Nostalgia - for a world yet to come

I bought a monthly music mag this week – Uncut as it happens. There’s usually a lot of ‘classic’ Dad rock in most of the monthies (it seems to me as an 'irregular' reader) and I’m as up for articles on Neil Young and John Lennon as anyone else – and yup, I’ll go for the stuff on Talking Heads and Dylan and the rest (not so bothered about Eric Clapton though...) too. However, what surprised me was looking at the adverts for gigs in the back. Who are all the thrusting young whipper snappers on tour this Autumn? Well...here’s a sample...

Wilko Johnson, Barclay James Harvest, John Cooper Clarke, Mudhoney, the Human League, Eric Clapton, Paul Weller, Van Morrison, the Waterboys, Nils Lofgren, Tom Paxton, Edwyn Collins, Lloyd Cole, The Wedding Present, the Selector, the Psychedelic Furs, Ian Hunter, the Bluetones, the Stranglers, Skunk Anansie, Marc Almond, Cast, Echo & the Bunnymen, Squeeze, Madness, James, The Pogues, The Charlatans, Primal Scream and Suede.

It’s not that all of these are rubbish – some are great. But can it really be that rock music (and ‘proper’ pop music come to that) is now almost exclusively played by and for the over 40s? Is it really dead on it's arse? Is there really no point in being in a badn trying to do something slightly new?

Maybe I'm just reading the wrong magazines but if one thing rock and roll isn't about it's nostalgia.

I'm depressed now...

Sandwich Bored

I note from my lunch this week that the Co-op was awarded the “Sandwich convenience retailer of the year” award from the British Sandwich Association. A quick question, what is a sandwich convenience? Is it bread that soaks up piss?

Anyway, there’s a ‘sandwich designer of the year’ award too - and a “Cheese Cellar Leerdammer Lightlife Cheese Sandwich Designer of the Year” Very much like getting a Nobel prize I imagine...

So there you go...and you thought you were wasting your life on the dole...Actually, I wonder what would happen if you told the dole off ice you were a sandwich designer?

I just had a look and downloaded an entry form for the sandwich awards – these are the categories:
- English Provender Ploughmans Plum Chutney Sandwich
- The Cheese Cellar Leerdammer Lightlife Sandwich
- Moy Park Corned Beef Sandwich
- Bernard Matthews Turkey Sandwich

Please note – I am not making this up...Perhaps these are winners and not categories? Could one invent a new version of these?

Mind you, the marketing industry is totally barking and out of control as you'll have noticed so who knows...

Baader news

Who’d have thought the Baader Meinhof group (no, they’re not a band...) would be in the news again? Seems that a member of said group Verena Becker is being tried for murder after new DNA evidence emerged connecting her with the killing of 3 people in 1977 (it says 'ere...)

This in interesting to me as the Whole Sky Monitor song ‘Drone (Revolution)' from the new album makes a couple of references to members of the group (specifically Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin). Erm, that’s it really. Best to read up on them if you have some time. It all looks a bit mad and un-heroic from here – despite Joe Strummer wearing the t-shirt...

DON'T READ THIS!!! - Distraction Devastates

When driving one should always concentrate on the road - right? Right. No watching people or adverts or whatever no matter how eye catching eh? So you'd think road safety people would be against distractions such as billboards wouldn't you? - Distraction can be dangerous.

So imagine the irony of a massive distracting poster BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD WHEN YOU'RE DRIVING that says 'Oi, eyes on the road, what's so important?' and 'Concentrate on the Road' (though they seem to have missed out the word 'on'...) I saw this on Roundhay Road in Leeds - my mouth hit the floor and I nearly hit the car in front...

So what tossing numpty sort of organisation would try to get away with such a moronic no sense of irony or responsibility wheeze? It seems to be something calling itself the 'West Yorkshire Safer Roads Group' - presumably making the roads safer by getting everyone driving onto the pavements in disbelief.

What hope is there when a whole process of design and discussion and whatever is gone through (presumably) for someone to let through such a transparently and massively stupid and counter-productive advert? It's like jumping in front of someone dresed as a clown on a goat screaming 'DON'T LOOK AT ME, I MIGHT PUT YOU OFF!!!

At no stage (presumably) did anybody say 'no, come on, this is mad, people will assume we're taking the piss, let's not waste money on making laughing stocks of ourselves'

I was hoping to tell them what tossing numpties they were directly but I can't find much on-line about them - I bet they're a consortium or 'partnership' of some kind and I bet local government is involved. Blimey though guvnor!

McAfee

Add McAfee to Firstbus as a company which deserves to die - I downloaded Firefox t'other day and I wasn't watching - so I ended up with this tossing McAfee bloody virus that gets in your computer and you can't get rid of. Actually, you can get rid of it but you have to work out how. Forcing your software involuntarily onto someone's computer should be illegal - either that or it's OK for me to find the head of McAfee and force my cock in his ear. How dare they bloody invade my computer! I should point out that this isn't the first time this has happened either.

I bet they say it's voluntary because if I'd read everything I could have read I could have worked out a way to say no - not bloody good enough. So...I will never buy a McAfee product and I will advise everyone I know not to buy a McAfee product and if anyone suggests burning their offices to the ground I'll buy the petrol! - Hey this is the sort of stuff that supposed to go on blogs - real hate!

Calm down dear

Well darn it - that stone ear is actuaLly from a mould - not a mold (I used to go to school with a Tony Mold) - BUT IT'S STILL DEAD COOL!

Anna Parker's stone ear

Well! Someone in my house got a present today - what? I hear you ask -

A BLOODY STONE EAR THAT'S WHAT!

The Sunday Telegraph probably have a section in their magazine for people with more money than sense on 'original Christmas gifts' round about this time of year - all made in crofts in the Hebrides by Southerners who got tired of 'the rat race' and making squillions of squid in the city - who moved up there to make sure that the locals had to move out.

But I bet none of them have a 10 year old daughter who's just been given an EAR CARVED OUT OF SOLID STONE.

Anna Parker is the artiste - and before long she'll be up on the scaffolding re- carving the Lincoln Imp. 'Kin BRILLIANT present!

And bizarrely just what was asked for!

Tiny children are coming to burgle my house

By visiting Argos (yuk!)I managed to buy a cat flap (the old one just broke into pieces, this isn't some keep up with the Whiskers upgrade)...

The maximum dimension of the new flap is about 16cm and it says that it’s suitable for cats up to 7kg with 162mm shoulder width – All fairly acceptable you'd think - but with this being the mad world it is the box has a sticker on the top explaining ‘WARNING – This product will not prevent unwanted animals or people including small children from passing through the pet door’.

So there you go, if you have access to a tiny kleptomaniac child with shoulders less than 6 ½ inches wide send them round to my house, the cat flap is wide open – though has none of the magnetic collars and whatnot it goes on about in the instructions. They can escape up the balnaced flue.

And on the subject of instructions – I got bought a Black and Decker Workmate. I couldn't work out for bloody ages how to put it together! Diagramatic instructions y'see...

Store-ing

I recently went shopping in town. I don’t do shopping as I’ve previously said. I now find that shops just don’t make any sense to me. For example I went in HMV - which I still see as a ‘record shop’. Thought I’d have a look at some of the CDs I might be buying off ebay. But they don’t have any CDs – or hardly any CDs anyway. It was like a cross between a DVD shop, Dixons and WH Smiths – with a few racks of CDs. Lush sell puddings that smell strongly of soap (or possibly they sell soap that looks like puddings) and Body shop sell soaps that sound like drinks – and puddings. I noticed another place called a ‘lifestyle salon and spa’. Now you can perhaps take a poodle to a salon – but a lifestyle? Supermarkets sell ‘spreads’ and ‘solutions’ but half the stuff in the shop (which they call a ‘store’ of course) - lottery tickets for example - they stop selling at 9pm when the shop is open 24 hours a day (except for the days it’s not of course…) Wilkinson’s in Leeds centre have stopped selling cat flaps – but think their Armley branch still does. Dixons host hundreds of people swarming round having opinions on tiny bubble packs. How does it all work? Why is it so difficult to just get stuff? Like I say, I don’t do shopping. Or store-ing…

The worst bus company in the world?

I set off to meet Ian our UK press person in town this evening. Went for a bus. Stood at a bus stop, watched the satellite tracking count 'em down, the 'out of service' bus cruise past, the bus times come and go and finally spoke to the driver of the bus that did arrive (far too late to get to the meeting - this was an hour later) and told him it wasn't good enough. Wandered off home. Spent the rest of the evening writing a letter to Firstbus. Measured and reasonable I was - like I was to the driver. 1 out of 4 buses (to be fair it could have been 3) is not good enough. What if passengers decide to pay one in three fares?

I wrote to Firtbus and I wrote to Metro. I may pass it on to others for all the good it'll do. I like to think the below proves my measured tone. I urge other bus travellers (if you actually find one to travel on of course) to do the same.

Here's most of the letter to Metro. I'm tired now...

...Please find enclosed copy of a letter I’ve just sent to Firstbus. I’m really fed up with their buses not turning up, the satellite tracking system counting down the minutes to ‘due’ with no bus actually arriving and the fact that they keep putting the fares up by multiples of the rate of inflation – that particular one has been going on for years. And this is not to mention the lateness and ‘going round in threes’ which I concede is probably more to do with traffic etc than the company.

They waste my time, they waste my work’s time, they cost too much and I’m sick of it.

I’d just like to register this with you. My particular complaint is specific to tonight and I have posted it direct to Firstbus but similar things have happened far too often – and there were going to be trams from the bottom of our road starting in 2007 – though that’s a separate issue it adds to the general rubbishness of it all.

If you have anyone who gets to meet the people from Firstbus I’d be grateful if you’d pass this to them.

As I mentioned in my letter to Firstbus, I work as a project manager for a local charity in Leeds. We have staffing, transport and other problems but we keep our service working – why can’t they?


Yours sincerely

The healthy drink rock and roll people

I got an email t’other day from the nice people at Pepsi Max. It’s another of those competition things. In short you can upload a video of your band where you get your mates to vote for it online. A person called ‘strings’ tells you to ‘rock on’! (I am not making this up!) The prize is apparently ‘legendary’

I even considered doing it. Obviously there are no issues around sugar or caffeine or selling sugary water to those who can’t afford it around the world with Pepsi…

But here is a list of what they say is “unacceptable video content”:

Anything which contains any works (such as musical, artistic or literary works) in which the intellectual property rights are owned by a third party, and which you do not have written permission to use
Any depiction of alcohol consumption
Any depiction of smoking
Anything which could bring the Pepsi Max brand into disrepute
Anything which could cause offence generally or which could be considered discriminatory behaviour in particular in relation to race, religion, sex, sexual orientation and disability
Anything which could cause fear or distress
Anything which involves children under 16
Anything which depicts or encourages unsafe practices, such as drink driving and drug taking
Anything which depicts or encourages violence or anti-social behaviour
Anything which portrays or refers to people in an adverse or offensive way
Anything which refers to or portrays members of the public without their permission
Anything which refers to or portrays people with a public profile without their permission
Anything which refers to or portrays members of the royal family
Anything that refers to or promotes religious, political or racial views
Anything that contains or promotes cruelty to animals
Anything which contains nude scenes or sexual interaction

Well crikey Moses!

I spent a few seconds on my response. I did a pitch for the video - or possibly a synopsis for the story. If you saw the full thing you'd be massively offended. Particularly if you're both PC and stupid. So some self censoring went on - I removed a couple of words. It now reads like this...

"The Q***n is a *****r ***g who ****s Cheryl C***'s drug taking ****** one legged ****** with a ******* shouting 'die *** priest die'! And if anyone doesn’t believe it we will demontrate via our **** tatoos that we have their addresses and me and David Cam**** are taking our clothes off and coming round in the unlicensed peado-mobile singing Mull of Kintyre to kill them by poisoning them with disgusting P*psi M*x (the well known child ********* b**** water) in the name of baby **** and ******ism"

Not particularly elegant I grant you, but I think it gets the point across.

But I won’t countenance smoking.

If anyone needs this explaining I’d like to say that I’m in a rock and roll band and we say what the fuck we like - or perhaps we don't...Tell 'strings' that working for an advertising company is neither big nor clever.

Perhaps this competition is not for us...

Single Mom in the Mancunian clutch

Yeah, I know, internet scam thingies are just a tax that criminals put on the terminally stupid but despite some amusement this one annoyed me: http://www.janesgrantblog.com/uk.php?t202id=86112&t202kw=GUK1125728C5

The link said ‘you can get a grant from the British government’ so I was intrigued having been involved in grants. Basically it says to send them an admin fee and collect your ‘check’. The thing that annoyed me is that the ‘blog’ mentions several times that ‘Jane Jones’, the supposed writer is from Leeds. This is annoying because their computer knows I’m in Leeds. It’s a 'blog' complete with comments saying things like

“Hi, single mom here, Took me a bit longer than you said to receive my grant-- 44 days. But in the end it was worth it, I receive $14,300. I cannot explain how much this has bettered my life, especially in these exceedingly tough times. Here is a picture of it!”

And

“Laid off and living in manchester. Need some income, and this came through in the clutch. This will give me atleast another month of job searching. $3765!”

They have a funny way of talking (and paying for things in dollars) those Mancunians eh?

I suppose one shouldn't really get annoyed.

Self Serving Bastards

I am really sick of either being ripped off or people trying to rip me off.

First up we have those who rip you off and there’s not much you can do – Firstbus, printer ink companies, insurance companies and the like. All of them can just take your money and there’s little you can do about it. Self serving bastards all.

There are also the second lot are those people who help themselves around misfortune. So, for example, our driver at work had a 5mph bump about a year ago. Definitely some damage to the van. Needed a new radiator for one thing, and a couple of panels. We reckoned that at a proper professional rate it’d be about £2,000 to fix it. That’s quite a lot of money – if you won it on a scratch card you’d be happy. The insurance brokers told me quite recently that the claim was now about £15,000 and liable to rise. Everybody piled in – the people who fixed the van helped themselves and it seems everyone had whiplash injuries that weren’t mentioned at the time and no doubt lawyers and insurance people took their cut. Selfish self serving trough snouting ambulance chasing bastards all. Have I already told you about this? Probably...

More recently we took a hire van back to the company we got it from. After 6 months of use it has some minor scraping to the paint on one side – and a tiny dent about ¼ of an inch long. We guess this was pretty much gradual wear coupled with rubbish paint. Fair enough though, there was a bit of a paint scrape and the tiny dent. Bit of touching up and smoothing over perhaps? I’m sure there are clever ways of doing this kind of thing these days. £50? £100? £200 even? The company have 2 quotes for us - £750 or £1,000! Nowt we can do, it’s business, we’ll have signed the blank cheque when we hired the van. More SSBs

This sort of thing genuinely makes me feel ill - even when it's not my money

Oh no - It's Facebook

Is it just me or is Facebook a bit rubbish? I don't mean the concept of it all (let's not go there) but the fact that when you write people a message it all goes wrong and you can't see what your typing and the cursor won't hold if you type more than about 4 lines. Then you go to 'friend requests' or various other pages (oh yes, friends, I do get 'em) and it says 'done' at the bottom left but the page is just blank - so technical glitches is what I mean.

I thought these sites were worth millions and were supposed to work?

There are things in the modern world that work. Just not car clocks, digital gizmos with batteries, oh batteries of course, Satnav, buses and well...there are some things that work in the modern world. Honest

By the way, please please please let me know what you're up to in Farmville (is that what it's called?), I couldn't bear it if you kept it to yourself

And I still can't track down me old mate Gordon Duffy from school!

More politics

Question - according to the new (ish) government the current economic problems are a result of 'the previous government's mismanagement'. My question is, how much money that New Labour gave away to banks would they not have given to the banks?

I also want to know when we get it back - was it a loan or a gift? And what was the interest rate?

Blimey, sounds like I've been listening to 'Any Questions'

World turned upside down

Tory Home Secretary (or Justice Sec or whatever) accuses the previous 'Labour' government of making up prisons policy with "a chequebook in one hand and the Daily Mail in the other". Did that really happen? He's absolutely right of course (if he did say it).

But how did this happen? Labour are friends of the rich, crack down on the poor, everything in 'the private sector' is brilliant, pay all our taxes to their mates in 'the city' and blah blah blah. If only I could believe that the Tories were somehow more 'on the left'.

But what do us pinko Commie liberal bed wetters do now?

Gibbon Time - WSM are back

No, not Gibbon time, advert time.

Whole Sky Monitor would like you to (pay to) download their new single and watch the video of 'Sold' on youtube.

Buy the single / ep at
http://www.play.com/Music/MP3-Download-Album/4-/15240944/-/Product.html
(other supplieers are available)

And http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOYMBqyvH6w

After that 'rock 'n' roll' related telly programme I'm prepared to say that we're very very rock and roll

Hey Dudes, Rock 'n' Roll

Despite lazy (and mostly inaccurate) generalisations like ‘drummers are always a bit crazy’ (illustrated by guess who…yes, Keith Moon of course and erm, not really anybody else) and ‘singers always have massive egos’ and all that sort of tosh I’ve quite enjoyed the bits of the telly programme ‘I’m in a Rock ‘n’ Roll band’ that I’ve seen over the past few weeks. Evan that bloke with the hat (Slash?, or is he Axel, I dunno who cares – metal is fantasy nonsense for 13 year old American boys anyway…) standing in a big field miming in screaming Spinal Tap fashion at least made me laugh.

This week though, I realised that they were having some kind of vote – the kind of competition that asks is pizza ’better’ than roast beef or are cars ‘better’ than helicopters or is green ‘better’ than blue. Pointless comparing of people from different genres of music I mean. Anyway, leaving that aside, I chanced across a bit of the final programme this week - hosted by Jonathan Ross (for fuxxsakes) and a load of people some of whom should know better (come on Mark Radcliffe – I’m sure he at least looked rather embarrassed to be there) were on some sort of panel arguing the case for their favourite – ‘Hendrix is jazz, vote for Page’, that kind of thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing in theory against pointless comparisons – WSM for example argued for hours about which decade of music was ‘best’ (it was clearly the 60s followed by the 70s, and the 80s - with the 90s and 50s in a poor 4th place) and there’s much fun to be had. But there were 2 things that pushed me over the edge and literally made me turn off before I became any more sullied through having to watch any more.

1 – Loyd fucking Grossman came on to go on about how great Keith Moon was – Mr fucking Masterchef pasta sauce ‘who cares who would live in a house like this’ tossing Grossman. I mean fair enough if it had been Liam Gallagher or someone at least a leedle tiny bit rock and roll but no, Loyd Grossman’s agent had bagged the gig. Alan Titchmarsh was clearly busy or his agent wasn’t quick enough on the draw. But that wasn’t the really offensive bit. The really offensive bit was when they introduced a Led Zeppelin TRIBUTE BAND. A TRIBUTE BAND! How more un rock and roll can you get than a tribute band? The answer is NO MORE. Paul McCartney singing about having a cup of English Tea or Mary had a Little Lamb is a million times more rock and roll than any tribute band. Tribute bands are less rock and roll than any crooner, wedding DJ or clown at a kid’s party – at least kiddies entertainers don’t pretend to be rock and roll.

I know it’s not worth getting annoyed about this. Tribute bands surely have their own circle of rock and roll hell where they will be pitied by Chuckles the Clown as he jams with Kurt and Jimi and the rest. Don’t hate them, PITY them. £20 a night each and a couple of beers and they're happy to put their bollocks in a blender and have their sense of shame removed or left to gnaw away in their conscience until death claims them (or they get booked to play at the New Roscoe in Leeds I suppose).

Some bright spark at the BBC with a degree is TOTALLY MISSING THE FUCKING POINT and some PhD in NOT HAVING ANY SENSE OF IRONY clearly decided that a Led Zep TRIBUTE BAND had something to contribute. Probably the same one that got Paul McCartney on to the X-Factor – where our Paul sang 2 great great songs thereby illustrating the crushingly obvious point that not one of the bastards was anything other than a shit karaoke turn with an 18 month career at Butlins and 6 weeks in panto at Skegness as their best shot at contributing to the musical landscape.

This incidentally reminds me of Gareth Gates (or one of the other ones?) singing a version of ‘Light My Fire’ – to be honest another contender in the all time all comers contest for spectacularly missing the point.

It's tiring being angry and even more tiring to check for a high neat phrase count and low bad grammar count so that'll do.

I emailed Mark Radcliffe asking what on earth was he thinking. I signed it 'John from Whole Sky Monitor - an actual rock and roll band' - and I wasn't kidding

I'm off to give Simon Cowell his special award for contribution to whatever it was - the death of irony?

The triumph of Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut once again define the term ‘a waste of time’. This is how it goes:
1. Design and print a glossy ‘Pizza Hut Delivery’ leaflet advertising one of your take away shops
2. Put it through my letter box
3. Make sure that the shop you’re advertising doesn’t actually deliver to this address
4. Do this time after time, year after year
5. Bob is, as they say, you uncle – paper wasted; ink wasted; time wasted for potential customer; time wasted for leaflet delivery person; time wasted for sap at shop who turns down any orders; customer annoyed – ‘good jaarb’!

Gimme a Break

Dunno if you've seen it but there's a kids’ TV programme on the BBC called ‘Gimme a Break’. Kids get to choose what kind of holiday they’d like to go on. The parents then have to go and the kids are 'in charge' (I'm sure you get the picture).

One day last week the kids were offered a ‘beaver safari in Sweden’. They turned it down. The following day they were offered a ‘water sports experience’.

Someone’s having a laugh I think…

The war on the car

Seems the transport bod from the 'coalition' government thinks there's been a 'war' on the car. Surely everyone knows by now that no bastard can afford public transport these days so a car is often the only option.

You want to get one person and a child 3 miles into Leeds on a bus these days - about a fiver. In a car - about £2.50 if you allow for depreciation and all that lot. If you pay for parking it's a bit more - but still cheaper.

We were promised a tram at the end of our road by the end of 2007. Half the time there isn't even a bus.

What happened to lefty politics - the sort that believed in public transport for the good of all. It's fucking depressing...

Staples

I visited 'Staples' recently. I'm doing a mailout of the new Whole Sky Monitor single and getting ready for the album (oh yes!) I couldn't easily get envelopes from my usual source so I signed up with Staples as FR Records. All I needed was 2 or 3 boxes of 100 padded envelopes. I had of course forgotten that this might involve having to visit a shopping centre but no matter, this is about Staples.

I THOUGHT THEY WERE A TOSSING STATIONERY SHOP!

I was clearly mistaken. The biggest pack of padded envelopes they had was 10. Ten! What kind of business wants to buy 10 envelopes? I even asked. No, the biggest amount was 10 - at 35p per envelope. I ended up buying some off ebay at just under 9p each.

The weird thing is that you do still have to be, at least in theory, a business to buy from Staples. So they sell nothing but individual pens and stuff.

I wonder if I'll be back?

Shopping

I visited a shopping centre today – on a Saturday! A drive in one, full of shit chain shops, cars and ‘shoppers’. This must be the 4th time I’ve done this in as many years – why will I not learn? It is just so damn depressing. It kind of makes me feel like it must do giving blow jobs to strangers in public toilets to feed a drug habit. Please remind me to just not do this stuff. The world cannot surely be as bad as this?

Swines!

Not long ago my ex boss was talking about using our meeting room at work as a temporary mortuary! Yes, she was joking but at the time all the people we worked with who worked for the NHS were being taken off their normal jobs to work on the major threat that was swine flu.

We had piles of leaflets, national publicity, '2 people taken ill in Leicester after holiday abroad' headlines and all that stuff. At our work we were going to be asked to volunteer to deliver food to old people when the infrastructure collapsed and all that. And when the 'first wave' turned out to be fuck all they told us that the second wave was going to lay millions low. Millions of doses of vaccine that shortened the symptoms by 24 hours in return for making you really ill were ordered and...oh well, you might remember the rest. All panic, all bollocks, all expensive, all paranoid, all nonsense.

So where the fuck is our apology? Who's been sacked, who's had to pay back the money they wasted?

Trouble is that if there ever is a real emergency I for one will die due to not believing a word of it - but the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour!

MSN top info on inventions

Referring to Nikoli Tesla the MSN homepage today says 'he invented electricity yet died broke'. Further illumination is provided by following the link to more information. Here it says he 'contributed to the birth of electricity'.

Gosh! I wish I'd have invented electricity - or soil, or animals perhaps. But maybe I'd have been happy just to have contributed to the birth in some small way -boiling towels or something. Mind you, would have to have used gas to heat the water I suppose. I wonder who invented gas? Bet he didn't die broke...

I just don't understand! Aaarghhh!

These are quotes from real work email from real people who would be upset and appalled if they knew I was blogging them off. So, no names, no organisations but a couple of direct quotes:

“I hope you will be able to use the review as an important driver and lever to help to make the case for a community and workplace champion approach in your locality”

Eh?

Someone else was explaining what they are ‘passionate’ about – Football? Food? Injustice? Nope, they announced via email that they’re passionate about...

“community based learning and the dissemination of health and well-being messages to improve local health aspirations and increase positive well-being outcomes”

Go them!

Decent human beings, nice people, good at their jobs - no doubt.

Unfortunately though, thoughtful intelligent people are training themselves to speak like this, or at least write like this. After my current job comes to an end I expect to be able to 'concentrate on my music career' because I just can't play this game.

Hang on...that might be a good thing. Trouble is you can get paid for talking like this.

Oh dear...

Summer of the Monkeys

Summer of the Monkeys’ is a DVD for kids – labelled as approved for family viewing by some American evangelical organisation. It has a picture of chimps on the front (i.e. not monkeys – not a good start). However, I digress...

Now we all know that this, like Christian Rock will be awful. Thing is though that I keep giving this sort of stuff the benefit of the doubt. For example, someone at a previous job had some CDs plugging (‘teaching about’ I suppose they’d call it) the Muslim religion. The weird thing was its massive similarity to similar Christian stuff. Half an ounce of logic makes one react with ‘erm, hang on...’ after almost every sentence. The overall impression is that it’s purely for people of a religious bent who may be looking for an alternative to the irrational mediaeval belief system to the one they currently follow. I’ve also given time to tapes and books all purporting to put the case for religion – they all just spectacularly (and worryingly) defy all logic and end up saying ‘it must be true, it’s in the Bible’ or the equivalent.

The thing about ‘Summer of the Monkeys’, potential creationist claptrap aside, is that it went to the cheriddy shop still in its wrapper. I actually have got to the stage that I have had so much experience of this sort of stuff that I for the first time have not taken the trouble to even let it annoy me by watching it – just its existence and my experience is now sufficient. I know many others have sensibly reached this conclusion much quicker. Actually I think with me it was lack of time. In 5 years I’ll be searching the internet desperate for a copy of ‘Summer of the Monkeys’ so I can watch it and hate it properly.

I suppose the positive is that as soon as you stop listening because you just 'know' your mind is closed. So there. it's because I'm open minded see...

If I could be bothered I'd make the prose above a bit neater by the way. I'm not a natural writer('you don't say' says everyone!, it's kind of speech written down - which isn't always good reading.

More on the enfolding drama that is cup-a-soup

I just bought some cup a soup – you got a problem with that? Well, actually, fair play if you have, pretty crappy stuff – but that’s not the point.

I was in a little Tescos and the only cheap type they had was some very weird flavour. So I went for the Batchelors – it’s ‘slim a soup’ too which isn’t a good start obviously. Losing weight via the consumption of salty floury gunk doesn't sound ideal to me. Anwyay, the strange thing is that it had the phrase “My boyfriend’s just found my granny-pants-a-soup” printed on the packet. There it was, on the front of the packet in big curly letters like it was all done on purpose and everything. Surealism in action - corporate sales surrealism showing that these people really are out of control. WTF!? Etc.

Further research (i.e. turning the packet round) reveals an invitation to tell them ‘what makes you reach for a cup-a-soup’ and they’ll print the best reasons on the packet (or ‘pack’ as they call it). So there you go, a full explanation. Why it didn't say 'I wanted summat to go with me sandwich, I know they're crap but it's a change once in a while' they didn't explain.

So, someone bought a cup a soup and it seems their boyfriend has found their ‘granny-pants-a-soup’ I'm not even going to start going into what this can possibly be about. Stealing elderly relatives underwear is just not on frankly - and making soup from such items is even worse. And as for talking about it on soup packets...
Presumably the marketing people didn’t feel they needed to add anything to this.

Actually, to be fair, the sheer madness of advertising (sorry, ‘marketing’) has always been a wonder to behold.

But there's more. I had a trawl around the interweb and found the following:

"Cup-a-Soup…rebrand

Batchelors, the Premier Foods-owned soup brand, has handed its roster agency Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy a brief to rename and rebrand its entire Cup-a-Soup range.
The agency, which works on Premier Foods brands including Hovis and Oxo as well as on ad projects for Cup-a-Soup, has renamed the 42 instant soup products to fit with the demographic that each is targeting.

New names developed by MCBD for the range include one for the brand's 99 per cent fat-free minestrone soup, which is aimed at calorie-conscious young women. The soup will now be called: "My boyfriend's just found my granny-pants-a-Soup."
Cup-a-Soup's chicken and mushroom variety will now be called "His new girlfriend is fatter than me-a-Soup" and others include "Still no signs of bingo wings-a-Soup" and "I thought he winked at me but it was a twitch-a-Soup".

So there you go – and you thought your job was a bit pointless eh?

I think it's too late for suggestions but I'm sending in
I thought they wanked at me but it was twats a soup

What can you say though really?

Would you like pointlessness with that?

We all know that thing – you say ‘just a burger please’ in the burger shop and you get asked ‘would you like fries with that and you say “Hey what?! You do fries?! – Yes of course I’ll have fries. I mean, if you’re sure you do them, wow, I never fail to be impressed by the choice you have available and your tip top customer service, in fact I’d like to ‘go large’ too please”.

Mm, well, maybe not. But today I bought a cup of coffee from Greggs. This is the first time I’ve done so and it’s one of the maybe half dozen occasions in the past 10 years that I’ve bought take away coffee. Anyway, I asked for a coffee and they responded by saying ‘would you like breakfast with that?’

If this happens to you I suggest the following possible replies:

Breakfast? Never heard of it, what kind of thing is that?

Damn it, I knew I’d forgotten something; that’s brilliant, thanks for reminding me – breakfast, breakfast, breakfast! YEEESSSS!

Excuse me, but what kind of person decides to buy breakfast on a whim? Surely of all the things you can buy a meal is one of the things that you know in advance that you want, what the toss is wrong with you Mrs Greggs? If this is training you must fight it! I will try to give you the strength - you must join me on a sacred quest.

Or you could just look slightly confused, wonder what on earth they asked that for and say ‘no thank you’.

You can guess which one I did…

Domestics?

It was International Women’s Day earlier this week – I wonder if they have a Domestic Women’s Day where we all get made a nice cup of tea? ‘spect not…

Your store

Both Currys and PC World tell me today (with big signs in the shop) that they're working to 'make your store even better'. I didn't realise I had a 'store' (the modern shit word for shop) at all until today, let alone two. Then when I decide to go in and take some of the stuff home for safe keeping while the building work is going on they get all arsey about it and threaten me with criminal proceedings.

Some people!

The signs of a cold and damp home

And today at work the ‘Hot News’ newsletter arrives courtesy of npower 'Health Through Warmth' – the December edition (with this being 15th February...) It includes a page entitled ‘Do you know the signs of a cold damp home?’

It then tells you how to spot a cold damp home...

Point 1 is ‘The room feels cold’
Point 5 is ‘the house smells damp and musty’
Point 2 is ‘there are no visible sources of heat – e.g. radiators or heaters’ and point 6 is ‘someone is wearing lots of layers, maybe gloves and a scarf indoors’

So there you go – if you go into a house that feels cold and smells damp and a little old lady is wearing scarves and gloves inside – they may be living in a cold damp house. It took a 2 and a half month late glossy brochure to tell me but now I know.

It’s good to have a little technical knowledge

Money saving Valentine's

I just saved £3.99 on a box of chocolates! Them chocolate sea-shells. I was in Tesco's (normally I send a runner obviously but today I thought hang the autograph hunters, I'll go mesen).

I picked up the box vaguely aware of a nice reddish coloured pattern on the front. I was about to put it in the trolley when I realised that it had a red heart on the front - Pigging Valentine's day special box! I froze...then I put it back and moved swiftly on - £3.99 saved!

My one regret is that I'm unlikely to be around in town tomorrow to laugh at the poor saps who 'do' valentine's day miserably shaming themselves with shit bunches of flowers, over-priced crowded meals and the rest.

No one actually believes that I (and 'we' as it happens) don't do Valentine's day - people seem to think you're joking - either that or it's a bit like announcing that you collect photos of 8 year old boys.

People who you thought were OK turn out to be stupid and mad after all.

Happy Valentine's - IDIOTS!

Go Max!

I definitely heard (OK, I'm fairly sure I heard) Sir Max Moseley on the Today programme on Radio 4 today use the phrase 'that was a private matter between me and the 5 young ladies involved...'

Fantastic! How many people get to use a phrase like that? He may be the son of a nasty Fascist but he's definitely my kind of guy!

Go Quo!

Got a letter today - a reminder about a 'voluntary contribution' (I'll tell you about the Lord Mayor's Fund in Leeds at some point...). £2.50 needed - why? BECAUSE STATUS QUO'S DRUMMER IS DOING A DRUM WORKSHOP AT MY DAUGHTER'S SCHOOL!!!

It would seem that the junior school kids are gunna learn how to drum like you do when you're in THE QUO!!! Staus Quo!

You may not think this is cool and the world has gorn mad. I think it's cool! THE STATUS QUO!!!

Perverts!

These cyber types - crazy! They're either telling me off or grooming me for sex - sometimes at the same time.

I've been posing as a 57 year old man 'on the net' using a pseudonym and chatting with my mates about gout and halitosis in chat rooms and putting photos of myself on Facebook and the like.

All these under age girls keep trying to cop off with me - perverts. String 'em up, that's what I say

Now there's posh

Ainsley Harriot the chef bod has his fizzog on a range of - cupasoups.

Sometimes one has to remind oneself that one could not make it up.

Cupasoup. By a celebriddy chef. Yeah, I know. Don't bother telling me it'll have knob all to do with him apart from the picture.

Cupasoup. Chef related. Cupasoup...

Mistrakes like yer grammar used to make

My grammar has been corrected. I said 'no less than' rather than 'no fewer than'. A big harrumph from me - I'd call the corrector a pedant but they'd probably have their windows put through. I'm not that great at grammar I admit - but on the grounds of popular usage changing the language I nearly decided to argue the point. I decided not to...

Thirty four squid ink

My friends at Epson have been in touch again - they sent me an email saying 'John, are you running low on ink?'

It goes on - 'Ha, we know you fucking are because we give you fuck all when you buy the printer - but if you want more it'll cost you £34.30! No, we mean it! Not only do we mean it but we're going to call it a special offer and pretend that other people's ink is dangerous and rubbish - so screw you! You bought one of our printers and now we're going to bleed you dry! We own you and you owe us a living! What are you gonna do to us? - We're Epson and we don't care if you hate us!'

Actually, they didn't say all that. They did want £34.30 for a set of inks though. I'd rather never print anything ever again and melt their printer over a brazier than pay that though. Come on people, let's start stringing them up. Special offer - for £34.30 I'll do a bunch of 'em.

And don't forget to keep the hate flow aimed at Firstbus - they'll be putting up fares by an inflation busting amount again in the spring like they do, you mark my words

It's capitalist profiteering gorn mad!

If you buy a car it costs maybe about £7,000. That nails my demographic...Anyway, the petrol so you can use it for about a month costs about £40. So the stuff that runs it costs about 0.57% of the purchase price.

An Epson Stylus printer (for example) costs £59.98 (down by a penny from the advert they sent last week). A set of inks so you can use it for about a month costs £33.57The stuff that runs it therefore costs about 56% of the purchase price.

So, yes, a set of printer inks costs well over half the cost of buying a new printer. It’s capitalist profiteering gone mad!

Everyone knows that it's rip off but no one dies. I suppose I've gone on about this before. Drag them out of their offices and beat them to a pulp!

Why, Mr Tesco, you are surely spoiling us...

Call me a useless consumer but I had a Tesco’s ready meal the other day. It contained an item or items they call ‘bacon lardons’.

Well, I’ve been looking at stuff on the internet. I’ve got a big fat steaming bacon lardon now. I’m going to stalk Mr Tesco and I’m going to stick it right in his profit bloated face!

Stay in your homes!

It’s odd to think that perhaps we did quite well with salt on the roads – until recently of course. Since the Council have bailed out and left us to our fate the roads are really really icy! Main roads are clear but you can’t get to ‘em. And don’t start me on the paths. But like I say, it does look like whatever it was they did before was better than I thought!

Funny how these once in a generation freak weather things happen every year though. It wasn’t long ago that I travelled to Warrington on the train and everything was cancelled because it was too hot and the rails were buckling. And then there’s that one off from last Feb. I think the list goes on.

The buses pretty much stopped for hours this week in Leeds too. I wonder how much I get back on me annual pass?

And the price of Council swimming went up by a double figure amount from 1st Jan. The cost of making the toilets stink must've gone up. And why can't I find a postbox anymore? Whine, whinge, moan. Off to hell in a handcart etc.

Sage and onion and 'erb

Soemtimes a pun coms along that it would be difficult to make up. Just before Christmas for example, a colleague of mine was apparently asking all visitors if they'd like 'some Baileys'. Sounds natural enough in the run-up to Christmas you might think (though I didn't run up to it - or jump when I got there...) - but we are a healthy living organisation and part of the brief is encouraging people not to drink too much...

Turns out that in fact the invitation was to 'some bay leaves' - and there in his office was a basket of fresh bay leaves.

Celebrity time

The modern definition of 'celebrity' I find most accurate is simply 'someone who you haven't heard of'.

Imagine my disappointment therefore to discover on reading about the new series of Celebrity Big Brother that I'd heard of no less than 2 of the contestants. Vinnie Jones - who was a thug footballer and went on to be in a film and Stephanie Beacham who was in a US soap and no doubt did 'some other stuff'. The rest are all made up.

This shouldn't bother me of course it's just TVs way of getting people to do something more interesting, but a small part of me wants 'celebrities' to be people 'celebrated' for something. Must be getting old.

I hope Sir Alex is OK

I do hope Sir Alex is alright - I hope he didn't stumble or anything on his way to tell ITV how his team had been outclassed (and dumped out of the FA cup) by a team from the third division. I presume he would have made every effort to give credit to the Leeds lads - and he'd probably have wanted to compare the prices of the 2 teams I guess.

I'll wait for the news to see how he is - must've been something serious though to keep him away from the cameras...

Me and Dave

I read a report recently about the ‘Integrated Processes Development Day’ which involved ‘the third sector’ (my speech marks for those who don’t talk like this) in the development of the ‘Children Leeds Workforce Development Strategy’. One of the follow-ups is to see what training people require ‘to enable engagement in workforce strategy development’. The evaluation will ‘contribute to the development of the Children Leeds Workforce Strategy and in particular evidence the position the sector is in with reference to the development of the Children Leeds Strategy and will be presented to the Directorate of Children’s Services and also to the Children’s Workforce Development Council’. Meanwhile the Council hasn’t got enough money to pay the binmen...

I wonder now if I’m a Tory because when I hear David Cameron going on about getting rid of useless quangos I say ‘right on Dave’ or perhaps I’m some sort of Maoist for wishing everyone involved in the ‘Integrated Processes Development Day’ had been forced at gunpoint to empty the bins when the bin workers were on strike.

Nearly all the conferences and meetings and stuff about strategies and partnerships that I have anything to do with all seem to be based on the concept that people are useless at their jobs and if they only signed up to ‘partnership working’ and whatever else the clever people who meet each other think is a good idea they would work much more efficiently. The trouble is that so many people are at meetings they can’t get any work done. There should be NO jobs in the world in my view that only involve meetings. People should either DO STUFF or BE PAID TO STAY AT HOME DOING WHAT THE HELL THEY LIKE!

It seems to me that if people ‘out there’ found out what their money was being spent on there’d be riots.

The 'Yorkshire and Humber Regional Active Citizenship Learning Alliance'

Sometimes the best way to express dismay, concern and perhaps a soupcon of scepticism is to simply state the name of something. For example, the 'Yorkshire and Humber Regional Active Citizenship Learning Alliance'. I assure you that this is not made up. It exists. And they were having a workshop! ‘Surely not’ you cry. Oh yes they were; the lathes went in yesterday and they produced 300 widgets last week. No, they didn’t. They had a ‘workshop’ for ‘Active citizens, people on learning programmes, Local Authority staff, learning providers’ and apparently ‘Take Part pathfinder projects’.

I present their draft programme below. I’m not picking on them but it is so typical of the sort of thing I occasionally go to where people collude in pretending they’re learning or doing some good for somebody. This is verbatim:

“Draft Programme

Brief Input from
• Learners stories
• The Radical Hillbillies – inspiring video from America

Story Tables
• Showcasing what has worked (and what hasn’t) from around the region using an accessible storytelling style – the chance to hear and discuss several ‘stories’

Inter-active Noticeboard
• The chance to ‘post’ your ideas and comments throughout the day via computers in the room linked to a big screen noticeboard – a rolling discussion forum open to all

Lunchtime Market place for stalls
• Bring and share information about your project

Put your Project on the Map – literally!
• A large map of the region will be on the wall – bring details of your project to pin on to the map

Contribute to RACLA development
• A fun exercise to collect your views about the Alliance – what you want and what you can contribute. Open session to agree outline programme and priorities for the next 6 months”

There you go, ‘the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Active Citizenship Learning Alliance as Harry Hill might say. They are a caution!

The Digital Activist Inclusion Network (DAIN) is "an exciting innovative transnational project which aims to develop, test and deliver approaches to challenge the digital divide, ultimately helping to widen participation in employment and learning."

Just so you know.

There was a conference to "explore practical approaches to challenging digital exclusion"

Just so as you know. The world is full of this stuff...

Degrees of madness

How does this all work then? I want my mileage in miles per gallon though I only know how much petrol costs per litre. I want my low temperatures in Celsius so I can say it’s ‘4 below zero’ or whatever but I want my high temperatures in Fahrenheit so I can say ‘it’s 85 degrees’. I want my big distances in miles but small ones are fine in centimetres. I would never of course consider measuring anyone’s penis – but if I did it would absolutely have to be in inches. Am I normal?

Wages

Here’s a simple question. Why is it that if you do something helpful for society like emptying the bins or wiping old people’s bottoms you get paid about £13,000 a year? If you sit in ‘strategy’ meetings deciding whether to put ‘resources’ into things you get about £30,000 a year. If you gamble with other people’s money, lose and then fleece the people who earn £13,000 a year when it all goes wrong you earn £100,000+ The less actual use people’s job is the more they seem to earn.

‘Ah yes, but what about doctors?’ I hear the annoying twat at the back ask. ‘They have to train for 7 years’ they go on. Here’s where you get into the argument about people being suited to things and where people somehow think you’re saying that everyone should be paid exactly the same whatever they do. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m suggesting that it would be good if pay related to how hard people worked and how useful what they do is – EVEN A TINY BIT! So there!

Eggs for Christmas

If you have a fantastically good memory you may recall me relating my scrambling egg hunting last Easter when I thought I might buy a couple of Easter eggs on the day before Easter (what a crazy guy eh!?) I found of course that capitalism had already moved on to the next consumer fest and it wasn’t allowed. Well, it’s happened again! Last time I was simply able to say ‘screw you Mr Tesco / Wilkinson / Sainsbury etc’ and decided to buy something a little more value for money. This time I was on a particular mission for a nine year old – for an Advent Calendar...

I thought I’d buy one on the 1st December and take it home in time for ‘window one’ to be opened that day. They’d been on the shelves in impossible quantities a couple of weeks before. I won’t go on but it was the same story – tour of supermarkets over 2 days (along with dozens of other people who seemed to be scouring the relevant section, looking disappointed and moving on), asking in supermarkets, staff shaking their heads in disbelief, disapproval and in some cases sympathy, with the words ‘you could try Wilkos’ issuing from the least judgemental. I would look round with my best screwed up teary toddler face and say ‘I’ve already tried there’ attempting to sound cheerful and hoping to find the strength to add a bright ‘but thanks anyway’.

Actually of course, I’d tried 3 branches of Wilkos first. Incidentally I still find it weird that if you added a separate record counter with surly teenager you could turn any Wilkos into an old school Woolies at the drop of a record counter featuring a surly teenager selling only the top 30. How anything actually got into the top 30 was a mystery too far for Woolies. Mm, ‘uses blog to slag off branches of Woollies from 30 years ago – discuss’

Anyway, I would now like to slide from vaguely pathetic to smug bastard – because here are your reactions (and my reactions to your answers!)

If you think ‘If you’re going to do something that stupid you get what you deserve’ you are clearly helplessly under the thumb of Mr Tesco and his billionaire mates and you think that you are there to service the shopping system.

If you think ‘Well there were loads of them where I was – and they were selling them off cheap’ not only are you smug and annoying but you’re JUST PLAIN WRONG!!! You got the dates wrong you idiot – you’re thinking of mid November so fuck off and die!

If you think ‘Everyone knows it’s like that, that’s capitalism, you shouldn’t be surprised’ then you’re one of those lefties whose leftie-dom consists of passing judgement in a self-satisfied ‘I told you so’ kind of way while doing precisely nothing to change anything. I bet you’re a college lecturer or something and earn £30 grand a year (which incidentally, in my world counts as a lot!)

Just to impart a nice circular logic, guess what’s now on sale in Tescos (on 31st December) That’s right – Easter eggs. Get ‘em while it’s still the wrong year!

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.

Scritti Politti 'White Bread Black Beer'

When I set this blog up I thought I would do more of this. Anyway, I bought another copy of White Bread Black Beer by Scritti Politti to give away as a present. I wrote this lot out in the time it took to write it (if you see what I mean - i.e. I did it quickly, straight off the top of me head) so the grammar and tenses sway a bit. However, it does convey some enthusiasm I think...

To be honest this album deserves proper research and information and putting into context and all that blather. However, I don’t have time for that. What I would like to tell you is that this is a GREAT, GREAT RECORD. I define that by the number of times I listen to it over time. This is one of those records that you like when you first hear it and have a little niggling urge to play again. Thing is that that urge didn’t start to fade until I got to about 60 complete listens. I put it on my MP3 player (a thing I’m a bit ambivalent about by the way) and just kept playing it – and I still want to keep listening to it! This puts it up there with the GREAT RECORDS that I’ve really loved over the years, Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, various Beatles albums – the really great records of all time. More recently only the Shins Wincing the Night Away has done anything like this for me.

I remember reading years ago that Joni Mitchell album took a year to sink in and another year to appreciate. I think that this album also has some of that quality. Now it doesn’t actually sound like any of the people I’ve listed but it does mean that you don’t have to buy into any historical 1980s or Scritti Politti ‘place in pop history’ stuff to appreciate it - it just means it’s a great, great record.

OK, so after that some hints as to what it’s actually like. Well for a start you get a really gorgeous voice. High, even slightly androgynous, caressing even, smooth and perfect recorded to hear lip sounds (close to mike and compressed fact fans) and just great to listen to. The words are pop in a slightly twisted and fascinating way. You may not know exactly what a song is about but it’ll certainly sound like it’s about something - and its something interesting and pop but slightly dark, perhaps even very dark. Blood features a few times – feeding something or other blood from a spoon, a flag of blood and lipstick – and is that ‘bellywash blood’? – yuk! – But fabulous too. Darkness in pop is a very special thing when it’s done well – I mean what can ‘Touch me again and I’ll tell Mrs Hughes’ possibly be about? This is followed later in the song by ‘Tell me again and I’ll touch Mrs Hughes’. Thing is, I think I know what this might be about but can’t quite put it into words and it’s private so I’m not telling you anyway. If I knew exactly what it was about it might spoil it. The whole album allows you to interpret lyrics for yourself and kind of develop your own relationship with it - you only need the album – no photos of artist or interviews or context to persuade you why you like it, just the record itself in a world of its own and you in a world of your own with the record.

The songs are all great but often a bit fragmented (this is not a bad thing though it normally would be). One will start with some gorgeous Beach Boys like harmony which will stop and reappear later as if its part of the next song - which it actually might be – who cares!? The result is that 13 tracks sounds like around 30 – and for once this is a GOOD THING – there’s always another favourite moment coming up and the bit you’re listening to is likely to be a new favourite bit in another few listens. The music is home recorded. Again, this sounds like it might be a horrible amateur thing, but in fact it just means it’s a single unique vision. A lot of time must’ve been put into this. Like my Grandma’s buns – perfectly risen, perfectly mixed and with icing and a cherry on top. I haven’t really analysed the instrumentation but things occur as you go along – there are certainly acoustic guitars on there and there’s bass and some beat box type drums and probably a lot of the songs have no drums at all but who cares – if you’re eating the perfect bar of bitter sweet chocolate why bother to notice the exact percentage of cocoa butter?

So, this is pop – YEAH YEAH as XTC once said. Do yourself a favour and buy this record and listen to it a 1,000 times before you die. Put it up there with yer Beatles and Dylans and Mitchells if you’re me or alongside your own particular life enhancing / changing records.

I came to this record after hearing Stuart Maconie play a track on Radio 2. It was the single Snow in Sun and it sounded like slightly trippy, slightly fey modern psychedelia on first hearing. I thought I’d be buying something slightly twee but fun. In fact I got one of the best records I’ve hear in years.

This is an achingly good record. I’ve bought 3 copies so far so I can give them to people I know who deserve them and might appreciate them. A strange and beautiful thing!