If the world could vote

This website is quite interesting in that it is asking people in countries all over the world who they would vote for in the US election (assuming they could). The figures overall and the figures for each country are given – of course it depends on how many votes have been cast in that country – one country has 50% votes for either party, but only 2 people have voted! To give it a look, and perhaps vote, click here.

God save the cash

It’s a depressing experience to watch TV advertising these days. Well, it always has been really, but I refer to a particular phenomenon, the re-appearance of rebel figures from one’s youth, selling their arses on TV for money. Remember 1976? – the excitement of punk emerging onto the music scene, these spotty youths who gave the finger to the establishment, were anti-everything and assaulted the nation’s delicate, Pink-Floyd mellowed ears with a wall of raucous, glorious, life-affirming noise. The sneering face of Johnny Rotten was a cultural icon of the time, as he snarled his way through Anarchy in the UK and God Save the Queen and told television interviewers that they were dirty old c****.

What’s he doing now? Well, last I heard, he is living in LA, possibly involved in the world of Estate Agentry. But he has still found time to advertise an English brand of butter. He can be seen cavorting around in his joke tweeds, grimacing and running from herds of cows, telling us how utterly delicious this particular butter is (don’t ask me what it is, the advert isn’t THAT good!) Creamery in the UK!

And Marco Pierre White – that enfant terrible of fine cuisine. He is flogging Knorr stock cubes and Morrison’s ready meals. What is the point of this type of advertising? I can understand why Marco and John are doing it (up to a point) – they want the cash, and that is the point where any previously held beliefs and standards go straight out the window. But can it be true that members of the public are so stupid as to believe that these characters are actually endorsing the products they advertise?? Or is it some kind of ironic joke that we are supposed to chuckle at, before trecking off to the supermarket and filling a trolley with butter and chicken tikka masala microwave meals, still chuckling to ourselves and winking knowingly at the checkout operatives?

At least there are still some people with principles (aren’t there?) I mean, we haven’t yet seen Germaine Greer telling us to go buy Nuts or Zoo, and Jamie Oliver has several years in him before he starts trying to sell us Turkey Twizzlers.

Bon appetit!

Privacy and Paranoia

As you walk around the streets of almost any major city or town in the UK, you will become increasingly aware of the fact that you are being watched, your every action recorded by the countless CCTV cameras which are now ubiquitous. There are the official council/police run cameras as well as the cameras that now seem to be both inside and outside a lot of high street shops/banks etc. I don’t ever remember being asked if I minded being filmed and observed as I go about my daily business. You see the occasional sign telling you that CCTV cameras are in use but that’s it. They even have them on the buses and trains.

Ok, so somewhere on those tapes, scattered around different CCTV installations, is an almost complete record of where you went on Saturday. And it doesn’t stop there either, lots of other data about you is being gathered and stored and used. If you have a loyalty card (e.g. Nectar), every time you use it, your buying habits are being recorded for use by advertising agencies, retailers and probably anyone else who asks for it. If you use an Oyster card to travel around London, there is a clear trail recorded of all your movements. I would never use a Nectar card as, at least, that is something I can opt out of. And let’s not even mention email etc!

This surveillance of citizens is apparently in place to protect us all. Fuelled by paranoia and the kind of right-wing, selfish ignorance of say, Daily Mail readers 🙂 we are watched, tracked and recorded, day and night, to keep us safe from the marauding hordes of thieves, paedophiles, maniacs, gypsies, immigrants and other ne’er do wells 😉 If ever there was a clear indication that New Labour have nothing to do with what was once the Labour Party, this is it. Under their government, we have become the most watched and tracked society ever. Civil liberties have been eroded to the point where we hardly notice them being chipped away any more.

And stop picking your nose! (Camera over your left shoulder…) 😉

Fairy Fury

That great British tradition of messing with the clocks took place yesterday – putting the clock back an hour just to freak everyone out and reinforce the fact that it’s now dark when you get to leave work. All the newspapers are telling us that doom is upon us, dark days lie ahead and you’d better have the candles ready for when the lights go out. Could it get any worse?

Well, something else also changed yesterday. Remember those heady days when you could call the speaking clock and have someone who sounded not unlike her Royal Majesty tell you that it was 10:15 and 45 seconds PIP! PIP! PIP! No longer I’m afraid. Call the speaking clock now and you will hear the voice of ‘Tinkerbell’ the squeaky, irritating, American excuse for a fairy, followed by bells. Yes, the speaking clock has been Disneyfied!! What next? The shipping forecast read by Minnie Mouse? Newsnight hosted by Scoobydoo? Question Time chaired by Jiminy Cricket??

I despair…

Unspoken truths

When we are young, we tend to think that adults know it all – teachers, parents, doctors, scientists, politicians, etc. – these are people who know what’s what. They are all experts in their respective fields and have experience behind them. One day, after we have studied hard and worked our way up, we will also be wise and all-knowing.

Of course, as we grow up, we never get this feeling of being wise and all knowing, but we still keep this view of professionals, on the whole. We trust doctors with our health, politicians with our government and financiers with our money. We believe that the world in which these people operate is a logical, scientific structure with rules and boundaries. Their expertise and experience allows them to make sure you stay healthy, employed, housed and have cash for a few luxuries once in a while.

Ok – here’s the unspoken truth: None of these people (well, very few) actually really know what they are doing. The system they are a part of is not as described in the previous paragraph, it is one of chaos, greed, gambling, lies, fear, guessing and sheer bluff. It is a miracle that the World doesn’t collapse about our ears far more often.

You only have to think about this for a few seconds to see that it is true. Draw on your own experience – how many times have you not been able to admit that you did not have a clue about what you were supposed to be doing? I rest my case 😉

Scary though, isn’t it?

Cyclopaths

Bring up the subject of cyclists in a conversation and you will soon see some very polarised reactions. Everything from defensive outrage to sheer, consuming hatred. I tend to fall on the side of defending the cyclist. After all, they are the vulnerable ones and they are doing their bit to stay healthy, not pollute our City air and generally reduce the traffic on our roads at critical times of day – aren’t they? But it’s not quite as simple as that.

I was once a keen cyclist who cycled everywhere. During the week I would cycle to work and back. At weekends I would go out on organised rides using the trains, or spend a weekend in France, wheels a-spin and legs out with glee. I was the coordinator of Bricycles (the Brighton Cycling campaign group) for a while and remember having to face up to the Hove Transport committee when campaigning for Brighton & Hove’s first cycle lane. This committee was run by a cab driver who probably had notches on his steering wheel for cyclists he’d taken down 😉 These days I am a fair weather cyclist, but still believe that cycling can be a very good thing for a City.

However, when I cycled regularly, I cycled safely. I, and most of my fellow cyclists on the roads would stop at red traffic lights, try not to cycle on pavements (not always avoidable) and make sure that we had lights etc. I have a definite feeling that this is no longer the case. Even back then, there were always the idiots who ignored traffic lights, treated pedestrians with scorn and never bothered with lights, but these people were in a very small minority. Now it seems that this statistical divide has been totally reversed. You are far more likely to be sent arse over tit at a road crossing by a cyclist than by a car. What has happened?

When I cycled every day there were hardly any cycle lanes, and when they appeared they were a joke. There would be a 100yd stretch of cycle path, ending in a dismount sign, followed a short distance on by another useless, pointless stretch of cycle path. This still happens, but the situation is much better, with many more, joined-up and long distance paths that should make it all much better. However, many of these schemes seem to be created without any kind of joined-up thinking – let’s put a mile long path here, a 300yd stretch of path there. Cyclists are still expected to get off their bikes and push for stretches, before remounting and continuing. Can you imagine if they did this with cars? A sign indicating that a motorist had to get out and push for the next 50yds would not go down very well, and that is because it makes no sense! Why can’t town-planners see that this is the same for cyclists?

I am not trying to justify the behaviour of the modern Brighton cyclist, quite the opposite. But what I am trying to say is that as long as cycle facilities are treated with contempt, like some sort of toy, playroad facility, as long as cycle lanes are clogged with parked cars that make them unusable and dangerous, and no enforcement seems to be in place to prevent this, then cyclists will feel aggrieved.

As long as cyclists feel like they are second class citizens and motorists treat them with contempt, this is a self propagating problem. Cyclists and cycle facilities must be taken seriously and must be designed with usability and fitness for purpose in mind. Cyclists must stop acting like selfish, stupid, arses who put lives at risk and increase animosity towards them from other road users. I have always hated motorists who accelerate madly at red lights to avoid stopping for a few seconds – I have always dreamed of having a device which could be used to disable that driver’s engine. However, these days I feel like carrying a broom handle to shove in the spokes of the idiot cyclist who has just ignored a red light and nearly taken the tip of my nose off.

More common sense on both sides is needed to sort this one – so it could go on forever!

Three day week

It’s a Thursday so I would normally be in the office. But not this week, oh no. In fact I am sitting by a dewpond on top of the South Downs, above Kingston. Last week I was asked to reduce my hours to a 3 day week, to reduce costs and help the company through a sticky time. Well I don’t know – 5 people were made redundant on Tuesday – perhaps they may have something to say about that. Right now though I am thinking ‘I could get used to this’. The view is certainly a lot better than that dreary office I work in.

So, less income, but here I am in the midst of beauty with lovely sunshine and a nice breeze, so who cares? Now where’s that sandwich…

…and it’s only about a 20 minute walk to the Juggs 🙂

A load of old rubbish

I live in an area of Brighton known as Hanover. An area which largely consists of small terraced houses originally built for railway workers, when the railway was first being built (most of it now gone, of course). These are narrow streets with parking (it’s Brighton’s biggest free car-park, but don’t get me started on that!) down both sides, making them effectively one-way streets. The plentiful rooftops are home, every year, to many seagull nests, so the residents are awoken with the meeps and squawks of gulls. As my mother describes it – ‘It’s like being on holiday all the time!’ 🙂

Our rubbish collection is once a week, and as soon as the black, plastic bin liners go out, the seagulls swoop down and rip them to shreds, leaving the pavements covered in the history of your previous week. The take-away containers, the leftovers, the rotten fruit and decaying, moldy bread. This can sometimes linger for several days, until the next street clean, and it is not much fun cleaning that mess up. I can say this from experience having scraped up all sorts of horror from the pavement outside our house. I got fed up with this and did the obvious thing – bought a big, black plastic bin. The bags go in the bin, the bin gets put outside on collection day, the seagulls are thwarted and the pavement is clean.

The strange thing here is that the Council tell us NOT to put our bin bags in a dustbin, just to put the bags out. They recommend double-bagging, extra strong bags and not putting the rubbish out until collection day. Of course, most people do this anyway, but it doesn’t stop the gulls. We continue, as do many people in the area, to put our bags in a bin, and I am sure that the bin-men are grateful for this. It can’t be much fun collecting ripped open bags with rotten detritus dribbling everywhere. Apparently, we will soon be getting binvelopes – collapsible boxes that can be used to put the bags in. So how come those are OK, but a plastic bin isn’t. Local councils are just strange.

Another thing they are doing, but thankfully not (so far!) in our tiny streets, is putting in big, communal bins. There are some of these nearby and they are all, every one, magnets for unwanted furniture, mattresses, supermarket trolleys, TV’s etc. etc. The streets of Brighton will gradually be transformed into one huge landfill site.

More Word from the street

The ‘beautiful game’ gets less and less beautiful – if it ever was! Now it’s come to this…

…and what would William Blake have thought of this…?