from the meat and potatoes of the argument. Everyone then starts banging on and on about it as if it really mattered, while conveniently ignoring the truly egregious tax dodging of, for example, Vodafone. It all then ends up at the top, and Cleggeron are asked if they ever did it, while Boris of course can't keep his snooty snout out of anything with headlines in. The intriguing thing is how (I believe) these fuckers and their PR handlers will respond to such a question. They will not consider whether or not to answer truthfully, but will instead assess the risks of lying, and of being found out.

Morality - in the fiduciary sense - is the order of the day. Tax avoiders, benefit cheats, unworthy bank bonus collectors - everyone must somehow justify their earnings, and if they have been found wanting in this moral balance, then they must return their ill-gotten gains from whence they came. So, Cameron, Clegg, Boris and all must agree with the Rt. Hon. Mr Gauke in his assessment of paying plumbers (or whoever) in cash, and yet must admit to having done so themselves. Everyone, right and left, seems to share the view that the guy is talking pure, unadulterated bollocks.

Surely the real question of morality should be posed on the dusty plains of Afghanistan, where Mr Obama's secret agents bung dollar bills at local warlords, not in David Cameron's bathroom?

Race to the bottom

Racism is very much in the news. Not in a way which enables any sensible discussion of the topic, but rather in a way which makes one splutter with frustration. From Louise Mensch hijacking the debate to have a dig at Diane Abbott (I'm no fan of the latter, just to be clear, but I also want to say that this has nothing to do with her being black or female, just as my intense dislike for the former has nothing to do with her being white or female. I make my judgements on areas of more substance, such as someone's views on abortion, or poverty, for example) in order to advance her own despicable political aims; to the question of whether Evra will shake Suarez's hand or not. It seems hard to turn around these days and not be confronted with some slur or other: John Terry; the aforementioned Evra/Suarez situation; the Liverpool fan doing a monkey impression; women ranting on trams and tubes... Where does it get us, all this - dare I say - feigned outrage? Nowhere fast is where.

Take the Diane Abbott scenario for starters. The whole spin element of Louise Mensch's tweet (and I love Twitter as much as the next man, but don't you agree that it is irritating in the extreme that tweets - especially celeb tweets - are being used as news sources these days? Who cares what some fucking semi-literate footballer posted in 140 characters?) immediately shut down any discussion of the issues raised between Abbott and the other woman, rendering it as nothing more than a question of whether Miliband was strong enough to sack a (black female) member of his party. FWIW, I think Abbott was absolutely correct that white people have used a divide and conquer tactic to repress minorities, and I don't think she was racist in any way to say so. There is such a thing as the balance of power, and the last time I looked, it didn't lie in Peckham or Edmonton. With the exception of the magnificent Darcus Howe



none of the wider context of this whole debacle was explored though, and even his voice was passed through the sensationalist prism of Newsnight journalism.

'Are you saying that violence is acceptable?' demanded the news woman, as if she had some kind of right to debate this stuff with him. 'Just answer the question!' I mean, how the fuck dare she?

Similarly, Terry/Ferdinand. All comes down to 'will they shake hands?' and nowhere are any questions asked which might illuminate the subject until Capello walks out as the ultimate result (and amen to that).

All of the above doesn't make a particuarly meaty thesis I know. But, fer chrissakes people, let's sort it out.

Hope & Despair

Last week saw - for me anyway - the definition of the best and worst of the USA on the same day. Thanks to Professor Cox on Twitter (how someone can go up in one's estimation after being a member of D:Ream, eh?) I logged onto the NASA website and tuned in to live images and audio of the launch of Discovery. Like Prince, I may occasionally question the idea of spending billions of dollars on a space programme whilst there are such basic issues around feeding kids and fighting preventable diseases, but I do marvel at the wonder of a launch every time I see one, and am too amazed that we have become so blase about it. To soothe the conscience, I always say that there are plenty of other things we could scrap (such as private jets or weapons or vast bonuses for those oh-so clever businessmen) while holding on to the space programme.

Brian Cox, as I was saying, fuelled my enthusiasm and it was a great feeling, like receiving a tweet from an astronaut, to feel part of this latest (and perhaps one of the last for a while) adventure into the infinite. God speed you, black and white, male and female emperors!

And yet. On the same day, again via Twitter, I heard of the leaked video showing the murder of Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists by a couple of Uncle Sam's finest chopper jockeys in 2007.



This of course, is the flip-side of the coin. The very worst expression of gung ho American Imperialism that you are ever likely to see. I know that there are some who will say that the soldiers are fighting a war, god damn it, and no soft civilian like me has the faintest idea of what that can mean. Force must be met with force, and all that. Well, that may be right, but if you take the 17 or so minutes needed to watch that video, I don't think you will be sticking to that argument for long. There is no threat from the group of people who are gunned down, and no excuse for heat of the moment reaction. All is done in a deliberate and calculated manner. What it does show is the total de-humanisation of the solider. The inability to see a fellow person in the gun sights.

Egg on face

I'm really sorry to bang on about this, but it really is the most pressing issue of our time, I feel, and I believe we are on the verge of some form of revolution.

Reading Zoe Williams in today's Gruaniad, I for once felt very happy that my readership was not much wider. She's taken a proper mauling for trying to write what I'm sure she felt was a nice lightweight bit of humour on the global crdeit crisis, and the mystification she feels at explanations for it offered by so-called experts. In a way, she only has herself to blame, and has laid herself open to the usual anti-Graun sneers by opening the piece with the following words:

"God knows I'm no stranger to not knowing what I'm talking about..."

However, the gist of the piece, poorly penned though it may be, is that it is difficult to see the reality of the crisis we are in when it is passed through the lens of the media pundits, and occasionally the sheer scale of the numbers is bewildering in itself. A commenter on the piece did manage to provide an illustration - in diagram form - which certainly helped to clarify things for me. As it is under a creative commons licence on Wikipedia, I can publish it here.

What it does illustrate is that it looks as if we are in deeper shit than I thought. Much or all of the lending of the last few years has essentially been underpinned by property values - Mortgage Backed Security as it is known, and now that the bottom is continually dropping out of this nice little earner, the whole thing is falling to bits.

To back up the lovely Ms. Williams to an extent, it might be helpful if that little twat Peston made some effort to explain these things instead of puffing up his own irritating schtick.

Lords A-Leaping

How edifying to see the spectacle of the Queen's Speech again this year. I actually smiled at the Sun cartoon on Wednesday, which depicted an open-top tourist bus passing the Houses of Parliament. The tour guide was saying: "And over there you will see the traditional dawn raid of the House of Commons by the police." That I think shows just how much the world has changed. A smile from the Sun cartoon. It has to be a first (though as a child I did enjoy finding the little man and the little bird hidden in the Franklin ones every day. Mind you, I also used to enjoy Hagar the Horrible - how times have changed, and not for the better) for me.

I am intrigued by the current power play over the arrest of Damian Green, and how it illuminates (or otherwise) the debate on the powers of police and Parliament. Terry Pratchett hints at this whole area in his 'Watch' books on the Discworld, and neatly demonstrates how fine a line is trodden by plod as a tool of the state, though he does sidestep a little by turning the Watch into something of a paramilitary organisation, whereas we haven't (yet) got that kind of set-up in jolly old England.

There is a good deal of strenuous and tenuous posturing by some in the Grauniad, about the sanctity of Parliament and the threats to the long-held freedoms enshrined in the democratic representation which we are so privileged to have. The arrest of Green they say - though this did not take place within the precincts of the Houses of Parliament, and which was ostensibly for a criminal matter - is somehow a major threat to this age-old system, on which other 'great democracies' such as Canada and (in part) the US, model themselves. What utter tosh!

At the risk of sounding like a rusty saw, I would simply state that anyone who witnessed the (there is no other word for it) travesty of justice employed as justification for the Iraq war cannot place any faith in the integrity of our politicians. Neither can anyone doubt that they will do whatever they can to further their own causes.

And a merry Christmas one and all.

While there is still time

Always one to jump on the back of a trend, I thought I might add my 2 cents to the current fad for nostalgia in the context of Credit Crunchiness and the escalating prices of foodstuffs. My recent post about childhood skiving was also moderately well received, so I feel further emboldened to comment.

Essentially (in the style of Mike Yarwood) the premish is thish:

Is the world a better place than it used to be, or a worse one? For the vast majority of course the question is about as academic as you can get, but I can only speak of my self can I not? So here goes.

First of all, though, a bit of background. Mark Lawson has once again identified the zeitgeist in his usual cucumber cool manner, by asking if we are all yearning for a golden age which never existed, whilst conveniently forgetting about cholera, rickets and child abuse. These days, he maintains, we are all so comfortable that we cannot tolerate the relatively mild degrees of suffering with which we have to deal. Of course things could be better, he says, but let's not jump on the backs of knife-wielding yoof, etc before we remember the Edwardian street gangs and the Teds of the 50s, their crepe soles covered in bits of brain and bone and Brighton beach.

The Sun's Captain Crunch last week carried a - fairly - interesting two page spread on a family eating a 1940s diet for a week (only!) and everywhere you look there are references to tightening the belt - living life as we used to, complete with dripping and powdered egg, as some kind of means to a) take us back to a perceived age of innocence and b) help us to become healthier and more frugal with a spot of good honest self denial.

I remember dripping. I liked dripping, though not too much. It had a pleasantly salty taste and a faintly nauseating texture. Though, like Special Brew, I really don't think I could take it now, unless in extremis of course. There are some other key things I remember about food from my childhood, and they are (in no particular order):

Lots of meat by-products - we used to eat savoury duck, faggots (is there a difference?) and cervelat (whose name, I have just discovered, derives from the fact that it originally contained pieces of brain!) as well as pies, corned beef, spam and sausages. A favourite was heart (ox heart, I would think) which my grandmother would roast for what seemed like hours and cut into slivers, serving it in a rich gravy. I can still taste the meat, which was extremely toothsome, even though I haven't eaten it for many many years.

All fried food was cooked in lard or dripping, and must have been extremely greasy, though I don't have a particular memory of it being so. Vegetables were boiled to a very soft consistency. Nothing was steamed. I did not eat rice (except in tinned rice pudding) until I was about 15, and even then it was in a Vesta ready meal. Salad was a fairly rare treat, usually more common in the summer, accompanied by triangles of bread and a steaming bowl of new potatoes covered in butter with a dollop of Heinz salad cream. Salt was abundant, and jam tarts and tea would follow.

My uncle would often eat a plate of radish with a pyramid of salt for dipping, and I would eat strawberries - sometimes from the garden - with a pyramid of sugar. Fruit juices, which seem to be coming out the wazoo these days, were hardly ever available, though there was always plenty of squash. I can't say as I ever went hungry (except when I stayed with my uncle and aunt in Harlow during the summer holidays, when I would sneak downstairs in the dead of night to supplement the meagre meals they prepared) and I ate vast amounts of sweets, resulting in the loss of 2 of my adult teeth before I reached the age of 21.

In all, there seems to be no question that the food I (and we) eat today is immeasurably healthier than the one I was used to consuming. My kids even more so. It is a strange and sad phenomenon then - the increase in child obesity and the frightening rise of diabetes in the young. Clearly, I was more able to run off the calories I consumed, and in all probability the few fresh fruits and veg I did eat contained a higher proportion of vitamins and minerals than they do now. When it comes to food, and the politics of body shape, I would have to say that the world is not a better place than it was. It is terrifying to think of 8 and 9 year old kids obsessing about their figures and trying to look like something out of a magazine. Bring back dripping, I say!

Street of Shame

I did hold a sort of respect for Ken Livingstone, as perhaps less of a thoroughly obnoxious, trough-burying, scum-sucking hypocrite than many others of his ilk. Of late, prior to the Mayoral election disaster, he had sunk somewhat in my estimation in his cosying up to big business and his support of Sir Ian Blair. But on the whole, you've got to hand it to Ken.

Yesterday, sitting in the Laughing Halibut for my lunch, I picked up an abandoned magazine left by a previous diner. As a result, I now have a new enemy. And his name is Mark Bolland. The crummy 'hack' that phones in his Restaurant Spy piece to that pillar of journalism - ES Magazine - on a weekly basis. Aside from the fact that the article barely mentions the 'restaurant' he is supposed to be reviewing, the whole air of smug middle-class snobbery it exudes is, quite frankly, repugnant. Here are some snippets:

"...(my T5 story sees Guy and I boarding the plane on time, only to wait for 70 minutes while they find a tug to reverse the plane, causing us to miss the rehearsal of our friends’ wedding – how hopeless is that?). And then there was Ken, who didn’t exactly help much, or make one proud of what should be London’s civic face to the world."
"...I have often thought how wonderful it would be if we could engage the vibrancy, the innovation, the business expertise and the sheer hard work that makes so many of our finest eating places the very best in the world, and unleash it on the elements in our capital that are failing."
"Maybe our liberation from Ken’s tired, monochrome regime will be the spur to do just that. Rather like the owner of a new restaurant, Boris is filled with passion and determination to succeed. Failure is not an option. He wants to make it happen, draw a crowd and, I predict, be very smart at tweaking what he’s offering his customers. There will be none of the silly ‘we’re listening now’ mantra that has spewed from the government these last few weeks, but a ruthless intuition about what people need. And so far, he’s assembling around him a gang who are not part of some giant client state, dependent on handouts and patronage, but actually personify the best of London. And, like a good local restaurant, his entire family seem to be joining in, too."
"...Byron is the sort of place where new Londoners – Boris’s Londoners – will go. And if this restaurant is anything like the enterprise at City Hall, we can start feeling sunny about London again. Look out for a Byron opening in a neighbourhood near you."

I won't urge you to read the rest of the article, which somehow manages to be worse than the one at the beginning by George Osborne's wife. I have added some bold font to emphasise the most irritating parts of this inane drivel, which is a laughable continuation of the Standard's sadly successful campaign to install that blond buffoon as the Mayor of London. It reminds me of the occasional pieces which Private Eye used to run about the Murdoch puffs in The Times or The Sun promoting Sky TV, before the shameless ruling that the BBC was doing the same thing by promoting the Radio Times in its TV broadcasts. As a matter of record, though perhaps slightly off-topic, I'm with Stephen Fry on the BBC, and believe that, for all its faults (and they are many) we should guard it fiercely purely because of what it is and what it stands for.

I make a point of never buying the shitty Standard, or indeed any of its sister papers, and I won't even take one of the free rags they shove down your throat on the way to and from work every day. I would like to instigate a campaign to... I don't know... do something about a twat like Mark Bolland being allowed to write pieces of shit like this on a regular basis. The fact that he was Prince Charles's deputy private secretary probably goes a long way in explaining things. I wonder if Charlie ever slipped him a length in the pantry?

Ilford nights

I am a big fan of Marina Hyde in the Guardian. A little florid on occasion perhaps, she still usually makes me laugh, especially when writing about the absurdities of football.

Here's a story of which I am sure she would whole-heartedly approve.

That stalwart of the West Ham side and victim of smarter brother syndrome, Anton Ferdinand, has been up before the beak after a fracas outside a nightspot in London's trendy Ilford. A gentleman by the name of Emile Walker, who was allegedly on the receiving end of some of Mr Ferndinand's less nuanced football 'moves' ended up with a fractured jaw. Needless to say, young Anton says he was acting in self-defence after Mr Walker threatened to kill his girlfriend, and - a far more heinous act this - looked at his watch.

His watch? You cry in understandable disbelief. Ah, but no ordinary watch this, being worth a staggering, nay eye-watering £64,000. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case (and justice is so very difficult a concept these days, isn't it?) I think we should all pause for a moment here and consider a few things. Anton Ferdinand is 22 years old. He is a reasonably solid defender who, a couple of seasons ago, looked like he might be about to become a little better, but who has faded somewhat of late. He plays for a side who are far from the elite of football, despite the Icelandic biscuit baron's millions. And yet he can afford to buy a watch which costs £64,000. There is something seriously screwed up with this world, and no mistake. The very fact that watches worth that kind of money are sold at all is obscene. Don't you think?

Man of Steel

A balanced view is something we seem to be sadly lacking in these days. The BBC prides itself on its neutrality, but we all know that in reality neutrality means 'consensus politics' or some crap like that.

They're like one of those people who don't engage in a (rational or otherwise) argument with you, but persist in telling you not to raise your voice - if you don't mind. I'm not going to discuss it with you if you start shouting. And then they somehow think they've won the argument, even though they haven't actually made any contribution to the debate whatsoever.

I would much rather have a stand-up row with someone who is saying something than be part of this polite middle England that everyone seems so worried about. So worried that they have to demonise the poor and frightened and pander to the Super Rich. Just in case this Worcester Woman (or whatever) gets upset about all the terrible behaviour and decides to vote Conservative. Where would we all be then? Deary me.

This is one of the reasons why I like the Independent, and why I especially like Mark Steel's weekly column. I can even forgive him for being a Palace fan, because he makes me laugh and is brave enough to talk sense in a national newspaper. Now that's something you don't see very often, isn't it?