Selling half an idea

Anyone ever been on a training course? Did you (or your organisation) pay for it?

Here’s how it works. Somebody had an ‘insight’ or some other ‘good idea’ and realised that they could radically improve upon what everyone was doing before. Funnily enough this idea needed some jargon, acronyms and a book (for sale) to explain it. And some training courses.

You turn up to find the categories they use never quite work, the acronyms are just a leedle bit strained and the human behaviour explained is just a little bit too organised and simplified to be real. However, the descriptions ring true to the extent of raising a half smile of recognition as you sit there wondering who you fancy and what sort of biscuits they might have at break time. ‘Hey, people really are like this a bit aren’t they, when you think about it’ you think to yourself. ‘This guy really seems to have stumbled on something’.

Fact is he hasn’t. It’s a very slightly different way of looking at the ways that people behave. The sort of idea any of us might have over a pint. The difference is that this idea has been expanded into a book and sold. The sort of people who organise these sorts of things get really ‘excited’ and ‘passionate’ about the idea (and as everyone knows, only sex and music are worth the effort of excitement and passion). And before you know it you’re talking utter bollocks trying to put people into boxes and talking about the ‘kind’ of people they are and how to predict their behaviour or manage them. It’s like star signs really – and if you believe in them at all leave now.

You collect the notes, a copy of the PowerPoint show and nick a small packet of fruit shrewsburys on the way out after lying on the feedback form out of politeness to the hosts who were sort of OK, in the end. You put the notes in a drawer and put them in the bin when you leave that job. The information in your head disappeared before you’d got the bus home on the day. £300 a head or something. But it wasn’t the management theory from the 60’s. It was an update.

I'm going to write “The 7 life Changing Habits of Massive Wankers”. And "Discovering the Key to the Inner Self (of the Bloody Drone Office Worker)”.

Mind you, you got a day out of work. This course also adds to the Gross Domestic Product you know. And you could've at least spoken to the woman with the legs.

Breaded Icelandic Cod Fillets

Say it again! That’s right! Breaded. Icelandic. Cod. Fillets!

Ingredients: Cod (55%)! That’s right 55%.

If you or I took some cod and covered it in breadcrumbs (even supposing we were prepared to countenance use of the verb ‘to bread’) how many percent do you reckon you could get to? 2%? 5%? 10% even, at a push if you really piled 'em on?

The cod is of course ‘formed’. I suppose this means they get crappy bits and stick them together with gloop before covering them with orange dyed gloop. Funnily enough, when the ‘forming’ procedure is complete, the ‘cod’ comes out in the shape of erm, a cod fillet. ‘Fillet’ will of course have some legal definition negotiated by the food manufacturers. It will no doubt mean that the bones have been taken out and this will no doubt be technically correct. Anyone who sees the shape and assumes that the product is a piece of cod with some breadcrumbs on it is just asking for it really aren’t they? I mean, no-one is that that stupid...like duh?

In the real world, put these ‘breaded Icelandic cod fillets’ in front of 100 people and how many people will think that it’s a piece of cod in breadcrumbs? The stupid 98% I reckon. And the other 2 of us are the kind of people with the inclination to read labels and complain. To a blog...

Why is there not a rebellion? And I don’t mean buying a whole a cod from Tescos for £38.50 or whatever. Not that kind of rebellion. I mean the boycott everything, storm the factory gates and start stringing people up kind of rebellion. Or I could write a letter. The reply would burble on about quality control and excellence and, yeah, waddever. Even I draw the line somewhere. At about 55%.

Ink again then ink for a third time

I hate printer ink manufacturers as much as I hate Firstbus. Basically they rip you off and there’s nothing you can do about it. We got a new computer and printer recently. We said we wanted a printer that was cheap on ink as the manufacturers are such rip-off bastards. The man in the shop (a proper computer shop) went on for a bit about how cheap this one was to run. So 2 weeks and half a dozen pages of printing later it’s running out of ink. Well, course it is, I should've known.

Luckily, Epson are on the case, sending emails offering us the opportunity to buy more. £9.79 a pop. That’s not for the full set of course, that’s for one. A tenner for a black ejaculation’s worth of ink. It’d have to be Michael Jackson spunk for me to pay that much (I wonder if his spunk was black? - ask one of the mothers of his dangly children I suppose - ha ha!) But hey, it’s only £33.57 for the full set – a tossing bargain.

Ironically they will have got my email address when I ‘registered the product’. I ‘registered the product’ because it mentioned asking for people’s opinions. I was going to tell them what I thought of their ink prices!
Hoist by my own consumerist, objecting, naively buying into the game bleedin’ petard. You can’t win.

Mmm, lovely green oven

We need a new oven. Boring, not very rock and roll but the old one is shagged out. We really do need a new oven. The door won’t close for a start and I can’t fix it.

But how ‘green’ can we be when we buy a new one? Excitingly, all the relevant ovens in the Homebase catalogue have a green rating of 'A' or 'B'. Brilliant, we can choose any one of ‘em and it’ll be at the top or next to the top of the green-ness tree! We can do our bit by buying more stuff. They’ve even got a nice logo and name ‘Ecohome products that don’t cost the earth’. ‘Don’t cost the earth!’ Wow, these marketing people are clever eh?

Well that’s nice. Clearly 'A' will be the most greenest oven ever. It’ll be a Greenpeace tree-loving oxygen- breathing friend of the earth - the ‘more you buy the longer the earth will survive’ oven. Course it will.

The truth of course is a little different. It turns out that rating ‘B’ is the second worst on the green rating shitometer. This is of course because the range goes not from 'A' to 'E' say. Oh no, that’s just what you unsophisticated uneducated types might expect. It actually goes from ‘A++’ through ‘A+’ and A and stops at C. So, even by the people who want to sell you stuff’s standards 'A' is middling at best and 'B' is a bit shit.

Maybe these ovens need building up due to low self-esteem? Either that or it’s a con. Just give everything a rating that sounds good or at least OK and carry on buying the planet to a crisp. A fan assisted one. In a handcart. A handcart made in natural woven flax in Indonesia by flooded out orphans. Just keep buying and we can all die quickly.

I like Top Gear!

Hate to admit it but I actually like Top Gear. Except when they talk about cars. Then its rubbish.

Charlie Brooker

I've just finished reading my rather out of date Charlie Brooker book - and it's brilliant. I think I said this a while ago but Charlie, you've clearly worked out how shite television is. May I humbly suggest that instead of just slagging it off in a truth pointing out, entertaining way, JUST STOP WATCHING IT! I should re-write this and make it funnier and easier to follow grammatically. But I'm not paid by the Guardian so I won't.

Incidentally, if you're chav scum you read about Jordon, Jade, Peter and the rest. If you're a Guardian reader, you read about the press reaction to Jordan, Jade, Peter and the rest. This means you're better than them. Apparently.

Language

It’s interesting to see that the paedophile scare continues with the whole registering and checking up on everyone. A man on the radio yesterday pointed out that he was having to pay the government £64 for a piece of paper telling him he wasn’t a paedophile and why the hell should he. Clearly he had to be checked because as a man he is a potential rapist or paedophile. Or worse! We need to be watched, catalogued and controlled all the time because we are all potential criminals in one way or another. But who would be up for doing that? - Hey, it's New Labour!

I may have mentioned this previously but here are three small ways in which religion has let me down. What I mean is actually three ways in which religious words and phrases have turned out to be, well, very disappointing and generally nothing-ey now I’m an adult.

For example, when I was a kid 'holy water' was something that could dissolve vampires and protect people from possession and all kinds of cool stuff. You should, it would seem, always have a vial (and it would never be a Tupperware cup) on hand for when things get really heavy, supernatural wise. It turns out that Holy Water is actually just water that a priest has talked to, or to be fair, over. A bit like one might while doing the washing up. I suppose it's the ritual that makes the difference. That would be the thing that makes it worth crossing people’s heads with and the rest.

Similarly ‘the last rites’ (which of course are always ‘administered’, no-one talks about a priest ‘muttering’ the last rites which it seems to me would be at least as accurate). Once again, when I was a kid I thought that this was some sort of treat. It was so fantastic and so good that you had to get it once before you die and if you’d never had it a bloke would rush round to your death bed to make sure you didn’t miss out. I could only imagine that this would be like having one’s dying trouser pockets filled with sweets of such unimaginable quality you could die happy just imagining the treat that you were probably not going to get due to your imminent death. I wondered if the ‘last rites’ somehow got taken back if you actually managed to pull through and the shameful priest would have to beg you not to tell. Once again, seems that the last rites are (or is?) a prayer. I’m not a Catholic incidentally and I can’t be arsed to check.

Finally there’s ‘consecrated ground’. Don’t be bad enough to be buried in non-consecrated ground because God won’t tolerate ground that hasn’t had words spoken over it by a vicar. I wish I could consecrate things by talking. Or make them sacred. I guess I’m stuck with ‘defiling’ and ‘polluting’ (like some men do with their bodies so I hear...) Perhaps religion is not for me.

I'm off to 'harvest' some names of teenagers from the internet so I can 'groom' them for something wicked.

Logic

I wonder what would happen if someone conducted a proper survey into what sort of preventable things actually kill people? I mean as opposed to the things that people, the government and the Daily Mail think will kill them.

For example, my guess is that terrorism doesn’t kill very many people. Car crashes on the other hand kill people every day. So how about doing away with the entire anti-terrorist organisation and putting the money into getting people onto trams and trains? Could we get away from that earnest ‘tribute to our emergency / armed services’ thing too? That'd be a bonus.

You could maybe not have a war in Afganistan and put the money into predicting earthquakes, that sort of thing.

There is no hope

There were a few very weird sights at Lotherton Hall bird garden last weekend. Some of the birds were a bit odd too...Boom boom! Seriously though, I did wonder which side of the fence the exhibits were on. The big raven in particular seemed to make more sense than the idiots making weird noises at it. Just idiot people I suppose...

Bah bah, bah bah ba ba bah!

There are few records I really loathe. There's that Friends theme of course and My Sharona by the Knack. Top of the pile however, and my vote for the worst record ever made - ever - is The Final Countdown by Europe. The genre is 'soft metal' I believe. If you need me to explain why that particular genre is 'a bad idea' then leave immediately please. Spandex, poodle hair, strangled high vocals and of course worst of all, fake brass - on a keyboard. Used as a lead instrument! No No No!!

I could check out and then detail their other crimes against humanity (finding our which country they came from for one thing) but that'd mean new memories to add to the old ones from way back when. You don't forget these kinds of atrocities. So, no!

The reason I mention this is that 'Europe' are playing in Leeds soon! If you must go to a cheesy 'rock' gig then you can see Saxon supported by Anvil! But Europe? I bet there's some sort of promotional tie in with Magic FM and Mike's Carpets. Probably with the same DJ (do they still have DJs or does it all come down a pipe direct from corporate musical hell?) who helps judge battle of the bands competitions and ruins the fireworks displays at Roundhay Park by playing shite pop music over them on an inedequate PA system.

On the subject of keyboards, I remember John Peel explaining (not in person, on his show) about how he did his record shopping. He'd pick up a record and look at the band line up. If they had a keyboard player he'd just not buy the record. Simple, classic, elegant and true. There's a man who knew stuff. There's too much prejudice and fundamentalism in the real world but not enough in music.

"99% is shit". True then, true now. The Final Countdown is 73% of the 99%.

Demolition

They’ve finally got round to demolishing the Leeds International swimming pool. They could have kept it open a couple more years instead of closing it and leaving it to rot. They could have just not sold it off to property developers at all. They could have built a new city centre pool.

Public amenity vs the builders of the slums of the (near) future. Guess who wins – every time.

They're taking my ideas and doing them better!

This is really depressing. I keep discovering people who do what I do but get paid for it. Now you might think I'm talking about music here - rubbish bands who are more successful than the one I'm in but not half as good. Well, yes, but I've known that for ages. But now I keep discovering that this applies to writing as well. A couple of Christmases ago someone bought me that book 'Is it just me or is everything shit', this is followed up by the whole 'Grumpy Old...' series and now I have a book by Charlie Brooker. They all do what I do on this blog but somehow have successfully hit the 'monetise' button.

Maybe they're just funnier than me. Charlie Brooker is. However, he is also as stupid as the telly he writes about. He obviously knows that telly is a complete waste of time but somehow hasn't worked out that the best course of action would be to stop watching it. Similarly, somebody Delingpole wrote a book called 'How to be Right'. This is a funny book but he appears to labour under the delusion that he's right-wing in some sort of anti left wing Guardian reader kind of way. He rants about things that are really annoying. And yet he somehow thinks that these things are 'left wing'. Nope, they're just things that are annoying. I think he works for the Telegraph - ha ha!

And the grumpy old men books are simply stories of reasonable, intelligent human beings being wound up by nonsense. Subsequently they're not very funny. And the Grumpy Old Women series is where somebody lost the plot completely.

Mind you, this is all out of date. I guess that finding that other people think the same (I only find out these things by accident as I don't read the papers or watch telly much) is being part of the zeitgeist or something? Am I part of the zeitgeist of 4 years ago?

More Bankers

A few weeks back I paid a cheque into the building society from my bank current account – Thinking that it takes a while for a cheque to go through I took a couple of days to get round to making an on-line transfer from one account to another (at the same branch) to cover the cheque. I went overdrawn and was charged £42! According to the subsequent paperwork the cheque was cashed on the same day and my transfer took 2 days (computers don’t work at the weekend it would seem) to go through. I complained at the bank and got some snotty attitude about it being ‘illegal’ to write a cheque when you haven’t got money in the account to cover it. Not that the sodding NatWest would ever commit itself to spending money it couldn’t cover eh?

The difference is that I did have the money – and at the same bank. To be fair to NatWest this is the first time they’ve really pissed me off in a very long time (and in the modern world where pissing customers off while banging on about ‘enhancing the customer experience’ and suchlike is a national pastime this is an achievement) so I didn’t immediately close my account with them. However, I’ve now moved all my money about and put it in building societies - and deprived NatWest of at least £42 in profit they would’ve made from me. I certainly hope so anyway. They enforced their rules and think they got away with it. But they didn’t. Better than burning the building down, if not quite as satisfying.

As an interesting (to me) aside, last week I got a leaflet from NatWest (‘Helpful Banking’ it says on it) explaining ‘The cheque clearing cycle’. Sounds like the cheque will sprout legs, pupate and become a butterfly cheque souring to the sun on wings of purest NatWest gossamer. What it actually says is that 6 days after ‘Transaction Day’ (when you pay the cheque in) ‘the customer can be sure that the money is theirs and it cannot be reclaimed’. That’s 6 days after the transaction day. Unless it a cheque to another financial institution it would seem, in which case they can do it in one. I heard a couple of years back that banks were going to speed up cheques. All that ‘3 days to clear’ would be a thing of the past. They obviously did change it – from 3 to 6 days. Capitalism is so efficient since the triumph of Thatcherism eh?

Double meanings / misunderstandings 2

I’m aware that people are into ringtones these days. I was intrigued therefore to discover old people apparently having them delivered in a small van.

I thought you called up or load-downed them from the interweb or something. Unfortunately the van turned out not to be selling ringtones but was actually from Ringtons (the tea and coffee delivery people). I should've known that ringtones don't get delivered in a 'traditional style' wicker basket.

Double meanings / misunderstandings 1

I rather liked the idea of Stanningley Road in Armley being dug up and repaired by Koalas. They could nip up to Town Street to see if the new shiny pie shop sells eucalyptus leaves.

Unfortunately, the people doing the road turned out to be a company called ‘Colas’ and not koalas at all (yes, we know they're not bears at all, actually...) Mind you, if one of the colas was Panda Cola...

Now I know for a fact that they are bears (or not, obviously)

More stuff with which to deal

I’m getting sick of being invited to enter talent competitions. The ‘Independent Music Awards’ for example. They say it could make you famous. I suppose it could. On the other hand it could just mean paying $30 to be 'judged' by Aimee Mann. Oh, and the bloke from the Smithereens (who’s roadie incidentally acted like a total arsehole when I was in a band that supported them many years ago – people don’t forget this kind of stuff).

There was another one that appears to be sponsored by Barclay’s Bank. They’re the people who know about cutting edge guitar and singer / schlongwriter music I suppose.

It’s easy to despair.

I am sooo cool

Hey, I'm cool! This is my cool summer holiday reading list - and it's cool. You may disagree...

The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories
The Baader Meinhof Complex by Stefan Aust
High Priests, Quantum Genes by Michael Hayes (subtitle: Science, Religion and the Theory of Everything’)
Holocaust – A History by D. Dwork & R Van Pelt
Archangel by Robert Harris

Either that or I'm reading the latest Katie Price and a three day old Daily Mail down at Alison and Dave's English fry-up bar in Majorca

Paddington

You should read Paddington books for the social history. The Browns for example have a few quid (they have a live-in housekeeper...) but at Christmas they're staying in one room because there's no fire in the other room. They don't seem to have heating at all upstairs - and they use whitewash to paint. And so it goes on - ticket collectors on barriers. Well, as I say, it goes on.

If you've never heard of Paddington he's a Peruvian bear who speaks English and likes marmalade. Keep up.

Definitely a Dad!

I’d like to admit to some extremely ‘Dad-ish’ behaviour recently. This has been disputed by at least one person I know who told me that this behaviour had nothing in it inherent to being a Dad (there goes my grammar again…possibly) I disagree. Only Dads would do this.

So, here we go (swallows hard) – last Saturday morning I found myself pacing up and down, waiting, listening and looking at my watch because I wanted ‘a word with the binmen’. I’m sorry, but wanting a word with the binmen is just something that only a properly seasoned Dad would do.

Having a word with the binmen would normally involve a complaint, so for those who are interested I have to tell you that this ‘word’ was not a complaint – I was getting rid of bananas! I’m not going to explain that further just because its not very interesting.

I’m off to draw shapes round all my tools and hang them on the garage wall on individual hooks with labels.

Calling David Slade

Years ago I was in a band called Greenhouse and a bloke called David Slade did a video for us. I think he must’ve done it for free or certainly for very little so he’s certainly in my list of ‘good guys’. It featured lots of quick flashing Super-8 images and pretty good it was too – though didn’t actually feature the band very much at all which was a bit frustrating at the time. Turns out that he’s now pretty famous – he’s done videos for Stone Temple Pilots, Muse, Aphex Twin and Tori Amos apparently (incidentally I managed to persuade a colleague once that this was pronounced ‘Torremolinos’ but that’s another story…) as well as directing the film ‘Hard Candy’.

Well, I’ve dug out the video and had it transferred to DVD and I want to put in on youtube. Thing is, I don’t really want to do this without him saying it’s OK. The video starts with ‘Copyright David Slade 1991’ on it, though he gave us the copyright as a thank you / apology for some delay in finishing it off. I think we had that in writing and I may even have the letter (though that might be a bit of a long shot).

So, to cut a long story short should David himself read this (which I guess is unlikely!) or if anyone knows him maybe you’d put him in touch somehow. I’m sure Greenhouse do own the copyright and I can’t think of any circumstance which would make it worth money but if ‘copyright David Slade’ pops up on youtube there might be someone who’ll get upset. On the other hand it’d be a bit rubbish just to edit that bit off the beginning. I guess I should relax and just use it like everyone else seems to do and I’m sure he wouldn’t find his ‘early work’ embarrassing but I’m putting this on t’blog as a kind of public record that I was looking for him and wanted to ask if it was OK and if he remembers giving us the copyright. So David, if you’re out there I’d like to put the Greenhouse video on youtube and I’d like you to confirm that’s OK with you!

Total Anchors

It’s weird how whole rafts of apparently intelligent English speaking human beings can get the meaning of simple words wrong – or at least not realise that some words have more than one meaning. A few years back even Leeds City Council realised that the proposed ‘Community Regeneration and Planning’ department would be called CRAP…Actually, that’s spotting the acronym I guess. Anyway, through work I occasionally see mention of ‘Community Anchors’. The ‘Community Alliance’ (tag line: ‘transformation through community anchors’!) defines them as “independent community-led organisations. They are multi-purpose and provide holistic solutions to local problems and challenges, bringing out the best in people and agencies”. Nuff said...

Actually, I’ve probably mentioned this before – but here goes again…Thing is, most people know what an anchor is (leaving aside any rhymes that may spring to mind) – it’s something on a long heavy chain you throw overboard which then drags along the bottom slowing you down until finally you come to a complete stop. So who wants to be in an organisation described as a ‘community anchor? And I wonder where the money comes from for this?

Anonymous

This is a bit old now but here it is anyway -

I know having a pop at ITV is like shooting ducks in a barrel or something but the advert for a programme called ‘anonymous’ was indeed a wonder to behold. What you do is take a small group of people you don’t recognise and nobody has heard of; then you disguise them so no-one will know who they are. Finally you send them out into the street to see if anybody recognises them! Totally brilliant! If I remember rightly even the makers of this programme may it seems have spotted the fatal flaw (i.e. that no one recognises or has heard of their ‘celebrities’) by making them interact with friends and relatives to se if they recognise them. I was very disappointed to find the advert at the pictures featuring kids breaking up clouds was an advert for ITV – if only the programmes were as good…

Mind you, the BBC had a woman crawling round the floor eating dog food from a bowl so she could experience what it was like to be a dog - and a man in pigshit. It is good to know you're not missing anything on telly.

The ID Card

Hey folks, the government are still after you and Big Brother has not taken his beady eye off your balls. This is recent stuff from NO2ID. The whole anti ID thing is basically about not being catalogued and tracked by the state like you were one of their pets.

** The ID scheme has NOT been shelved, cancelled, or even significantlychanged **Once more government spin has triumphed and much of the media has got itwrong. The new Home Secretary Alan Johnson has not made any significant changes to the scheme. Compulsion by stealth is still the order of theday, just as it always was. Someone joining the ID scheme 'voluntarily'will still be placing control of their identity in the hands of the IPS for life.The Home Office line remains the same. No compulsion (as the Home Office defines it) was going to be applied until almost everyone had'volunteered' and then it was only a matter of rounding up a minority of resisters and marginalised people.The Home Office's idea of "voluntary" is not the same as yours and mine. Since 2004 the scheme was (and it still is) to proceed by "designating"one-by-one under the Identity Cards Act 2006 other documents issued by official bodies -- in the first place passports. Once a document has been designated, you won't be able to apply for one without also applying to be entered, for life, on the national identity register. If you don't agree to be registered it won't be that you are refused (say) a passport; you'd have voluntarily decided not to apply. There's no compulsion to have a passport. It is useful for travelling. But you aren't compelled to travel. Or (say) to drive. Or to work as a security guard. Or with children. Or in healthcare. To get parole from prison. To practice as a lawyer. ...Any official licence, registration certificate or permit can be designated, and -- in the home office's skewed logic -- handing control of your identity to the Home Office's Identity and Passport Service will still be entirely voluntary. That they were due for a confrontation with the airside worker's unions over designating new passes at Manchester and City Airports is an illustration of just how voluntary "voluntary" really is. But the fact they have now ducked that fight for political convenience suggests saying no does work - if you say it loudly enough.

So...(this is back to me now) Just say no - and watch out for the Community Support riot police...

Bus Drivers

Well, who'd have thought? Within the last couple of weeks I have twice found myself running for a bus just as it was about to pull away. Guess what happened...On both of these occasions the bus driver stopped, opened the doors and actually let me on! This is First Bus! In Leeds!

Maybe they've had a training course or had rear view mirrors fitted. Perhaps I was just lucky. Maybe we'll reach a point when this will not be worthy of note. Anyway, good news for once.

Car Clock

Apologies if this has been posted before, I can't remember and I can't be bothered to check...

On our old car you changed the clock by grabbing a sticky - out bit and twiddling it until the clock showed the right time. It even had little buttons for making fine adjustment. Easy, intuitive, mechanical (even though it was electric – you know what I mean) – and no problem. Now we have a new car. It is not possible to change the time on the clock! Not possible. The manual even admits it might not be possible. The car does all kind of stuff automatically (to the extent that if it breaks down a mechanic is the last person you want around) but you cannot set the clock to the right time!

The person or people who dreamt this up are probably still working in the motor industry. Why is there not a rebellion? We also have a spare tyre that only goes at 60km or something. Oh, and all the useful boot / back space has been neatly walled in with plastic so the car is much bigger but doesn’t have actual usable room – presumably we’re only allowed to use the small square space because we’re not qualified to stick things into nooks and crannies. I’ll be wanting to just open the door with a ‘key’ or wanting to wind the window down myself at this rate. Too late, sorry! And yet it takes the manual 15 pages to explain all this convenient simplicity!

I found out after writing this that with 20 minutes reading, a copy of the manual and half a dozen people you can actually set the clock to the right time! You can feel very proud of yourself - until you turn the ignition off when the clock sets itself to the wrong time again! Hurray!

Hand-washing Hand-wringing and the BNP

People keep sending me links to the 'not in my name' petition about the BNP. What a horrible whinging liberal thing this is - 'oh, like I'm terribly sorry but like, I didn't, like vote for them'. Yeah, you sign to say 'I didn't vote for them'. Great, that'll show Nick and the lads eh?

Maybe you didn't vote for them, but do you think signing a hand-wringing hand-washing petition will make any difference? We all know that most BNP supporters are those grey, pinched ugly people with no dress sense who smell a bit looking for someone else to blame for their unhappiness and lack of success in life. However, due to the fact that there is a lot of social injustice about (thanks New Labour for widening that class and income gap!) there are more of these people and they're fucking ignorant. So, you have to actually talk to people and learn stuff and put it about - and if you actually put some effort in rather than whining to your Guardian reading friends you might just prevent some people with legitimate concerns about political correctness and equality etc voting for the BNP.

Incidentally, the BNP are wide open on what they probably see as their home turf - patriotism. There's no more fun to be had than chatting to a potential BNP supporter quoting stuff about our glorious boys sticking it to the Nazis and quoting Winston Churchill's proud defence of the English as a 'mongrel race'.

Having said all that there's a great bit in a Woody Allen film where someone is talking about taking on Nazis via a great letter to the New York Times, while Woody is more inclined to actually get down there with baseball bats.

Finally, it is difficult to convince anyone that the BNP are Nazis when they're not allowed to give the salute openly and be overtly racist and the rest. This means that they should either be allowed to be publically racist so people can see them for what they really are or you need to have arguements ready that concede that they may not all actually be racist at all - there's plently of madness to go at, you just have to find the right bits. In the end not that many people are really so stupid you can't talk to them.

So...uncle John says jaw jaw not bleat bleat - and have that baseball bat to hand if its needed. Mind how you go now...

Oh how I lurve Firstbus!

I got on a bendy bus in Leeds recently. Someone has decided that since we can’t have trams they can sell us buses that ‘look a bit like trams’ and we’ll all be happy. However, I got on just as the doors were closing and was told off by the conductor (conductress? – can you say that these days?) for getting on the ‘wrong door’.

It has ‘exit only’ printed on it in small letters apparently. For some reason I’d neglected to search for door signage when getting on the bus. She said that some drivers make you get off again and get on at the other door. She may have been joking but since I’d spoiled the Firstbus drivers’ favourite game of shutting the door in passengers faces and driving off perhaps they do get cross enough to do this. Oddly, when the bus stopped it was OK to get off at the entrance door. I did explain that I thought it worked like a tram and I nearly asked her for an explanation of what anyone gained by only allowing you to get on at one set of doors. I didn’t. This is probably best. I decide to murder all those that stopped us getting trams instead. At his rate that film with Micheal Douglas getting more and more wound up and more and more violent due to frustration at idiots and their ways will soon by my favourite thing ('Falling Down' I think its called).

Oh Lordy, its the Council again

I go swimming most Sunday mornings at a Leeds City Council Pool. I naively thought that a) they’d want people to actually use the pool and b) they were providing some kind of service (paid for by my Council Tax and income tax). However, they’ve come up with the perfect wheeze to keep people away, cause them maximum inconvenience, generally annoy them and presumably prepare the case for closing pools down. What they do on a Sunday is this – they open up in the morning for an hour and a half. Then they kick everyone out and close the place for half an hour. Then they open again for an hour and a half and then close again for half an hour kicking everyone out - and so on throughout the day!

So, realistically you can only get in to swim during a small number of periods of about ½ an hour (maybe 45 minutes) during the day. If you get this timing wrong the pool will either be closed or about to close before you’ve had chance to actually swim. Presumably staff are paid when there’s no-one in the pool to pay their wages – and everyone gets to the showers and changing rooms at the same time.

The only hint as to what twisted logic they’ve used to come up with this system was a comment by the receptionist about swimming being made free for children – I think it may be do with ‘managing demand’ (of which in real life there is precious little) by making sure people don’t turn up and swim for hours (like they do, obviously).

Basically the only people who can go are the organized compliant types who don’t mind being pushed around by Leeds City Council for its own convenience and who can get themselves and the kids up and out on a Sunday morning without any time slipping by in any nonsense ‘let’s try and relax its Sunday morning’ kind of way. The toilets still stink by the way.

Can you imagine Tescos pulling this sort of stunt? Presumably they could do with some catch-up time and shelf stocking time if they got busy, but would they just close the shop for random half hours during the day? Actually no, I guess not. Mind you they probably don’t close their cafes at 3.30 on a Sunday afternoon when everyone wants a cup of tea either – that’s the Council again. To be fair, it’s a bit later in the summer – ‘bout 9 o’clock any good for you? Nah, 4 I think. Everyone’s back home 7 hours before it gets dark in June obviously.

It has occurred to me that I could and should write letters and phone councilors and whatnot. Unfortunately I have stuff to do so won’t get round to it. I shall just continue to harbour hate and contempt for the Council and Firstbus and the rest of them.

Electricity

I ordered something off ebay recently and its delivery was delayed. I got a note of apology from the seller. It said:

"Hi, I went to the post office today to post the cd and unfortunately they had a power cut and were unable to accept any parcels. Please accept my apologies for this..."

Now in what kind of a world can a post office not accept a CD in an envelope because of a power cut? Do they only have android counter staff who all shut off when there's no power? Do they not have a 'non electric space' where they can put stuff down? Do they not have stamps and weighing scales? What would they do in a real emergency? Actually because they're all so swish and modern these days they don't have stamps (they print out labels) and the scales are all digital - presumably because the old ones could be used and understood by customers. So when the power goes off the whole thing stops - not exactly the spirit of the blitz.

Mind you there's virtually nothing these days that doesn't need a computer and electricity to work (except it doesn't actually work very well of course). I say bring back hand cranking and scales with weights and clockwork, erm, clocks and cars that will start with a handle and all the rest of it. We could even have back up card index systems. One big bang or disease or weird computer bug and everone will starve to death for no good reason because nothing works. Doors won't open and cars won't move and all the rest. We are so totally dependent on this stuff that we would have no idea what to do if anything big went wrong. Everyone would be bleating for the 'emergency services' or 'the government' to come and sort everything out for them and we'd all starve for want of a battery for our digital tin openers.

Bus stop paranoia

There used to be a bus shelter in the middle of the Headrow in Leeds where you can get the 49 and 50 buses. It disappeared. At about the same time the massive new Argos 'Extra' opened just where the shelter used to be. As a miserable amateur conspiracy buff I started to convince myself that Argos probably had the power to object to bus shelters and get them removed due to them covering up Argos logos and their wonderful shop front. Then I saw a sticker on the bus stop saying that there would soon be a new shelter - what a silly paranoid little man I am eh?

However, this was weeks ago now and still no bus shelter. Maybe I am not mad. If it were Tescos I could be sure...I'll wait and see.