Why I'll never vote, unless there's a chance of real change

...because the abuses have grown...

There's a file alleging paedophile activity at Westminster. It has gone missing.¹

Now, there's some other missing files. 114 of them. Described as 'relevant'.²

Norman 'On Yer Bike' Tebbit thinks there may have been bit of a cover up.³ Hiding child abuse in the 1980s.

This what Tebbit said:

“At that time I think most people would have thought that the establishment, the system, was to be protected and if a few things had gone wrong here and there it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into it.”⁴

Then he went on:

“That view, I think, was wrong then and it is spectacularly shown to be wrong because the abuses have grown.”

So, either Tebbit thought those views were wrong then, and didn't speak out; or he thought they were right then and now, with hindsight, thinks they are wrong. Neither of those suggests he's worthy of the title 'Lord'.

As a Lord, he's a political insider, a Westminster regular, and he says: “...because [since the 1980s cover-up] the abuses have grown”.

There's a regular drip of bleating from mp's about being held in low regard despite how hard they work, what a good job they all do, etc, etc (yawn).

Asked was there a big political cover up, the answer was:

“I think there may well have been. But it was almost unconscious. It was the thing that people did at that time.”

And what they're still doing now, Norman. Only the abuses have grown.

Why Waste Your Time? (Aggressively) don't vote. Broadly, the choice is between the paedos to the right...

the paedos slightly to the left of them...

or the paedos between that will side with either for a sniff of power, led by a bloke with a dad with strong connections to Leon Brittan and the cover up...

Why endorse the power craziness of any of them.

Wanting power is the greatest reason for being prevented from ever attaining it.

1There's a surprise.

2Another surprise.

3Is there no end to tory ex-cabinet ministers' insight?

4For most people read: politicians. For 'protect the system' read protect our own selfish interests. For 'a few things going wrong here and there'...well...using those words just beggars belief.

Look, it 'aint ours, right?

Who's planet?

Monsanto, and other giant corporations' farming methods are making species extinct and doing no end of harm. There's a need to keep banks of seeds in storage just in case, at some time in the future, common sense outweighs filthy lucre on the priority scales.

I got an email about this, asking me to donate.

I'd be much more likely to donate if the email didn't start:

“Our planet...”

Old time religion (gimmie that...etc) tells us we're here with dominion over all the fish in the sea, animals in the fields (is that it, on the plains? locked up in tiny cages?)...yawn...whatever it says...religions spread the falsehood that we're some super-species here to lord it over all others. They tell us how to kill the things, fer christsakes, in cruel and unusual ways.

That “our” implies ownership, too heavily, for me to accept.

This isn't “our” planet.

The planet's been here a long, long time without human habitation.

It may or may not withstand human destructiveness (were I a gambler, I'd have a punt on the planet seeing us out) but the chances are it'll continue after we've ramped our activities up to a fatal level. It's the space-rock where humans have happened to evolve, where any number of species have come and gone before and where others will probably come and go in the future.

The big agricultural concerns wield way too much power, for sure. But until that “our” disappears, forever, and fundamentally, from our way of thinking, nothing will really change.

We had one job - you can guess how that worked out...

Curry organisation, part the second

So. We had one job to do. There were things in our favour:

• We were all sat at the same table

• We were sat there for around an hour

• We had an agenda one item long:

AGENDA

1. Set a date and time to go out for a curry

Any other business

That's short enough for even me to remember it. Off by heart.

There were, however, some things that conspired against us:

• The television was on in the clubhouse

• Brazil

• Chile

• Extra time

• Penalties

• Chips with salt and tomato sauce

Who, in the face of such adversity, could concentrate on the one job they had to do, no matter how simple and straightforward?

Obviously, not us.

So, therefore, the curry remains, neither disorganised, nor unorganised, but yet to be organised. To be confirmed. Watch this space.

I'd not considered the question...

...until I completed the County Cricket board's online questionnaire. Basically, the question was: when your playing days are over and it's time to disappear back off to the pavilion for the last time, will you still want to be involved, (A) umpiring; (B) in an official capacity; (C) coaching; (D) doing the washing up / making the sarnies / general dogsbody duties; or: (E) will you wander off never to be seen again?

Most of the questions I hadn't had to think about too much, if at all.

This one made me realise: I'm a wander off into the sunset never to be seen again sort of bloke. I don't so much draw a line (in the sand or elsewhere) as build a ten foot wall topped with razor wire, and relentlessly, remorselessly, and even ruthlessly, move on to the next phase, whatever that might be.

I don't feel that I turn my back, rather that I get busy with the new stuff to full capacity, and don't have time to re-visit the past.

The order of things

Curry organisation, part one

I'm awful at text messages. Not exclusively. I'm awful at loads of things, text messages included.

I like to blame dealing with them while I'm driving, and other excuses, but the fact is I'm awful with the things. No surprise then, that I Chinese-whispered AD's “shall we organise a curry on Saturday, after cricket” to “curry, Saturday, after cricket”. Then I part-organised Rich and Mr B O'S, believing the lime pickle committee was planning to meet after the game. Only to have to furiously back-peddle after getting the facts straight.



Evening T20

Wednesday evening's T20 saw that rare event: we won a game of cricket. With three of us making the twenty not out to get retired (and eligible to go back in) we were able to speed up towards the end and knock the runs off.

It was warm, a nice evening, we played on aground with a stone wall, surrounded by mature trees, opposite the all-weather hockey pitches. A nice setting and a nice way to end the day. We should do it more often.


The order of things

Unless there's a good reason for doing otherwise, when I turn on a computer, this is what I do:

1. Fire up the media player (VLC, generally);
2. Open the folder with the music in and drop something in there. I don't get too fussy, let's have something playing while the details are sorted out;
3. Plug in the headphones or the speakers.
4. Open up a web browser (Firefox or Chrome, never IE);
5. Open up the document I'm working on;
6. Open up the email client (Thunderbird, or Evolution);
7. Put the kettle on;
8. Work on the document, until...
9. ...the album finishes, when it's time to think about what to listen to next.

Always it's music first. The first step in doing some cooking is dumping some music onto a SD card for the kitchen stereo. If there's nothing playing, it's almost like an anxiety attack, every subsequent music-less second lost and gone forever pressing the panic button harder and harder.


This is my screen wallpaper

Words from Trout Fishing In America.

Christmas in July

Christmas in February

Well, Christmas in July, anyway.

'Nam.

Christmas in February: Lou Reed from the (check it out, it's his absolute best) New York album. Soldiers coming home from 'Nam. Vietnam.

Christmas in July?

'Nam.

As in Debenham(s).

July is when the big retailers gear up to test-drive their Christmas products, decide what to market and what isn't going to fly (this year the guinea pigs will sample, among other delights, a Brussels sprout smoothie with apple and pear juice – if Rik Mayall were still alive they'd surely be contemplating a Bottom advertising campaign for that one).

There's mock ups of suburban homes with trees and crackers, that rubbish music and trees and silly hats all over the place, apparently, with Tesco and Waitrose and Morrisons blokes with clipboards scribbling away, ticking and crossing.

Photographic studios are busy taking pictures of juicy turkey slices, glistening roasties, flaming puds smothered in custard and cream, such is the lead time for getting those pictures into the glossy magazine advertising pages.

Who watches the watchmen?

I grow tired of them. Really, I do.

If only it were not for: football matches / football fans / binge drinking / drugs / the Internet / guns / the influx of foreigners / porn / loud rock music / (even worse) hip hop music / Grand Theft Auto [insert release number (Roman Numerals) here]...

...then...

There'd be no violence / theft / naughty children / accidents / paedos / atheists...

...and...

England would win every World Cup and European Championships, the churches would be packed, the pubs and clubs empty, every cinema would be showing The Sound of Music on every screen, and decent, well-respected people from wealthy families would be free to continue ruthlessly exploiting everyone else for their own selfish benefit.

Stinkin' thinkin'.

The government, and the prime minister's offices (centres of stinkin' thinkin' excellence) appointed a chief advisor, a guru, to stem the flow of Internet child porn.

Like all the others, he ignored the problem (humans are not some super-species, here to look down on nature, flora, all other fauna, do with the earth what we want), which is of human origin, and attacked the sideshow: the naughty Internet. Police the un-policeable, catch up with the un-catchupable, and we'll have it sorted in no time he said.

The prime minister and no doubt the home secretary (because she loves a good snoop) liked what the bloke said, bought into it, promoted his views and opinions, heeded his advice.

Probably like untold numbers of others in similar positions of power, he had child porn images on his tablet pc.

63 of them at the latest count.

Why Waste Your Time?

Why bother voting?

This is what you get.

A clean up child porn initiative, sponsored by our political 'leader', on behalf of the gang that think they're qualified and entitled to tell us all what to do, led by a man with child porn on his personal computer.

June Prince of Darkness Special

PRINCE OF DARKNESS SPECIAL JUNE 2014

Peter Mandelson (Mandy), the Prince of Darkness is pacing up
and down a large, wood-panelled room in his London
townhouse. He has a copy of The Independent in his hand. In
his other hand he has a fistful of his lustrous,
suspiciously black, hair. Terry, his man Friday enters. He
is also holding items: a cigar in one hand and a tin of
Budweiser in the other. He is wearing a Brazil football
shirt, and a large, frizzy, Sideshow Bob-style David Luiz
wig.

                      TERRY
                (singing)
          Braaaazil, Braaaaazil...

                      MANDY
          Serbia! Of all the god forsaken...

                      TERRY
          Who, boss?

                      MANDY
          Serbia!

                      TERRY
          But they went out before the
          finals, boss.

                      MANDY
          Eh?

                      TERRY
          Serbia.

                      MANDY
          Yes. Serbia...

                      TERRY
          They went out...

                      MANDY
          Out of what, Terry?

                      TERRY
          Duh? Boss? Man of the people? The
          World Cup.

                      MANDY
          Oh. Yes. I was wondering about the
          change in mealtimes...

                      TERRY
          Yeah. I've been meaning to talk to
          you about that...

                      MANDY
          About what?

                      TERRY
          Mealtimes.

                      MANDY
          And?

                      TERRY
          Well, it's a bit inconvenient, what
          with the five o'clock and the nine
          o'clock games and now there's the
          possibility of extra time and
          penalties, well...

                      MANDY
          Well?

                      TERRY
          Any chance of a few takeaways, so I
          don't miss any of the action, like?

                      MANDY
          But my body's...

                      TERRY
          ...a temple. Yeah. I know, boss. I
          can get you some healthy stuff from
          those weird-o places if you like,
          or order in some of those (pulls a
          face) organic salads, if the
          Rawalpindi vindaloo isn't good
          enough...

                      MANDY
          Terry! Remember what happened last
          time...

                      TERRY
          Oh. Yeah. (laughs). That was...

                      MANDY
          No. Terry. It wasn't remotely
          amusing. And now this...

                      TERRY
          Now what?

Mandy waves the Independent newspaper around.

                      MANDY
          And now this. Look.

                      TERRY
          Oh. Serbia.

                      MANDY
          Yes. Serbia. It's come to this. Not
          Spain. Not Portugal. Not even
          Greece. Bloody Serbia. Special
          advisor to bloody Serbia.

                      TERRY
          They were...

                      MANDY
          ...I know. Knocked out before the
          finals. Thanks Terry. Now, rubbing
          salt into the wounds, THIS!

He flourished the newspaper again.

                      TERRY
          Hold still, let's see...oh (reading
          aloud)..."Mandelson to advise
          Serbia...because...he's cheaper
          than Blair"

                      MANDY
          Yes. Not only not Spain, Portugal,
          or even Greece...but...but...a
          backward, cold, concrete grey
          wasteland full of East European
          trailer-trash with missing teeth,
          vodka-breath and pistols in their
          leather jackets, old women out in
          the potato fields all day dressed
          in those
          black...things...but...but...it
          seems I've only got that because
          I'm cheaper than bloody Blair...

                      TERRY
          Well, it's not like you're a...

                      MANDY
          A what, Terry?

                      TERRY
          A political heavyweight, are you
          boss? I'd put you no higher than
          light-middleweight, maybe even
          lightweight or bantam...

                      MANDY
          Terry! I'll have you know I'm up
          there with the greats. I'm the
          comeback king. Churchill, McMillan.
          Gosh, even (he genuflects) the
          glorious Blessed Margaret...

                      TERRY
          Boss, aren't they all Tory...

                      MANDY
          Details, details, don't give me
          details...who said that, Terry?

                      TERRY
          Er...dunno boss.

                      MANDY
          Er, I think it may have been
          someone in 'Layercake'...

                      TERRY
          You watched 'Layercake' boss?

                      MANDY
          By mistake. It had James Bond in
          it...anyway...this is an
          outrage...Serbia...cheaper than
          Blair...

                      TERRY
          About those takeaways, boos, it's
          the knock out stages soon, and...

                      MANDY
          Whatever, Terry (sighs) whatever.
          And put that cigar out!

Oh, and some of those wooden stirrers with that, thanks...

Foot pedal blues

Sad, but true. The foot pedal ordered from Amazon does not change the sound an electric guitar makes. It doesn't add wah-wah, it doesn't create fuzz or distortion, none of that. It starts and stops a media player for audio typing. It's a digital dictation instrument, not a musical one. Amazon confirmed the order, and that page had that section along the bottom: customers also bought...

...I don't usually pay much attention to this, but this time I did, and there's:

Olympus ear sponges. Makes sense. Foot pedal on the floor, headphones on the head, ear buds in the ears, and those foamy bits on the ends wear out after a while, become thin, get loose and fall off. In any case, if there's common headphones in the office, you need your own ear sponges. Otherwise, you're in audio typing territory equivalent to junkies sharing needles.

Philips ear sponges. See above.

Keyboard-type 'foot' switch. An alternative start / stop method.

A connector cable. Presumably of the type needed for the foot pedal? Surely they're all USB now?

Sticky coloured dots 8 mm labels. These:

OK. They are office supplies. There must be any amount of office supplies more relevant to a foot pedal than these labels. (i)

Drink stirrers.

Yep. Long thin lolly-sticks that substitute for spoons (ii). People thinking about foot pedals were also thinking about hygienic, disposable coffee stirrers. Apparently.

(i) 

I was once on a removal job. The result of a divorce between an interesting couple. He was one of those ex-army (armed forces, not barmy) types, very posh, obviously wealthy. She was an African lady he'd met on his travels. Sadly, after many years together, things hadn't worked out, and the split, clearly, was acrimonious. We were there in two separate lorries. Us doing his stuff, and our competitor (swearing allowed for proper names) Vic (the prick) doing hers. The problem was, or, more accurately, the problems were:

1. He was moving into a small flat in town, and therefore what he was taking was labelled with those little round stickers (blue).
2. The flat was too small to accommodate all his chattels, so others were going into our storage unit (green stickers). Already too much for a removal bloke to remember, eh?
3. She was also downsizing.
4. Her stuff was going to her flat (red stickers)...
5. ...and into Vic (the prick)'s storage facility (yellow stickers).
6. There were a number of items going to a separate storage unit (orange stickers). These were still in ownership dispute.

Vic (TP) had (all-day, industrial strength cannabis) problems with what day it was, let alone with what coloured sticker was going into which truck, and where (we were stacking left / right – flat / storage, he was going front / back. They deliver a mean bollocking when under pressure and irritated beyond a sensible level, those ex-army bods. Wasted on Vic (TP), though. He just did the eyebrow thing, smiled, and said “other van then, boss?”

(ii)

Do you think there's one factory producing these? Normal (for lolly sticks), long super thin (for stirring hot drinks), shorter, fatter, individually wrapped (for the Dr when he does that “now say ah” thing, pressing down on your tongue?)

World Cup Themes

World Cup theme #1: the all-inclusive celebrations

Normally there's rarely goal celebration involvement for players and support staff on the bench. They usually have their own, separate, and comparatively low-key affair. A bit of discrete air-punching and some cheesy grins. On the pitch there's much more going on. Full scale Busby Berkeley choreographed all-singing all-dancing ensemble jobs. Shirt over the head. The “we're behind, you know” grab the ball from the net and sprint back to the centre-spot.

In Brazil scorers are heading straight over to the management and the substitutes, and there's huge numbers involved in the celebrations.

World Cup theme #2: we're doomed, we're so, so doomed – look, we're on the big screen! Yay!

Three-nil down, facing elimination, down to ten men, all hope long since abandoned, there's the fans, a-weepin' and a-wailin'.

Count: one-thousand, two-thousand.

Then they realise that they're on the big screen.

Wow. Look. There we are!

There they are. Suddenly the world isn't just a better place, they're jumping up and down as if they've just found themselves in the best place ever, aboard their own huge yacht.

The cameras, so far, have been kind.

I don't think I could resist the temptation to repeatedly zoom in on the same group, watching them bipolar flip between the joy of the big screen, and, when no longer on the big screen, going back to the devastation of their team's shockingly bad performance.

World Cup theme #3: referee's spray

Not only does that spray ensure free kicks are taken from the right place, with the wall ten yards away, it should be sold to taggers and grafitti artists serving their apprenticeships so that their early works are temporary until they get to Banksy standards.

World Cup theme #4: the blame game

There's no end of theories and no end of supposed culprits for England's early exit.

However, there's a lot of nations still in the mix whose populations, while significantly larger than their squads, are smaller than that of London. Suggesting that, for example, the average Costa Rican is very much better at football than the average Englishman.

World Cup theme #5: rich and thick

The wealthy snobs must be suffering from the in-breeding. Fancy holding Wimbledon during the World Cup. They must be mental.

The unholy countryside alliance

Shut up disagreeing with me

To their absolute discredit, the BBC and some newspapers are reporting as serious the opinions of that unholy countryside alliance. An alliance of the ultra-wrong ultra-rightwing, the “get orrf my land” dog-shooters, and that one fat lady that isn't dead yet.

Their opinion is that celebrities shouldn't voice their opinions.

That is, if the celebs happen to disagree with them.

No, much more valid are the opinions of the ministers and secretaries of state. After all with their degrees in history, and, er, history, and...history, they're ideally placed to comment on the science, the biology and zoology of exterminating badgers and hunting foxes. After all, they've devoted a lot of time achieving their qualifications in, er, history.

The politicians are no more qualified than the celebrities. They just happen to be better disposed towards the cruel, nasty and evil treatment of animals.

Then there's the princess that looks like a horse. “Gas the badgers” she says. She is eminently qualified to hold an opinion, because...well, because her mum and dad happen to be her mum and dad. She's genetically qualified and chock-full of hereditary expertise.

Then there's the farmers' lobby. A cabal of loons if there ever was one. They're either farming the better part of East Anglia with intensive machinery and chemicals and are spreadsheet jockeys who can't tell a cow's arse from a fox burrow. They're money men who would hand their grannies over to Somalian Pirates if they got a couple of quid more per head at market, let alone worry about exterminating large numbers of any species. Or they're hands-on. To be precise, that's hands-up. Hands up a sheep's arse at ungodly o'clock every morning, then milking the cow's arses, then getting the eggs out of the chicken's arses. You'd have to be barking to want to get up at four every morning, look out onto the tractor scrapyard, and set off with the border collie for a day of various animal behinds, all, if they're to be believed, to lose money hand over fist. That is, I think, if you discount the EU subsidy. The custodian of the countryside subsidy. The no rates subsidy. The poll tax subsidy, and the cow's, sheep's and chickens' arse subsidy, and the leaving the fields alone doing nothing and still get a subsidy subsidy.

So, their point of view isn't really valid because they're all mad.

It is different in even semi-rural areas:

There's a strong smell of horse, only occasionally overwhelmed by the dodgy stables owner burning the insulation off those bails or wire he mysteriously accumulates, and sells for scrap.

There's next door but one. He isn't always out with his chainsaw. Sometimes it's his tractor. Sometimes it's other hand-held, two-stroke, petrol appliances.

There's all the birds. They like a between three o'clock and four o'clock kick off in the summer months. Not all of them sing. Some tap dance on the roof tiles.

There's the rats. Every time they seem to clear off, there's another horse parked out the back and the hay (or the straw or whatever the technical term for that dried stuff they eat or sleep of crap on) provides a rat-squat they just can't turn down.

There's the road in the winter months. An adventure in itself. Never seen a gritter. They did send a snowplough down once. It cleared the road. In doing so it blocked everyone's drives so we couldn't use the road.

Most of all, though, it's a place of beauty, made all the more beautiful by the birds, the foxes, the badgers, the mice and the rats, and, sadly, infested with people who seem intent on wiping them out.