Marshside

Tulsa Time

2017-08-04T14:23:00.001+01:00

Fixed term elections: how about fixed term lives?

2015-02-05T12:10:00.000+00:00

Here in the UK, a general election is looming. But then that's not news: it's been looming for nearly five years, since the last one. The date of May 7th has been known for ages and, given that all most politicians care about is being re-elected, their minds have been firmly focused for some time. In fact, so firmly focused that the government long ago gave up any pretense of doing anything useful and concentrated solely on saving their jobs. At our expense, of course.

In the (not so) old days, the timing of a general election (although in theory up to the monarch) was at the whim of the party in power but under pressure from coalition "partners" the Lib Dems, the Conservatives agreed to this fixed term business. OK, so the government no longer has the element of surprise in its electoral arsenal but the law of unintended consequences has kicked in and produced this so-called zombie government. But it occurred to me that this fixed term principle may be a good idea in other contexts; like fixing the end of your life.

Now this may sound a bit morbid to say the least but do open your mind to the advantages, which are many. Anyone who's got to that age where you need to start thinking about pensions and the like will know that the key variable which makes these decisions so tricky, is the date of your death. If you knew in advance when you were going to snuff it, the whole business of financial planing in one's later years would be so much easier.

Then there's this "bucket list" business. Many of us may want to go round the world, climb Everest, discover lost tribes in the Amazonian rain forest, etc., etc. but the problem is, when? Just how long does one have to cram in these things? If they're potentially life-threatening, you wouldn't want to do them too soon but if you knew your time was up the week after next, well a spot of wing-walking doesn't seem like such a bad idea. And this fits with the money angle too; bucket list stuff can be expensive - what a disaster if you blow all your savings now and then find you've got another thirty years to struggle by in poverty. There's no doubt about it - a fixed date of death would be a real boon to the grey haired adventurer and financial planner alike.

And what about the benefits to society as a whole? We're all living too long, so we're told. This puts a terrible strain on the health service and care homes. It ties up housing, which means higher housing prices for the youngsters and leads to the need to build more housing, which means less countryside, and so on and on. If we're all given a fixed termination date (kind of like having a leasehold life), many of these problems would fade away. Of course if you die before your given date, that's no problem and perhaps your descendants could enjoy some kind of government handout by way of thanks.

So there you have it; my radical proposal for solving almost all the problems in the developed world. Which political party will be the first to adopt it? And how about a slogan: "live today, die tomorrow - and we mean tomorrow."

Glastonbury - how we survived

2014-07-08T18:49:00.001+01:00

By not camping, is the short answer. We are of a certain age you know and although we have done this camping lark (see Cropredy posts), we've never been too keen. So, having actually managed to get Glastonbury tickets, which is no mean achievement, we weighed various accommodation options before deciding to stay at a pub just a few miles up the road.

A small part of the site: your tent not marked with a cross

The pub owners not being stupid, this cost a fortune as the room rate was roughly double what it would be at any other time of year but it was worth it, especially as there was an hourly bus service to the festival site from right outside the pub. Luxury!

Now the thing about Glastonbury, as anyone who's been there will tell you, is the size of the thing: it is HUGE. We've done a number of festivals (again, see Marshside posts passim) but Glasto is simply on another scale. When I was doing my pre-festival planning, I studied the site map which, helpfully but somewhat depressingly, had a scale on it. I couldn't bring myself to actually get the ruler out and check but it looked like the site was about 3 miles across. This estimation was corroborated by Lauren Laverne on the telly saying that the perimeter fence was about 9 miles long...if you remember your old maths, you will know that a site diameter of about 3 miles would be consistent with this. More corroboration came from our legs on the Thursday when we drove in. Having had to park in a car park so far from the main stage that we were probably in another county, we were knackered by the end of the day.

There's a lot of weird stuff going on at Glastonbury

In fact this is one of the key themes of Glasto; it's kind of half music event and half army style route march. That's not to mention the third half (yes, OK) which is the non-music side of the do. Never mind the distant car parks, the number of stages spread far and wide and that sheer massive size, means you do a lot of walking. And when I say a lot, I mean THIS MUCH. Clearly, the reason that so many of the youngsters seek to get off their heads on booze and dope is not to achieve mind altering euphoria but to dull the pain in their legs. As for the older ones, well there were a good many camping chairs around the place.

As well as the size of the place and the need to trudge from stage to stage there is of course one other factor that I have avoided until now: the mud. My God was it muddy. It had been raining on and off since we arrived but then early Friday evening - bang! The heavens opened, accompanied by much crashing and flashing and for about 40 minutes it absolutely poured. That's OK until abut 300,000 feet start pounding through the fields and then the place rapidly comes to resemble the Somme. Have you tried walking long distances in heavy mud? Terminally exhausting is an understatement.

That's real Glastonbury mud you know.

The good news was, we were in the acoustic tent at the time of the thunderstorm so didn't get a soaking (at least not at that particular juncture) but the bad news was that the Fishermen's Friends were only about 3 songs into their set when all the power was turned off, everywhere. This was some sort of health and safety overkill to do with the lightning.They wouldn't have done that a few years ago, said Mr Glastonbury, Michael Eavis.

OK you ask, so apart from the mud, the rain, the long distances and the cost what other dismal experiences did you have and can you confirm you're never going back? Well folks, of course the answer is that we will be back and all in all, we had a great time. Yes it would have been much better without the rain but even so, Glastonbury is such an extraordinary event that it rises above this minor nuisance.

Somewhere in the far distance, that might be Dolly Parton

There are literally hundreds of bands so if you don't like the headliners (and we didn't) there's always going to be other acts you want to see. Of course unfortunately, unless you're blessed with omnipresence, there are going to be dozens of people you're going to miss. As someone else said, the festival would have to last about a year for you to actually sample all it has to offer.

Then you've got the all the kids stuff, the circus tent, the cabaret tent, the healing fields, the giant spider show in Arcadia, poetry, comedy tent, the stone circle, arts and crafts, about a zillion shops and food places and, if your legs haven't completely given out come sundown, a vast mass of late night entertainments that go on until dawn. Get those prescription drugs down you so you can boogie all night and then see the sun rise over the fields.

The giant spider. Altogether now: wow!

Actually, this last suggestion may be something of a necessity because you probably can't find your tent anyway. I don't know how anyone does, which is another reason for not camping. There are just acres and acres of tents all crammed together randomly (not in neat rows like at Cropredy!) and they all look much the same, especially at night. This is not to mention that if you came by car, your car will probably be miles from your tent so if you need to go back and forth a few times, well that'll take care of your first day.

The sun shines down on the Park stage. Smell that drying mud. Lovely.

My son assures me that people do find their own tent (and he's camped there twice) but this is a skill that I am in awe of. One tent had the legend "your girlfriend slept here last night" printed on it. I don't think this was supposed to be witty but just a statement of fact; she probably just gave up looking for her own tent and passed out in the first one that looked empty.

Speaking of wise words, I must mention my favourite flag which was a simple black on orange one saying "Play the fucking Bends!" It's something of a Radiohead fan in joke but it still makes me chuckle, especially as Radiohead weren't even playing, But of course, as the man with the flag probably would have said, when it comes to Radiohead and Glastonbury, you just never know and it's best to be prepared.

The inaugural winner of the Marshside Blog "best flag at Glastonbury" award

So, the highlights? Well Robert Plant was superb, with several Led Zep covers, interestingly done, along with his recent solo stuff. Elbow were as sublime as ever. Jake Bugg, who we saw doing his solo set in the acoustic tent, is a precocious talent but hot on his heels comes young George Ezra. He drew a simply vast crowd to the John Peel tent which nearly caused major crushing when we all left at the same time and, given the location of the John Peel tent, in much the same direction. We also saw and enjoyed Goldfrapp, Warpaint, Midlake, the Manic Street Preachers, the Pixies, Lau, Massive Attack, St Vincent, James Blake, the Kaiser Chiefs and and and....Dolly Parton, a very slick entertainer with a hot band, she attracted about 90% of the total festival crowd I reckon. We stood about a mile back.

Robert Plant: Stairway to Heaven temporarily closed due to thunderstorm

But the surprise stars for us were a band called the Stepkids. I'd never heard of them but they were great...only a 3 piece but crikey they could play and sing, with a funky jazz/rock style, heavy with hints of Steely Dan and Earth Wind and Fire, among others. Oh, and they had a great line in cheesy dance moves. Do not miss them if you have the chance.

The Stepkids. Nice shirts boys!

The food and drink is good and not at all badly priced; 6 Music Festival take note...if Glastonbury can serve me real ale straight from the barrel at £4 a pint then so can you!

Apart from all the above, what makes Glastonbury special is its duration. Although in theory the festival is just 3 days, Friday to Sunday, the gates open on Wednesday. This means that you can be there for the best part of 6 days so for almost a week you can be on another planet, blissfully untroubled by the usual grisly world events. Everything is different so if it's true that a change is as good as a rest, you will come home very well rested, despite having walked 50 miles.

If they could just do something about the rain, it would be almost perfect.

Er...you don't suppose that might be rain coming? At Glastonbury...?

6 Music Festival review - a new personal record?

2014-03-05T12:46:00.000+00:00

We're big fans of BBC Radio 6 Music here at Marshside Acres, where the station's unique blend of quality rock and pop, ancient and modern, blasts continuously from the kitchen radio. So it was hard to resist the suggestion from the lady of the house that we troll up to Manchester to check out this festival thing. You had to be on the ball as the tickets sold out in (appropriately) 6 minutes but we secured a pair for the Friday and, me having done a deal to include a day or two in the Peak District, got ourselves organised.

The first bit of good news was that I managed to get a room in the Premier Inn almost literally a stone's throw from the venue but after that there was some less good news.

Now I hate to puncture the huge inflated balloon of self-love that has been hovering over 6 Music since the weekend, with the playlist heavily interspersed with live recordings from the do but...once inside the environs of the Victoria Warehouse, we were approached by programme sellers asking a staggering £8 for a running-order-on-a-lanyard thing, which you often get at these events. I was having none of this sort of rip off so laid about them with boot and fist. There was blood and teeth everywhere as we strode purposefully into the warehouse, looking for a simple bit of paper which would tell us who was playing where (there were two rooms) and when. Imagine my disgust to find no such thing existed. The security staff had them, oh yes, but they weren't going to risk damaging their £8 a throw sales by sharing this info with the humble paying punter.

Anger now simmering gently, we headed for the bar. Now I'm not completely naive; I've been to more gigs and festivals than many in the poorer parts of the world have had hot dinners and I know there's an unwritten law which says the bars at these places are going to charge well over the odds. Like many laws, it's a very bad one and like many other events, this one supported its usury by banning the possession of food and drink from the outside world. But get this: the price of the Stella Artois was £4.40 for a 33 cl bottle. Reader, let me save you the trouble and do the maths for you; are you sitting down? This works out to £7.54 a pint!!! Yes!! Really!! Bloody hell!!!

Tom Robinson delivers public health warning re beer prices. No one hears him over the din of chatter

The Heineken was a tad cheaper but only a tad. I've been to Wimbledon, Lords, various other sports grounds, almost any music venue you can name, many fairly swanky hotels around the world, not to mention of course hundreds of pubs but, here in a grimy warehouse, in a grimy part of industrial Manchester, not refrigerated, served in plastic bottles with plastic glasses, was the most expensive beer I've ever drunk.

What is the justification for this "think of a number and double it" pricing strategy? None at all of course, other than if people are going to be trapped in your premises for 7 hours or so with no other supply available, they have to either drink or expire so you can charge what you like. Handily placed cash machines were at the venue for those whose budgets had not factored in these from-another-galaxy prices. Still, look on the bright side; I might have been driving and restricting myself to water which was an even more staggering £2.50 for a small bottle. Trebles all round!

And just remember, this event is being organised by the BBC, already paid for by our licence fees not to mention the entry tickets (normally free for BBC shows aren't they? Not this one). Just remember, the reason why you pay so much more for a drink in the pub than from the supermarket is the pub's very considerable overheads. But at a do like this, the overheads are pretty close to zero, save for the hapless students behind the bar on minimum wage. The profit margins must be wonderful and I am hoping that our share of these will be refunded via some clever licence fee rebate. OK, you're right, I'd better not hold my breath...

Right, so once over this latest shock, things must improve, no? Well no and yes. As well as the two concert rooms, there was a "silent" disco, one of these things where you dance around wearing a pair of headphones. Now, I thought that the meaning of the word "silent" was about as clear as it's possible for it to be. Not in these parts apparently and the blaring racket blasted its way very easily though only a curtain separating it from the smaller of the two rooms. Incredible. And it's not just me; we were watching, and trying to listen to, Jimi Goodwin (the main man from Doves) and even he commented from the stage that he thought the disco was supposed to be "silent".

Midlake. Acoustic guitars no match for the "silent" disco and dodgy acoustics

The main room didn't suffer from the proximity of the not-at-all-silent disco but it did suffer from bad acoustics (hey, the place was a warehouse) and perhaps worse, the constant yapping of thousands of people seemingly happy (and rich enough) to get drunk and not bother listening to the band (actually maybe they were not drunk but stoned; perhaps because no drugs were on sale by the organisers, there seemed to be nothing to stop you bringing in your own). This was at its worst during Damon Albarn's set, pretty surprising seeing as he was headlining. But the trouble was that Mr A played all of his new, and rather quiet, solo album and nothing that anyone knew. Cue increased volume of chatter. Listening to Marc Riley's programme on 6 Music last night, I heard him say that he was looking forward to hearing the live recording of Damon's set as he couldn't hear it well from where he was standing at the gig. You were very much not alone Marc!

Anyway, one way and another, we had a pretty good time, despite all the stuff above. Midlake were especially good, as were Haim and a couple of the less well known acts like Weird Shapes.

But BBC, next time, please let us have some more punter-friendly prices and if you're not going to let us bring in our own beer, then please search everyone thoroughly for dope and pills so we can at least hear some of what's going on.

Flooded? Better call Saul!

2014-02-11T14:13:00.000+00:00

Hi there folks - Saul Goodman, attorney at law, here. I know some of you have been dealt a rough hand by the recent weather in parts of the UK. As you try and salvage the pitiful remains of your possessions, tears adding to the flood waters as they splash onto that new TV you got for Christmas, or that photo of your late Auntie Hilda, you may be despairing at any chances of recompense. I'm here to tell you that you couldn't be more wrong.

OK, so you forgot to renew your insurance - that's assuming you can get any for a house on a flood plain but that's no reason you can't get your hands on the folding stuff. Hey, the reverse is the case; insurers always find a way to weasel out of paying up don't they? It's much harder to dodge your obligations when you've got the weight of the legal system bearing down on you.

Here in the US of A, we've had temperatures so low it gave another meaning to frozen assets, even down here in the Land of Enchantment (that's the state of New Mexico to you good people). But I'm happy to tell you I got my clients a bundle of $$$$$. How come Saul? I hear you ask. Well the possibilities are endless: you've got the negligent weather forecasters, and they're usually backed by those deep-pocketed TV stations; did your automobile vendor give you proper warning of snow hazards? How about the stores that failed to stock up properly on shovels, salt, grit, de-icer, sledges, to say nothing of their lack of sufficient canned food. Perhaps you have a young child? This lack of proper winter food might have led to malnutrition and consequent long-term bone and even brain damage. That's a mighty big claim there friends - but the likes of Walmart have a pile of cash and don't you think they'd rather part with a bit of this rather than having their good name mauled in the law courts? You're damn right they would.

So let me give you the benefit of my experience. You may think floods are an act of God and you can't sue the Big Man, right? Wrong. The Lord has his representatives on earth and there's banks in Rome that are used to paying out to cleanse these people's consciences. Know what I'm saying?

So do yourself a favour. Put down that bucket for five minutes; strip off your waders and tie up that dinghy for just long enough to make that phone call which'll dry you out in no time, to say nothing of providing for that college education little Wayne never thought he'd get. Call me now!

Up to your waist in the watery brown stuff? Better call Saul!

Interactive white board economics - an update

2014-02-06T13:58:00.001+00:00

Keen readers will remember my exciting new economic forecasting tool based on the spread of interactive white boards in schools. Other items of dodgy gadgetry apply. Well I thought you'd be interested to hear that the school I mentioned as having dished out ipads to all its "students" (why is it never "pupils" any more?) had surpassed itself. GCSE results have collapsed (and they weren't great in the first place) and on this basis, it is apparently now the 43rd worst school in the whole country. Yes you read right - that's country not county.

I expect their response will be to spend more of our money on some new technological initiative...smart phones for all, perhaps.

After all, this level of failure doesn't come cheap. Did I mention that this school enjoys brand new buildings? And then there's the staffing. When you drive past, you're struck by the size of the car park and the number of cars. Clearly these don't belong to the kids, virtually none of whom are old enough to drive, so they must have staffing levels undreamed of when I was a lad. Not only that, but the car park is illuminated after dark (and long after the school's closed) and so is the flashy neon school name sign and logo thing. Now our school had no lights in what passed for a car park and no neon sign. Why is it that schools nowadays need these things, and countless admin staff and how come we can afford this when the country is broke?

And why do we reward failure like this?

Damned if I know but much more of this and I can see another impending economic disaster on the horizon. Alert the Treasury!

Breaking Bad - Better call Saul! US TV can be very good

2014-02-06T12:49:00.001+00:00

The flight to India is quite a long one. While waiting to attract the attention of a stewardess to get another free beer, we watched some stuff on these natty in-flight personal entertainment things you get nowadays.

I'd heard of the TV series Breaking Bad but had never seen it as it wasn't shown on a normal UK TV channel. I think actually it was in my mind as the final episode was not long before we went to India. But anyway, they had the first series on the plane. We were gripped. We don't normally go in for this box set business but Christmas was coming, and so...

There are in fact 5 series of Breaking Bad and since Christmas we have spent much of our free time ploughing through all 60 or so episodes. We've got 2 to go so for God's sake don't tell me how it ends!

One of our favourite characters in the show is dodgy lawyer Saul Goodman (not his real name but he thought people liked their lawyers to have Jewish names). It seems we're not the only ones to be Saul fans as the company who made Breaking Bad are to give Saul his own show, by way of a BB prequel. It should be great, even if you've never seen BB.

To get a flavour of this, Saul has his own web-site..the link is below. If like me, you think there is no better target for satire than lawyers then check it out...hilarious!

Remember: don't drink and drive but if you do, call Saul...

And if this makes you want to check out Breaking Bad, it'll be money well spent.

DUI? Dealing Drugs? Better Call Saul!

What we did on our holidays - part III

2014-02-06T12:23:00.000+00:00

Despite the pressures of never-ending building works, we found time in early December to jet off to India. Yes India! What a place. I tell you, if you go to India you really know you're abroad; no Irish pubs, English newspapers, Starbucks, western chain shops, etc, etc. And not much in the way of western toilets either. Yep, India is definitely foreign. (Although we did come across a MacDonald's and a KFC but I am trying to forget those cultural aberrations.)

Toilets are a big selling point in India

We did one of these escorted tour things, a first for us. I heartily recommend them. We were only there about 10 days but we packed in an enormous amount; as well as the usual stuff like the Taj Mahal, we went on a real Indian train (two WCs: one marked "Indian" the other "Western" - apartheid lives! Why not just make them both Western? Plus we learned that a 50p bribe will get you round the smoking restrictions); we rode a rickshaw round Delhi; we saw a tiger in the wild; we drank Kingfisher beer made in India and not, as all UK Kingfisher is, at the Shepherd Neame brewery in decidedly non-Indian Faversham.

Not all Indian wiring would comply with UK building regulations

Tiger alert! Yes a real one! Not in a zoo!

We were a party of 34 among whom were a couple who recognised us as habitues of a pub not far from here: small world or what? We had an English (well Italian actually) guide to organise us plus a local guide to smooth out the dealings with the locals and to keep up a running commentary as our coach trundled along through the extraordinary Indian traffic. This included driving (deliberately) the wrong way up a dual carriageway for a stretch. As our guide said, in England we have traffic rules which don't really work; in India no one pays a blind bit of notice to traffic rules but somehow it seems to work - we never once saw an accident.

Some building or other shortly after dawn...sleep deprivation not pictured

Yes most Indians are very poor. But they are amazingly happy; they smiled and waved at us as we went by and they rushed to take our picture and have themselves photographed with us. We never felt threatened and while I'm sure that theft is not unknown, I never felt I was a likely victim. Given the wealth disparity between the average Indian and the average tourist, this is amazing.

So what did we learn? Among other things, the following:

There are more than 300 million Hindu gods, including an Enfield motorbike.
Nearly all Indian marriages are arranged but the divorce rate is tiny.
It's hard to get a beer in India, they're not big drinkers. And although prices generally are, to us, very low, a beer in a top hotel can cost a fortune.

One reason why getting a beer can be a struggle?

The most popular roadside snack seems to be not samosas or puris but peanuts in their shells.
It's true: Indian food in the UK is generally better than Indian food in India
If visiting India, do not even think of hiring a car.

Pimp my ride, India style

Few Indians speak English and even fewer can read and write it but despite this, the driving test is in English. This is one reason why driving licences tend not to be acquired by what we would think of as conventional means.

What do you mean it only seats 4?

MacDonald's in India have a special menu featuring spicy vegetarian burgers.

What's "go large!" in Hindi?

Most Indians are vegetarian and it's best to adopt a "when in Rome..." policy when dining out.
The local hawkers are persistence personified. But do buy something - the stuff is cheap and even cheaper when you haggle.
Someone from a lower caste will not sit at the same level when with someone from a higher caste, even if invited to do so.
It's the man who wears the trousers in Indian families. Most of them seem to sit around all day while the women work, even doing road repairs.

We learned a ton of other stuff but that'll do. I urge you to visit and see for yourself. Bring me back some more poppadoms as our stock is now running low...not to mention the duty free smokes which are so cheap they're almost free...

Some of the hotels are not at all bad. This beats a Travelodge

Economic boom - latest

2014-02-06T10:59:00.000+00:00

Hi folks. I apologise for recent blog silence. Really there is no excuse but we were preoccupied for some time by our building works, which rapidly precipitated more works as we needed to tart up the room used as a music room and now largely emptied thanks to completion of new music room over the garage.

This second chunk of works entailed organising a plumber (to remove the old radiator then come back when all was finished to install new radiator); an electrician to sort out the electrical mess in the room; a plasterer to replaster the whole thing (which was especially important as the walls are kind of wattle and daub and were somewhat dodgy in places); a builder, to put an air brick in a blocked up chimney breast, plus us two to strip off the woodchip wallpaper and to redecorate and also to put new ironmongery on the windows. This sounds easy but extracting those old screws was anything but, plus of course the new latches were not quite the right size, so...more work.

All this lot, which probably amounts to no more than a week's work in total, took around two months to complete. Why is it so hard to find someone who can come in for a week and do the whole thing? Not that we even tried as, luckily, we know a good plasterer, electrician, etc., etc. But once again I am made aware that there is plenty of work around for tradesmen.

Oh, and as well as the new building, we then had to replace some dilapidated fencing and get part of the many miles of paths which snake throughout Marshside Acres relaid.

Anyway, I now can sit and blog to you in refurbished luxury, toes warming on the shiny new radiator (well not at the moment - have you seen the price of heating oil?) and while so doing, I can gaze out at the new garage featuring the Marshside Hit Factory on the first floor. I know you're now wondering what exactly in the way of "hits" has emanated from this soon-to-be-legendary recording venue. Well if I can figure out the technology, I may well try and post something; watch (or rather listen to) this space...

In the meantime, here's a photo of the new building, to compare with the previous one of cement and mud...

More blogging anon!

The Marshside Hit Factory. (Hits not pictured.)

Why do we invent laws?

2013-08-19T18:14:00.002+01:00

God knows we have enough laws, rules, regulations don't we? I'm talking about the UK by the way - other countries may be more blessed. Perhaps you do live in that Utopia where there are but two laws: (1) don't hurt anybody and (2) don't steal their stuff. If so, do please let me know where it is.

Parliament is constantly passing new laws. If I could be bothered, I'd look up the figures for new laws passed each year but really it's too depressing. And what makes it even worse is that it's often not even parliament that's doing the legislating, at least not directly. What tends to happen is that a bit of "enabling" legislation is passed which then allows the government to enact dozens of subsidiary regulations at various points in the future without the tiresome need to have them actually approved by our glorious elected representatives. And worse again, they hardly ever repeal old laws so every year the towering mass of rules just gets bigger.

But despite this regulatory overkill that we find ourselves burdened with, we seem to love to invent non-existent laws. I can't be sure about this, but I reckon it's a peculiarly British hobby although I can't quite put my finger on the national trait that gives rise to it. Something to do with the orderly nature of our society, coupled with the general loss of autonomy (the "computer says no" generation) which makes us want to assert a position of power over others wherever possible. This latter facet of our character may be due precisely to this massive and recent rise in legislation as whenever there's a new law passed, that invariably means there's one more thing you can't do, hence your autonomy is chipped away and hence the need to invent a new power base for yourself. So paradoxically, the more laws you have, the more people invent new ones, and vice versa.

Actually, when I say "power base" I'm making mountains out of molehills a little. The sort of fantasy laws I'm talking about are usually minor things but they just give the enforcer that little bit of a lift and make life just that little bit more annoying for the enforcee.

So what sort of things am I talking about then? Well this piece was partly inspired by a comment on another piece to the effect that people were fond of wrongly blaming "health and safety" for all sorts of mythical obligations. This is certainly true and the Health and Safety Executive actually have a "myth busters" page on their web-site I believe to combat this sort of thing. Well done them but unfortunately this category of invention is largely beyond their control. The problem here is the judges, and of course their best mates, the lawyers.

The judges are perhaps the best example of those who seek to over-assert themselves in the face of legislative wing-clipping. The more that the government says that there's no truth in such and such a rumour that you must do X or face the slammer, the more likely are the judges to award damages because someone tripped over a paving stone or ruined a blouse after spilling curry on it (the menu omitted to say "warning: some of this food may leave irremovable stains"). We used to have a good chuckle at how this sort of thing only happened in the USA (MacDonald's in hot coffee shock) but like most things American, we have imported it into the UK.

So thanks to our learned friends, insurance companies will put reams of stuff in the small print of their policies, compelling you to put warnings on your menus or coffee cups or whatever, failing which they will not pay out. Which could be very bad news indeed. This is what gives rise to the "got to do that, it's bloody health and safety" business, not the boys at the H&S Executive. Of course what people should really be saying is "got to do that, it's them bloody judges" but the effect's the same.

But that's just one area. What else is there? Well I'm going to list a few things that pop into my head and will try and update in future posts. Do please add your own. In fact I feel a whole new web-site coming on! Let's hope someone's not got there first. Here goes:

1. Tenancy agreements: I know a letting agency whose agreements provide for a witness signature but this is not required in the vast majority of cases. They know this but won't change it as they feel compelled to use a standard form provided by some trade association or other. Or perhaps they're just too lazy. Also, they think that landlords have to have insurance (they don't); that they have to provide copies of insurance documents to tenants (they don't) and that all electrical appliances have to be regularly tested (they don't).

2. I was once told by a work "colleague" that people were legally obliged to attend and pass some council-run course before they could drive a minibus. Not true. What makes it worse is that it's the nature of your licence which determines this but the person trying to boss me around didn't know this so could well have been sanctioning illegal minibus drivers.

3. Smoking in hotel rooms is illegal: not true. Hotel rooms are one place you can still smoke. Now, the hotel may impose its own smoking ban but that's a different matter - they shouldn't hide this behind those annoying "smoking in these premises is illegal" stickers they put up. Take a marker pen with you and write "not true" on them.

4. Pubs: one or two things here. "Kids under 18 can't drink alcohol". Not true. They can't legally be served alcohol but when you're 16 you can drink various alcoholic things with a meal. Also: "kids under 14 not allowed in pubs". Not true any more, although it used to be and some of us think it might be a good idea if it was again!

5. Smoking again: the smoking ban is an EU thing and applies across Europe. Not true. The rules vary from country to country. You can smoke in pubs in Belgium, under the very eyes of those swarming Eurocrats who hang out there. Maybe that's why.

6. You can't kill foxes: yes you can: they're a bloody nuisance. Just not with dogs.

7. All buildings which might be used by the public must have full disabled access, etc. Nope. The Disability Discrimination Act provides all sorts of get out clauses. We had premises used by the "public" for many years and we never did anything about disabled access nor, in fairness, did any council jobsworth ever tell us to.

Well that's enough to be going on with, more fantasy laws anon. In the meantime, I must get to work on that web-site and watch the £millions roll in...

Festival report: Cropredy - Nik Kershaw

2013-08-19T10:29:00.000+01:00

Hello there you in your denim shorts and wellies uniform - how's the festival season for you this year? Ours has been limited to Cropedy, thanks for asking. The Hop Farm is no more; there was no one worth shelling out for at Lounge on the Farm; V and Reading simply too much like a war zone for the more mature festival goer; failed once again to get tickets for Glastonbury. On this last point, what's the secret here? Our boy and many of his friends got them as did a number of people one reads about who claim to go every year. But for us, despite being welded to the Internet and phone with military precision from 5 minutes before the allotted time for Glasto ticket sales - nowt. Not a sausage. Again. Is there some cunning filter in the ticket sales process which, via cutting edge artificial intelligence, determines that you're too old/fat/boring for Glasto? Or perhaps our rural telephone wires, having been nibbled by badgers and entangled with the roots of various crops, are just not up to competing with those equipped with this super-mega-speed fibre optic whatnot.

So anyway, we made do with Cropredy last weekend. The weather was great (again) which was just as well as the musical line-up was thin in places: Romeo's Daughter anyone? How about Martin Barre, the Dunwells or Brooks Williams? Thought not. The reason for this may be that they blew the budget on Alice Cooper. A spectacular coup and the old snake charmer didn't disappoint. And I must mention 10cc. Despite having only Graham Gouldman left from the original line-up they are just wonderful; do not write them off as washed-up has-beens - go and see them if you have the chance. But the act I really wanted to bring to your attention was Nik Kershaw.

"Little" Nik Kershaw goes large at Cropredy

I guess you've got to be the wrong side of 40 to remember little Nik's heyday which was in the early '80s when he had a decently long string of hits. He was marketed as a spiky-haired pretty boy Duran-a-like which may have done the trick for his chart success but didn't do much for his long term credibility rating. Consequently, those of us who were snobbishly into more weightier sounds took little notice. Until, that is, I heard the song Human Racing on the radio. My first thought was that it was Stevie Wonder, partly because of the sound of his voice (and maybe the sonic limitations of my radio) but also because of the strength of the melody which was, and remains, absolutely beautiful.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered it wasn't penned by Little Stevie Wonder but by Little Nicky Kershaw (and he is little). This was about the same time that I used to bore anyone in earshot with my prediction that George Michael, then famous as a prancing spray tan disco boy with a shuttlecock down his shorts, would come to be known as a major talent. This was on the basis of a series of sensational melodies under the Wham brand. (Here's a conundrum for you: if Andrew Ridgley contributed nothing to Wham, how come that's when Georgie M made all his best records?) So on this basis, the same surely applied to Nik K who would one day shake off the shackles of the record company marketing boys and bestride Tin Pan Alley like a colossus, Ivor Novello and Grammy awards tumbling from his overburdened arms.

But it didn't quite work out like that (a big hit for Chesney Hawks aside). I wonder why not? I bet Nik does too. Funny old world, this pop music lark. How can you be demonstrably such a good songwriter and not clean up? Let me just bore you with a bit of detail on Human Racing. I've always liked to knock out the first few lines on the keyboard but only now have I sat down and worked out the whole thing. This in itself is saying something because, as anyone with a decent ear for music will attest, it normally takes about as long to work out how to play a song as it does to listen to it. But not in the case of Human Racing. It starts in A minor (but resolving on A major), moves swiftly to D before, after a brief dalliance with A minor again, moving into the key of F, which is where the verse ends up. But not content with that, Nik modulates abruptly into Ab for the chorus and contrives to end it on a kind of Bb 9th chord, thereby giving him the basis for that semitone drop at the end of the chorus back down to the A, which is of course where we came in.

Yes alright, I know a series of tricky chords and unusual key changes does not of itself a good song make but believe me, all this stuff helps to explain just why Human Racing sounds so good. If you haven't heard it for a while (or ever), I urge you to head straight for Spotify. And if you play an instrument, get it out and work your way through it using the above scribblings as your guide (that weird chord at the end of the second line in the verse is F augmented by the way). I guarantee your life will be enhanced as a result!

So back to Cropredy. Nik's show was excellent, although this year he was tout seul (the Alice Copper budget issue again?), which was inevitably a bit limiting. But he made a valiant attempt at all his hits, except, guess what? He didn't play Human Racing.

"Do Human Racing Nik!"

"With all those tricky key changes mate? You're joking!"

Health, safety and pubs: there's a reason why cliches are cliches

2013-07-27T14:58:00.000+01:00

And that reason is: because they're true. The cliche I'm thinking about is the one that runs something like "it's health and safety gone mad". The trouble with this and other such things is that they become cliches and are dismissed as such when actually the reverse is the correct response: don't dismiss them, embrace them! Cliches are true! That's why they're cliches, you dolt!

We all know that when a pub closes, an angel dies. As a result, heaven currently looks like the Somme on the morning after. I'm not sure what happens when a pub is desecrated; perhaps an angel loses the use of their wings for a period, or something. Anyway, it's bound to be something pretty nasty.

That being the case, there's one less angel flying around now following the horrific treatment suffered by a pub in Plymouth called the Minerva, this treatment meted out in the name of the dead hand of Health and Safety.

The ceiling of the Minerva, Plymouth: you won't see that again

The Minerva is more than 500 years old and was apparently the local of Sir Francis Drake. Many of its beams, and notably its staircase, are thought to have been taken from ships of the Spanish Armada. Its ceiling was covered with the scribbled messages of sailors about to set sail to do battle. Sounds like an important bit of history doesn't it, and one probably subject to all sorts of preservation orders, yes? No.

All this history has now been covered by several coats of paint. The reason? Apparently it was a fire risk. No matter that the place has stood for hundreds of years, unscathed by fire, despite for most of its life being full of smokers, inevitably often the worse for wear, warmed by open fires spitting sparks all over the place.

How do we let this sort of thing happen and what can we do about it? A lot of these regulations stem from our membership of the EU so we could tell them to go to hell but I'm not sure that would make much difference. What I'm wondering is, if it was OK for Nelson Mandela to be involved in killing people in the interests of ending the evil of racial discrimination, maybe it's OK to be involved in killing H&S busy-bodies so as to protect our heritage. Just a thought...

And yes it most definitely is health and saftey gone mad. But not just health and safety - our society as a whole for allowing this to happen.

Raise a glass and toast the Minerva and its sailors. You won't be able to read their messages again.

How democracy works...or doesn't...part 2

2013-07-27T14:31:00.000+01:00

What's the point of an MP then? All they do is fiddle their expenses, open a few village fetes and vote how their party tells them to. That's the received wisdom isn't it? The less cynical response is that they hold the executive to account, ask awkward question and scrutinise legislation. Plus they might occasionally do something to help their constituency.

And so it comes to pass that one way MPs can make themselves useful is by sitting on parliamentary committees. But then how useful is that? This blog has already had a go at the Public Accounts Committee for its dumb approach to the tax affairs of the likes of Google, Starbucks, etc., etc. Now this bunch of financial wizards has been lambasted by BT for a similarly idiotic approach to Internet infrastructure upgrades. The BT head honcho accused them of rudely interrupting answers and being far more interested in generating headlines for themselves than getting at the facts. One reason for this is that, just as with the tax business, they're too thick to understand the facts. Another reason is that these things are often televised these days so playing to the gallery ensues.

So what's to be done? God only knows but it's clear that many of our MPs are just not up to the job. Perhaps there should be rigorous testing of prospective candidates rather than just some local big mouth or whoever's flavour of the month with the party and is parachuted in.

You get who you vote for but you can only vote for who you get given. IQ tests for prospective MPs now! And less of this stuff on TV.

How democracy works...or not...the pub quiz angle...

2013-07-27T14:05:00.000+01:00

Do you go in for pub quizzes? We do, quite a bit as it happens. I'm not sure it's because we're quiz fanatics or whether it's just a good excuse to go to the pub, as if one were needed. But the dynamics of your average pub quiz team are often fascinating and can teach us a lot about the democratic process and especially the failings thereof.

The weaknesses of our old friend democracy have been something of a theme on this blog. We've seen how the poor souls in Greece, who gave us the word democracy for goodness' sake, have been sold up the river as a consequence, not to mention the general economic mess that much of the so-called developed world continues to thrash around in. But nothing demonstrates so clearly how democracy can lead to sub-optimal outcomes like a pub quiz team.

"Come on - you're the bloody geography teacher - what's the capital of Bhutan?"

Anyone who's been in a pub quiz team knows how it works. You get half a dozen or so "friends" together, some of whom are dead keen and some of whom have been dragged along under protest by their other halves. The problem is that some of the dead keen ones may also be dead thick and some of the reluctants may know a lot of stuff but are probably staring into space or acting the shrinking violet and not speaking up. So you get situations where one of the keanos loudly asserts "I'm 100% sure Everton won the cup in 1961...I remember my old dad telling me and he was there" whereas a shrinking violet is pretty sure the answer's Tottenham but is unwilling to contradict Mr 100% Certain. All the while the bloke with the pen in his hand is wavering, pen poised; he knows nothing about football but experience tells him that when Mr 100% Certain is in uber assertive mode, he's very often wrong. Finally, with the question master now spouting forth with the next question, Mrs S. Violet mutters almost inaudibly into her pinot grigio something about thinking it might be Tottenham but it's too late - the man-with-the-pen has to write something and with Mr Certain now almost purple with rage that his answer's still not been taken as gospel, he scribbles down Everton. The correct answer, inevitably, is Tottenham. The team lose by one point and several of them never speak again.

Our recent equivalent of this scenario concerned the number of motorways in the UK. Someone (OK, it was me) surmised that there's bound to be more than you think...ooh, say around 50? Everybody else thought it was a lot less. A minute or two of canvassing ensued with yours truly on the hustings, trying to convince the team of the infallibility of my logic while some team members (teachers of course) tried to do a list. In the end we went for the usual British compromise and stuck down a figure of about 35. Now this was actually quite an important question as there was a round of drinks on it. In due course, with the tension rising to fever pitch the question master gave us the answer: 50. Not about 50 but exactly 50. One round of drinks evaporated.

Luckily, being mature adults, this failure did not result in blood on the carpet, noisy exits with the words "you never listen to me you bastard!" hanging in the air or the end of friendships; only a deeper hole in someone's wallet (probably mine, just to rub it in.)

So what does it tell us about democracy? That the majority view is often the wrong one. It also tells us that squeaky wheels get the most oil, i.e. those who make the most noise get the most attention. Neither of these things is ideal and leads to career politicians often cocking things up, where our beloved but elusive benign dictator might make a much better job of it. Whatever, one can conclude that just because a decision's been reached democratically, this does not necessarily make it better than one which hasn't.

Anyway, there's a music quiz at our local tonight so let me leave you with a little musical teaser. This one I think is obscure enough that even Google won't help you (and I knew you were going to cheat). The teaser is: Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love", aside from being a rip off from some old bluesman, is very heavily based on a version (recorded in about 1965) of the old blues song in question by which British recording artist?

Get those answers flooding in!

If Eric Clapton is God then what does that make Albert Lee? And why haven't you heard of him?

2013-06-10T15:05:00.001+01:00

You'll have heard of Eric Clapton. He's a pretty useful guitarist. In the mid-sixties, graffiti appeared in London proclaiming "Clapton is God!". Of course it's always possible that the writer meant "good" and was running short on paint but whatever, the epithet stuck. There were a number of other hot axemen on the London scene at the time; notably the likes of Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend and Peter Green. Plus there was some upstart from the USA who was about to make an impact, some bloke by the name of Hendrix. But among the less well-known pluckers to be seen on stage in various London pubs and clubs at the time, backing Chris Farlowe, was a lad from south London called Albert Lee.

Albert Lee: he may be grey but wouldn't you kill to look like that at 70?

Now, here's what Mr Clapton said about Albert: "he's the greatest guitarist in the world." Yup, there you have it - the word of "God" and there's a lot of people who'd agree. Albert has played with all sorts of big names over the years and is still going strong, even as he approaches his 70th birthday. He's probably playing somewhere near you soon for the price of a few drinks. Don't look this gift horse in the mouth: go.

I first became aware of him when I saw his name credited with lead guitar on "Sweet Little Lisa" on the 1979 Dave Edmunds album "Repeat when necessary". The playing is astonishing and quite unlike anything you normally heard (or hear) in the UK. That's because Albert went down the country music route, while his contemporaries stuck more to the blues genre and cleaned up (or in the case of Peter Green, bombed out). So while Page, Clapton, Townsend & co are playing to the baying thousands at football stadia, Albert is quietly doing the business with Emmylou Harris and the Everly Brothers (and later on, with "God" himself). In country rock circles, that's a pretty big gig but in the late '70s it didn't get you on the cover of the NME.

It just so happens that the recording of Sweet Little Lisa was featured in a TV documentary. If I can work the technology, I'll put in a link to the Youtube clip but otherwise, do a quick Google and you'll find it in a trice. Look out for Nick Lowe's classic "I can see you've read my pamphlet on playing the guitar" line at the end.

Here's the Youtube clip www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Rx-zaBjow

So that's how it comes to pass that you can see "the greatest guitarist in the world" for a few quid in your local community arts centre or similar (which in my case means the Astor theatre in Deal last Saturday.) Isn't that weird? He's a guitarist; it's not exactly a niche thing, not like being the world's greatest zither player or something. But there he is, almost close enough to touch, chatting to the audience, signing old album sleeves and generally being the most unassuming chap imaginable.

There's plenty of sayings such as "talent will out" and "cream rises to the top" but in rock music, there's a depressingly large number of exceptions which tend to disprove, rather than prove, the rule. I remember some years back seeing Eric Bell, the original guitarist in Thin Lizzy, playing with a band to a handful of people in a London pub, wearing clothes that a charity shop would reject. You could also meet up with him by answering his ad in Melody Maker offering guitar lessons. This was a bloke struggling to make ends meet but my God could he play guitar. But then you know that: if you've heard nothing else by him, you've heard the solo on Whiskey in the Jar. So why wasn't he on stage at Wembley, arriving by helicopter? Send your answers to Eric.

Unfortunately, in show business and probably many other forms of business, there's a fine line between stardom and obscurity, between mansions and maisonettes. The two main messages from this are: (1) life isn't fair and (2) you have a chance to see the greatest guitarist in the world - take it.

The world's greatest guitarist...and some chap known as "God"

Lies damn lies and...

2013-05-17T20:43:00.000+01:00

...statistics. That's the saying isn't it? Churchill I believe but I could be quite wrong. But do you ever think that your life is conditioned, not by reality, but by the statistics and whatever else you are told by the government? Because the news is ceaselessly punctuated by talk of "recession" and "austerity" we think that times are really tough; we mope about with long faces, huddled against the wind and rain of this unseasonably miserable late spring (which seems to be in perfect sympathy with the bleak landscape painted by the news media.) Despite the unprecedented low interest rates, we avoid the temptation to splurge our money around and we lend it to the banks who delight in paying us no interest. Thanks very much.

But what if none of this were true? What if you awoke tomorrow to headlines full of stories of growth, economic boom times just around the corner and general all round cuddliness? No question you would feel much better and nip down the high street with a spring in your step to buy that nice new pair of shoes, electronic gadget, car, whatever that you'd been coveting but had denied yourself thanks to the general apocalyptic scenario oozing from your TV/radio/newspaper/web browser.

You see none of us really knows what the rate of inflation or unemployment is. I bet you haven't gone out and tried to calculate the balance of payments position have you? All you know is what you experience and what the government tells you. And my experience tells me the economy is booming.

I base this on our latest round of so-called "home improvements". Since you ask, we've had a new shower put in, all sorts of landscaping work in the garden (mostly involving cutting some things down and ripping other things up) and we've eventually got round to this new garage+studio over, that we've been planning for years. So we are definitely doing our bit to kick-start the economy.

A gardening war zone in a small corner of Marshside Acres

Very laudable, I hear you say, thanks awfully but so what? Well the thing is that, given all the gloomy news around these days, you might expect tradesmen to fall at your feet, begging to be the chosen one and desperate to start work that very day at prices so low as to have you fearing for their children's welfare. But instead of this, you get a scenario of unreturned phone calls, quotes at levels to make your average Russian oligarch think twice and in terms of start dates it's "...ooh, not until the end of next month, mate. At the earliest."

So I deduce from all this that this talk of recession is a nonsense. It's a kind of corollary of the North Korea situation, where everyone's told they're living in a land of milk and honey, despite the fact that they live on a diet of boiled insects and old shoes (actually, the UN is encouraging all of us to eat more insects so maybe things aren't so bad there?)

My point is though that in economics, expectations are a crucial factor. So if you expect things to look up, then you will behave quite differently to how you would if you thought a North Korean lifestyle was your imminent destiny. That being the case, coupled with my point about none of us knowing what the level of the various economic indicators really is, why doesn't the government just feed us a diet of good news: unemployment is almost zero, retail sales are booming, the NHS has invented a cure for death, etc., etc. The economy would perk up in no time and lo, a self-fulfilling prophecy has come about.

Plus, interest rates would go up and those of us with a few quid in the bank might be able to eat again. Spare a fiver for a Starbucks, guv?

Another corner of Marshside Acres disappears under cement - booming economy clearly pictured

Staying in bed - the answer to all our ills

2013-02-21T13:22:00.000+00:00

We're all too fat, apparently. "Doctors" (which doctors exactly?) now want to put a tax on fizzy drinks to save our kids' waistlines. This is on top of the existing swingeing taxes on tobacco and booze, not to mention moves for a minimum price for alcohol, all justified on health grounds. Of course it's quite handy that all these things raise money for the treasury to waste on government spending. Perhaps the government pays these so-called "doctors" to come up with these ideas and scare us into submission and paying ever higher taxes.

But there's a better solution. You may remember John and Yoko back in the late 1960s spending an inordinate amount of time in bed, even holding press conferences from their cosy divan. Well the time has come to say they were right, although not necessarily for the right reasons: we'd all be much better off if we stayed longer in bed.

Just think about it: when you're in bed, you don't spend money, you don't drink, don't eat, don't smoke (I am aware that there are people who may do some or all of these things in bed, especially now you can spend money by buying stuff on-line from your ipad, but this sort of behaviour is beyond the pale so I am leaving you to your fate.) The consequences are all good: you have more money and are much healthier. Yes I know about bed sores but I'm not proposing you lie around under the duvet 24/7 - have a bit of common sense now.

I first developed this theory when, as an impoverished student, I found I was able to spend prodigious amounts of time under the covers and quickly noticed the benefits. The most immediate of these was on the wallet thanks to the financial benefits of not eating/smoking/drinking; the health benefits were not so immediate and not so much of a concern. Now one is somewhat older, one is perhaps more concerned about the health factors rather than those of a financial nature but it doesn't matter, the prescription is the same.

You will have realised that this bed policy has much wider benefits for society. People don't commit acts of robbery or violence when in bed (I am ignoring stuff of a "50 Shades of Grey" nature here - what were you thinking of?) It is also less likely that politicians will spend our money or start wars from a prone position, especially if they're asleep and being comatose whilst under the duvet only serves to heighten the benefits and is therefore to be recommended.

So there you have it folks, stay in bed, live longer and be wealthier. Must go now as I am yawning a bit and doing this blogging lark is using electricity and costing me money. The lure of the bed is calling me back.

Storms in teacups - the news we deserve

2013-02-15T13:02:00.002+00:00

It's quiz time folks. What do the following have in common:

1. Horse meat masquerading as beef

2. Chris Huhne

3. Phone hacking

The answer is that they all occupy far more of the nation's column inches and screen minutes than they deserve to. With a bit of luck by the time I've finished writing this, I may have worked out why, but I'm not promising.

Take the horse meat business. When you buy some processed concoction, you really don't know what you're eating: the list of indredients is dauntingly long and largely incomprehensible. Also, the meat content percentage is going to be pretty damn low, so if a bit of horse has cantered into the box, it's only going to be a very small amount. And crucially, what's wrong with eating a bit of horse? Findus should have kept all their lasagne on the shelves and simply re-labelled it as horse lasagne: watch the sales gallop away!

The horse: a butcher's guide

Then there's poor old Chris Huhne. A ruined man, and for what? He didn't hurt anyone, he didn't steal from anyone, he was just unlucky enough to be caught by one of those infernal speed cameras. OK, and he told a few fibs. We've all been there with the speed camera business. Not only that, I expect many of us know someone who's persuaded A.N.Other to take the rap for them. Alternatively, if Mr Huhne had been driving a foreign-registered car, he'd have got away with it completely. But now, as an indirect consequence of this minor indiscretion, he's facing jail and a lifetime as an answer to a quiz question.

Finally, phone hacking. Readers may remember I've already offered my phone for hacking at a fraction of the price paid out by News International to various celebs. Does anyone really care what messages may be on Hugh Grant's phone? ("Hi Hugh it's me: did you remember to put the bins out and feed the fish?") It really is of so little consequence as to be laughable but despite this, we have God knows how many police hours being wasted on this telephonic twaddle and you and I are paying for it.

Do the police have nothing better to do? Of course they do but messing around with mobiles is so much more pleasant than preventing teenage chavs from making poeple's lives a misery, etc., etc. And do the newspapers and TV companies have nothing more important to report? There's appalling wars going on around the world, most of the developed countries are bankrupt and the undevleoped ones are still starving but never mind, let's devote our first seven pages to "horsegate".

So what do these three news stories have in common then? The answer is that the news customers, that's us folks, want to hear about them. And why is that then? Because they make us feel better. The horsemeat thing is a good laugh and makes for many excellent jokes; everyone likes to see a politician get his comeuppance and these days there is an insatiable demand for any tittle-tattle relating to anyone who can vaguely lay claim to being called a celebrity.

Britain's debt continues to rise inexorably; Africa is riddled with killings and poverty; it's a race for armageddon between North Korea and Iran. Scary stuff - who wants to read about that? Whack another lump of Shergar in the microwave!

First Gary Mabbutt's Knee now Gareth Bale's Left Foot

2013-02-15T12:04:00.000+00:00

In 1987, Spurs played Coventry City in the FA Cup final. Spurs were clear favourites but Coventry triumphed thanks to a late and freakish goal. Coventry had a free kick, about 25 yards out I recall. The ball was blasted towards the Spurs defencive wall, struck Spurs' captain Gary Mabbutt on the leg and flew up in the air, looping over the head of Spurs' helpless goalie and into the net. A terrible way to lose an FA Cup final but if you're on the winning side well hey, they all count.

On me knee son! Gary Mabbutt displays his famous patella

Now, Coventry had never won anything before (older readers may remember the Monty Python spoof quiz show featuring - bizarrely - famous communist leaders from history: "When did Coventry City first win the FA cup? That's a trick question: Coventry have never won the FA Cup.") and I don't think they've won anything since. So their only trophy win is all thanks to Gary Mabbutt's knee. Consequently, this lump of flesh and bone has acquired mythical status amongst Coventry supporters to the extent that there is a Coventry City fanzine/web-site called GMK (it's true: Google it).

How long before there's a Spurs equivalent called GBLF? I speak of course of Gareth Bale's Left Foot. Last night, the Welsh wizard's magical appendage twice plopped the ball beyond the reach of Lyon's diving goalie from free kicks...plus he did the same thing the other day against Newcastle. So that's three free kicks and three goals in the last two matches. Even David Beckham in his prime could not match this.

The consequences are clear. For Tottenham, it's pay the lad anything he wants; tell the rest of the team to pass the ball to Bale at every opportunity; when he's not on the pitch, keep Bale in pampered and secure surroundings at all times and don't let him do anything which might cause damage to GBLF.

For opponents, it's stamp on the bastard ASAP!

Tennis frenzy time again

2013-01-25T18:57:00.001+00:00

In the interests of trying to blog at least something daily, I thought I'd pay tribute to the boy Murray who has beaten Roger Federer (for the first time at a grand slam) and made it to the final of the Aussie Open. Now only Djoko Bloko stands in the way of a second consecutive grand slam win for Big Andy. And how fitting that this should be on Burns Night! (I don't know what this is but I believe it has some significance for those north of Hadrian's Wall.)

So no lying around in bed on Sunday like you lazy lot normally do...it's an 8.30 a.m. kick-off and it's on the BBC so free for all. I would normally be out on the tennis court myself but it is a bit cold and the courts are still covered in snow at the moment so it's a good excuse to stay in the warm.

Remember as always: if he wins he's British, if he loses he's Scottish.

Come on Andy!

Snowing again? It must be global waming

2013-01-21T13:26:00.000+00:00

We've had no more snow today but then the existing white stuff is not going anywhere and Marshside Acres still looks like it did in yesterday's picture. I gather this is not the case elsewhere in the UK where frozen precipitation continues unabated.

Of course many of the schools are closed round here in what has become standard practice when a few flakes hit the ground. This is despite the fact that, according to the BBC web-site, there are no road problems anywhere in the county! But it takes more than (or should that be less than?) a lack of transport problems to prevent the determined head teacher giving staff the day off. It's amazing isn't it? Hospitals don't close, the staff at the small business next to us turn up for work, our paper gets delivered by some poor chap who has to battle across miles of frozen tundra to the Marshside Acres gates but as for the schools...there's some snow on the ground, ergo, we close.

So is our winter weather getting worse? It's laughable how many people declaim confidently on this topic, based only on their own hazy memories of a few years. They happily ignore the fact that the earth has been around billions of years and that their sojourn on the planet represents such a tiny fraction of this that no conclusion they can draw is remotely significant. The weather goes through all sorts of cycles and mini ice ages come and go. These things are but blips in the long term experience of the earth's climate.

But blips can have a cause and what do you think is the most likely cause of these blips? Might it have something vaguely to do with Mr Jones down the road sticking some solar panels on his roof (subsidised by me, thanks very much)? Or Mrs Smith in the village who's just bought an electric car? Or even those damned windmills that march across the countryside like something from War of the Worlds (or in our area, stand around in the sea, currently becalmed but still taking a subsidy out of my pocket)? Or maybe it's got something to do with the source of all our energy and life itself. Doesn't this seem more plausible?

The Sun: a very powerful thing which affects your life

There's a physicist called Piers Corbin who has a better record than anyone at predicting the weather and on what does he base his super-spot-on forecasts? Solar activity. As it happens, he reckons that a lack of this is likely to cause some pretty cold winters for some time to come, and no doubt various other weather anomalies. I'm inclined to believe him. I'm all for cutting down on carbon emissions if it saves me some money but that's a world away from the unbelievable arrogance of those King Canute-like people that think the type of car they drive is going to have an effect on the weather. The sun is just so much more powerful than anything that any of us can conceive. It's thanks to the sun that life on earth got going in the first place and it'll be the sun that will determine when life down here finishes. In the meantime, it's pretty obvious that if the sun sneezes, then we'll catch a cold.

Some windmills: not very powerful things which will not affect your life, only your wallet

Who's going to be the first world leader to blink in the extraordinary carbon-control stand-off and admit that all this renewable stuff is a waste of time and money?

For the time being, it's back out into the frosty wasteland to bag a bit of game for dinner. I hope the staff are out of the firing line!

Exclusive: Manchester to be declared capital of the UK!

2013-01-19T16:47:00.001+00:00

You read it here first: in one of the most extraordinary moves by any government, ever, London will no longer be the UK's capital. Instead, this honour will transfer to Manchester. It may seem crazy but then there's several precedents: Brazil springs to mind, various African countries I believe have shifted their capitals in recent years and how about the USA? I'm sure the capital was somewhere else before Washington DC came along.

So why is this happening and why choose Manchester? Well the first question's easy to answer: to save money. All those politicians, bureaucrats, judges and bankers will earn a lot less "oop north". And as to the choice of city, well where else? No sensible person could stand the Brummie or Scouse accent for any length of time and Newcastle's just too far away. Plus, although the Geordie accent's not so bad, you can't actually understand what they're saying.

Of course the more canny amongst you won't be too surprised: why do you think the BBC has moved so much of its operation up there? This was the first step of a plan hatched some years back but kept a closely guarded secret, until now. More than that, on BBC Radio 6, even many of the presenters based in London are from the Manchester area. It's a gradual takeover.

Media City: The BBC lay the foundations for Manchester's new era

Plus, Manchester has a lot going for it. It was of course the first city in the world (yes, in the world) to be industrialised. It was the here that the atom was first split and the first computer invented. The University boasts more Nobel prize winners than anywhere else in the UK (well except Oxford and Cambridge but then those places did have a head start of several hundred years) and thanks to the Prof Brian Cox effect, the physics dept. at the University is now, if you rank them on entry requirements, the best in the country (which probably means in the world.)

Physics at Manchester with Prof Brian Cox: it's not called Madchester for nothing you know

Then there's sport. The city boasts the top two football teams in the league. Plus, as most Manchester United supporters don't come from Manchester, that's a good reason for making the place the national centre of attention. Then there's our outstanding Olympic achievement, the cyclists, who have been based at the velodrome in Manchester for many years.

Fit for a toff: new executive housing goes up in Manchester

Culturally, where have most of the best bands come from recently? I refer to the likes of Oasis, Elbow, the Stone Roses, Everything Everything, Doves, the Smiths, Joy Division, Badly Drawn Boy and many others...you can include the Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets if you like. I would certainly include Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias and Cherry Ghost in my top picks and a bit further back you have John Mayall, the Hollies and 10cc. OK, there's also Freddie and the Dreamers and Herman's Hermits but let's not dwell on them...

And if you look down your nose at this noisy pop music, then where was Rufus Wainwright's first opera commissioned and performed? Got it in one. Then you have the Halle Orchestra and the Royal Northern College of Music. And, as my trump card, I give you poetry and the Bard of Salford, John Cooper Clark.

For the icing on the cake, there's the majestic countryside of the Peak District just down the road plus a number of excellent breweries who sell first rate beer at friendly prices. (Holt's, JW Lees, Robinson's, Hyde's take a bow...shame Boddington's has gone.)

Of course it's not all good. It does rain a lot but then that's arguably preferable to the water shortages you get down south. I mentioned the sad loss of Boddington's brewery. Another Manc institution which is sadly no longer with us is the legendary Plaza Cafe. There are a million stories about the extraordinary chicken biryanis (that's pretty much all anyone ate there) served up at all hours of day and night at this famous establishment. Perhaps the best is that of the student diner who missed the whole of his second year at university: he was so violently sick after a Plaza special that he suffered two detached retinas. (Who cares if this is true or not?!)

The sadly missed Plaza Cafe, Upper Brook St., Manchester M13. Prof Brian Cox stands outside pondering the meaning of biryani

So there you have it. Be prepared for much movement up the M6 and some new famous faces amongst the footballers' wives in leafy Cheshire. Cash in now: buy property in Manchester or, if you can't stretch to that, a few shares in a local brewery. Treble pints of Robbie's mild all round!

There goes another new year's resolution

2013-01-19T15:49:00.001+00:00

A belated happy new year to you all. I hope you all survived the festive season. We did but out waistlines didn't. Every year we buy enough food to feed us about 3 times over. Every year we say never again but then we do exactly the same again. Why? Tradition: if we didn't then it wouldn't feel like Christmas.

So here we are in 2013 and already I have broken my promise to post at least something on the blog every day. As you can see, this binge-eating spree has upped my lethargy level to new heights and even blogging has been too much trouble. But on the other hand, I have been working hard recording stuff on my new 24 track machine with which I am forming a deep bond. The stuff sounds great (biased, moi?) and it's remarkably easy to use. This is in stark contrast to my Roland keyboard. I 've had it for years but have never used the sequencer feature, despite various half-hearted attempts. So the other day, I sat down with the manual and was determined to crack the thing.

Now this manual is a massive tome, full of reams of instructions, rather loosely translated from the Japanese and pages and pages of technical data. By the time you'd absorbed all this, the damn thing would be obsolete and in fact this is exactly what's happened as everyone (except me) uses computers these days for recording music so even my brand new 24 track thing could be said to be somewhat antediluvian.

The fearsome Roland XP-80...what can it all mean?

Anyway, after an hour or two spent pressing various buttons and staring myopically at the keyboard's hopelessly inadequate LCD screen, I am ashamed to say I admitted defeat and gave up. Ridiculous isn't it? But I can't see how I am ever going to get to grips with it unless I attend a 3 week course and if such things ever existed then they wouldn't now, due to the obsolescence issue.

The wondrous Tascam DP24...the beating heart of the Marshside hit factory

This failure meant I had to play some tricky Steely Dan chords correctly several times over and use my old drum machine, which means days spent programming it. The Roland has better drum sounds but if you can't figure out how to record a pattern then it might as well sound like a cake tin. I honestly think this is the first time I've been beaten by technology which I suppose is not bad, given my advancing years. I know some people who can barely turn their TV on and as for tasks such as streaming music from the PC over the home network to the living room stereo...climbing Everest with one hand tied behind the back would be easier.

Still that's nothing compared to the UK's inability to cope with a few snowflakes. This has become such an annual news story and standing joke that we've now come to expect it but it really is rather poor, to say the least. Here at Marshside Acres, we carry on regardless and the Eastern European workforce are experts at gritting the tracks, cutting logs for the fires, breaking the ice on the ponds and cossetting the livestock. By the standards of their winters, our current weather is positively balmy and we have a job to persuade them against wearing shorts and t-shirts.

A snowy vista at Marshside Acres...asylum-seeking workforce not pictured.

They work hard but then with an influx of Romanians and Bulgarians due soon, they know they face stiff competition.

More snow expected tomorrow: bring it on!

Another new year's eve...oh dear...

2012-12-31T13:14:00.000+00:00

So here we are at New Year's eve again. The scene for this is as usual: mounds of turkey still in the fridge, fighting for space with ham, cheese, brandy butter, etc., etc. The house still littered with Christmas detritus including half-eaten boxes of chocs, bowls of peanuts, dates, satsumas and about 80% of the Christmas cake which stares at us threateningly. We haven't even touched the Christmas pudding yet. In our house, it's a custom around this time of year to ask ourselves why we buy so much stuff at Christmas and to swear never to do it again but of course the following year, we do exactly that.

So we all suffer from a bit of what the Catalans might call post nadal depression. And then along comes New Year's eve to jolly us all up again or not, as the case may be. I've never been much of a fan of New Year's eve myself. It amounts to celebrating the fact that you're one more year closer to death and it's hard to see what's so great about that. Of course it's compulsory to go out and drink a great deal but you can't get a taxi, or if you can you need to part with a sizable part of your life savings; and if you've got kids, you can't get a babysitter so going out at all is something of a nightmare. That's why we have developed the cunning ploy of staying in and having people come to our place, thus avoiding all the problems associated with going out, which includes the fact that we've eaten so much over the festive period that it's hard to move anywhere without mechanical assistance anyway.

So we slave all day, cooking up a load of exotic curries and our friends do likewise, bring them all round to ours and we pig out (as if we haven't done this enough already). There's always way too much curry and in a kind of loaves and fishes scenario, by the time we've finished, there appears to be just as much left as when we started. Then, digestive systems screaming for mercy, we collapse in front of Jools Holland's programme on the box. Cue mutterings about the line-up not being as good as previous years. And then we're left with mountains of uneaten curry to add to the turkey, ham, Christmas cake, etc., etc.

But it's all change this year. Someone round the corner is having a party which ticks all the boxes about not wanting to travel and means our uneaten food pile will not increase exponentially as in previous years. Of course it still means having to sing some bizarre old Scottish song and wish everyone a happy new year, which as I've said, I can never quite see is something to get excited about.

Still, by that time, the alcohol will have numbed the pain of the whole thing and we can stumble a few yards back home to catch the end of what really does look like a mediocre list of acts on Jools' annual knees-up.

And then it's back to more cold turkey and stilton for breakfast. Have a good one won't you and try not to drink too sensibly.

At Christmas time, there'a no need to be afraid...

2012-12-18T18:09:00.001+00:00

...at Christmas time, we let in light and we banish hate...." So sang Paul Young at the beginning of Bob Geldof's mega charity smash hit, "Feed the World". Hard to argue with the sentiments and the objective although some cynics have noted that the Bandaid/Liveaid project seems to have done far more to enhance His Bobness's well-being than that of the average Ethiopian. Ah well, a bit of collateral benefit is no reason for not trying to help.

It's hard to know what to say about Christmas that hasn't already been said. I love it myself, even though I may moan with the best of them about the commercialising of the whole thing, nothing good on TV, turkeys don't taste like they used to, etc., etc. We might not be able to raise millions like Bob G but we all feel a bit more charitable at this time of year I think and chuck a few bob in the direction of the Sally Army band. Or even that dodgy busker we've been avoiding all year. Wouldn't it be good if you could somehow capture this mood and extend it over the rest of the year? But that never seems to happen.

The same sort of problem applies to the Olympics. During the summer, everyone marvelled at the change of attitude in London and indeed, the whole country, helped along by some great British sporting achievements. There was constant talk of "legacy" and how we had to ensure that this sporting fervour penetrated to the further reaches of the population and transformed us into a nation of finely-honed athletes, instead of the pizza-munching fatties that we are. Well some of us. Not me and you, obviously. We also wanted to make sure that the vast amount of money lavished on the new facilities was not wasted on a few weeks of sporting endeavour but would provide the means for our crop of newly-enthused youngsters to reach new sporting heights. Well this is where I do put on my cynical trousers and express serious doubts.

You see people have short memories. In a week or two, we'll have forgotten about Christmas, apart from the reminder provided by the expanded waistline, and already the Olympics are fading from memory. The issue here is "cultural change". This is rarely talked about in the context of national culture but is a term often bandied about in companies and other corporate bodies, where the practical application of this often involves some dreaded team-building "awayday". You've probably been on one of these: you have a series of group exercises where you have to be nice to everyone, including those people from the sixth floor who make your life a misery the rest of the year, and you all pretend to love each other and subscribe to whatever new corporate ethos is flavour of that particular month. Does the corporate culture change as a result? Rarely.

So how do you effect cultural change? Well of course it happens naturally over time in any case but if you want to do it quickly and steer it in the direction you want it to go, you need to do something pretty big and you need to be the head honcho. You need to be a Hitler or a Mao Tse Tung or a Stalin. My word these people shook things up. Only problem was the millions of dead bodies left in their wake. So a few drawbacks here.

Or you need to be Jesus. Or Buddha, or Mohamed. Which, in the case of the first, brings us back to Christmas. No mean achievement to have a large proportion of the world's population celebrate your birth some 2,000 years after your death, even if most of them tend to forget about your ideas for most of the year. So you must have been quite a guy and that's what it takes to change the world: a big man with big ideas, who hangs around longer than most elected politicians and who doesn't have to worry about buying votes. And one who doesn't have a gun in his hand.

Speaking of guns brings us to the awful event in the USA the other day. Obama said all the right things but will he be able to change the US's gun-toting culture? Not a chance. Unlike the people listed above, he doesn't have the power and he won't be around long enough. If Jesus really does pop up in Utah then you might see some movement in the right direction but until then...

Only 3 more days until that Mayan calendar runs out. So get back to your Christmas shopping and don't get me any more bloody socks!