of-course-blog

John Jarrold Printing Museum

2012-02-03T22:19:00.000Z

Last Saturday we had the pleasure of visiting the John Jarrold Printing Museum in Norwich. Spending a fascinating couple of hours there. The museum which has limited opening appears to be staffed mainly by retired folk. Nothing wrong with that I might add. Many of whom worked in the printing trade. I’ve been in love with printing since my first John Bull Printing Outfit as a kid.

The museum has a really good cross section of exhibits from early letterpress to latter-day offset-litho, as well as examples of ancillary equipment related to the printing and bookbinding world.

The print museum is housed in part of a very fine building, a former yarn mill. In many ways the museum undersells itself but that’s also part of its charm. Having said that they could tweak the presentation a bit to improve the experience and no doubt increase revenue.

In my early years as a buyer I worked for a firm of manufacturing stationers, Swallow Manufacturing Co Ltd, which did its own printing. I was charged with buying the printing supplies. I loved that bit of my job.

If you ever find yourself in Norwich on a Wednesday with an hour or two to spare you could do a lot worse than going to this fine establishment.

“With twenty-six soldiers of lead I have conquered the world” – this saying has been attributed to a number of famous people over the years, including the great Karl Marx and it adorns the museum brochure.

May I have your autograph please?

2012-02-01T18:46:00.006Z

I’m never likely to be famous and quite frankly I have no desire to be so. I write this blog mainly for my own amazement and for anyone that happens to come across it. It’s nice when others read it but I see that as a bonus and not something I work very hard to encourage. So if I ever have the misfortune to become famous please be warned. I will not be signing autographs.

We have this strange class of people in this country, mainly driven by cheap ’n’ nasty television and the tabloids, which are famous for being famous. The celebrity is a curious and pointless phenomenon; talentless and yet famous. Pawns in a lucrative latter-day freak show. In my adult life I’ve never asked for anyone autograph and it is something that I don’t think I’ll ever do. I’ve been to concerts where at the end or in the interval the performer will be at the ‘product’ stall signing cds books etc. I’ve even made purchases on odd occasions. But I’ve never ever been tempted to have them signed. I’m not big on hero worship and can never see the point of an autograph. What does it do?

I suppose my unswerving belief that we are all equal kicks in and yes certain people might be very talented, artistic and/or clever having interesting things to say, sing or display but it doesn’t put them above the rest. We are all mere humans; flesh, blood and brains. No more, no less. I don’t acknowledge pedestals. It is why I can never see the point of awards or honours, and why I’m a republican. We are of equal value.

Confession corner

I own an unsolicited photo of The Smiths, signed by Morrissey. I wrote to him in the early days of The Smiths, no idea why. He wrote back and enclosed the photo. I hang on to it. Again I don’t know why. Perhaps I should shred it.

Well excuse me!

2012-01-31T18:09:00.000Z

“We apologise for the late departure of the 8.40 to Cambridge. This was due to the late arrival of the previous train from Cambridge”

I’m not really into excuses, if a train is late, a train is late, and no reason is going to make the pain any better. But at least if an excuse is going to be offered let’s have the real reason. The ‘previous train from Cambridge’ was the same train as the ‘8.40 to Cambridge’. The train goes back and forth between Cambridge and Norwich. At Norwich it turns around almost immediately for that particular service. So why not tell us why the ‘previous train from Cambridge’ was late? Tossers!

Rather than doing a good job or giving a good service rail companies only seem interested in meeting targets. They do this by manipulating phoney targets that supposedly measuring what they do. They fool no one. Trains continue to be late and filthy. Our railways surely are the laughing stock of Europe.

1003 words

2012-01-29T20:29:00.000Z

the day the music died

2012-01-28T16:19:00.001Z

it was just before christmas
the day the music died
at first we thought it a dream
the day the music died
or maybe a fantasy
the day the music died
oh dark day and dark dark night
the day the music died
no more pie american
the day the music died
the walrus would sing no more
the day the music died
silence, deafening silence
the day the music died

Paul Garrard

I thank you!

Camel goes through eye of needle shock!

2012-01-27T18:03:00.007Z

As you age it becomes very tempting to inhabit the past. I try not to. I try to be forward thinking. Progressive even. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t learn from the past. As long as we don’t view that past through rose-tinted spectacles that is. It can be argued with some confidence that the 1960s were a golden age in the UK. Sgt Pepper was released on my twelfth birthday. It was the decade that working classes flexed their muscles and many broke free from the chains that bound them. It was a decade when many working people experienced a relative affluence that could only have been previously dreamed of. Our family did. It was a decade of major innovation and thought. So many of the thoughts on equality and respect came to the fore during the 60s. We had, in modern terms, a progressive Labour government. And with that came high rates of tax for high income earners. Sadly Thatcher blew a lot of the good away, and given half a chance this fucking Tory government will do the rest.

I don’t buy this nonsense about how you need to pay obscenely high wages to attract the right sort of people, or that taxes need to be kept low so as not to de-incentivise or drive talent abroad. It is all capitalist spin and bollocks. If you control excessively high pay and people go elsewhere so what? Plenty more very apt people to take their place. British industry and commerce is littered with over-paid ignorant shits who operate in a poor or mediocre fashion. It is a total myth that they are somehow special. Most of them aren’t. Excessive pay is way out of control and the only people who can stop it, apart from the perpetrators are the government. Shareholders won’t. In the main shareholders are either in the same ‘fat-cat’ boat or they have been neutered by the system.

Today’s announcement of the RBS chief Stephen Hester's £963,000 bonus is an insult to all those suffering up and down the land. This is public money we are talking about. Tax-payers money. Tax that thing that every man, woman, child and hermaphrodite contribute to. Robert Peston has been “...reliably told that they feared Mr Hester and much of the board would have quit, if the payment had been vetoed by the government as the majority shareholder.” So? Let the selfish bastards resign. Good riddance I say. We are talking about the sort of people and their ilk that are responsible for the ‘high-pay’ culture and the ‘persecution of the average person’ culture that we find ourselves in. Let’s enforce extreme pay restraint at the top and cull the parasitic and obese leeches that have caused us all these financial woes. We’ll be all the fitter financially for it. All we need is the courage.

The wages of sin

2012-01-26T07:02:00.001Z

For every £1 million that is paid to some fat-cat executive you could employ 40 people at £25,000, 50 people at £20,000 or 66.6 at £15,000. If you raise the wage rate from the minimum wage (£6.08) to a living wage (£7.20) it would cost, per person, £1.12 per hour, which is £44.80 for a 40 hour week, or £2329.60 per annum. For every £1 million that is paid to some fat-cat executive 429 people could benefit from an increase from a minimum to a living wage. Now I realise that a living wage is still far from ideal and that any company that is serious about their business would pay more but it would be an improvement on what many have now.

Now I realise that the above is an oversimplification and that the costs of employing people are not directly proportional to their salary but it is accurate enough to highlight how unbalanced and unfair most businesses attitude to wages and staffing are, in that one person’s wage can be so high that it is the equivalent to 40, 50 or several hundred people’s wages put together.

Do bankers, footballers and multi-million pound earning captains of industry et al actually work any harder than the poor soul on minimum wage working as a cleaner care assistant or other equally valuable job? I think we know the answer to that, don’t we?

The minimum wage should be a living wage!

The living wage:
"An idea whose time has come"- David Cameron

What is the point?

2012-01-25T18:11:00.001Z

No society can call itself civilised whilst it has poverty in its ranks. We in the UK are not a civilised society. Most of the population seem to tacitly accept poverty, if it is not happening to them. Presumably it is on the grounds of ‘I’m alright Jack’. What is wrong with us? Have we been so ground down that we no longer have the will to fight it? Is it just mass stupidity? Have the capitalists so brainwashed Ms, Mrs and Mr Average that they are incapable of questioning the immorality of the regime we live under? How do we get the message across that it doesn’t have to be like this? How do we get the message across that not only is financial equality desirable on moral and humanitarian grounds but it actually makes a whole heap of sense on purely a financial basis as far as the vast majority of the population is concerned?

Young and old, urban and rural dwellers alike are suffering terrible hardship, and collectively we do nothing, apart from turn a blind eye.

I’m not sure I can answer any of the above questions. Some days my faith in ever building a fair and just society is seriously challenged. I despair at the Great British public and the fuckwhats that they have become.

What is the point?

The gospel according to Alan Measles

2012-01-23T21:49:00.000Z

As I’ve said before the arts are the thinking person’s sport and so on Saturday while Neanderthals sped northward for the Norwich v Chelsea match we trained it down to London for a bit of yer actual culture. Our planned destination was the British Museum and the Grayson Perry exhibition entitled ‘The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman’.

We only just got tickets. They seem to sell out fast on the day. What a truly wonderful building the British Museum is. I hadn’t been since my schooldays. The rotunda is a magnificent construction and along with the glass roof makes for a light and airy space. As there was a fair bit of time between buying the tickets and our allocated slot we decided to go for a meal. We’ve had some very good meals in museums up and down the land and the Court Restaurant in the British Museum; both the food and the service were first class; the staff were just so nice; a destination in itself.

The entrance to the Grayson Perry exhibition is guarded by his pink motorbike, as used on his pilgrimage. The glass case affixed to the back now houses Alan Measles’ stunt double. The queuing and entry arrangements left a lot to be desired. You would think that an august and mature institution like the British Museum would have this sort of thing down to a fine art so to speak. Seemingly not. And once inside things didn’t improve greatly. I think that far too many exhibits are concentrated at the beginning thus causing a human bottle neck. The exhibition itself was a piece of inspired genius. Grayson Perry continues to go up and up in my estimation. In my opinion he is one of our greatest living artists; up there with David Hockney, Anthony Gormley and Gilbert and George. Grayson’s work is three dimensional. He’s a potter, a sculpture a tapestry and cloak designer. The exhibition is a mix of his work along with pieces that he has selected from the British Museum collection to compliment his work. I love Grayson’s pots. They are adorned with philosophical slogans. He has his own personal deity, Alan Measles his lifelong teddy bear, which features in many if not all of Perry’s work. He also has a wry and acute sense of humour. Three of his sculptures, a skull, a father and a mother all reminded me of a line spoken by the ghost of Jacob Marley “I wear the chain I forged in life”. The pièce de résistance is the eponymous Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman a huge cast iron sculpture based around a sailing ship and is a wonder to behold. Grayson Perry is a very unique artist and a true visionary. If you get the chance to see his work you should go.

What the dickens?

2012-01-12T19:35:00.001Z

The recent Dickens season on the BBC has caused me a certain amount of unease. I have a distinct dislike of period costume dramas, particularly those based around Regency and Victorian times. In fact I will often go out of my way to avoid them. In many ways that’s a shame as no doubt some of them will be very well written. The trouble is that they make me want to vomit. The only exception to the rule is A Christmas Carol which I never tire of and which invariably leads to a modicum of tear-duct leakage. I’m sure that somewhere in this land some very good ‘alternate’ productions of his work are being performed, but I would so much prefer it if by default Dickens could be treated in a similar vein to Shakespeare. I know that there is a whole world of difference between the novels of Charles Dickens and the plays of William Shakespeare but I do feel that the approach could be equally as exciting by relying solely on the prose of Dickens and its dramatic interpretation. Does it really need to be reduced to lack-lustre entertainment gift wrapped in frilly dresses, starched collars and sideburns? I‘d like to see Dickens interpreted with some stripped down gritty realism.

Sadly much of the subject matter in the works of Dickens is still very relevant. Presenting his work cosseted in a cloak of mawkish sterility detracts from its power. Charlie boy highlighted the horrors of poverty which sadly are still all too real today; you would have thought that over the last 142 years* it would not have been beyond the capacity of the peoples of Great Britain and their successive governments to have eradicated it by now. But clearly to date it has beaten us. Poverty is very much alive and thriving. So far we have failed. When will we make poverty history? Until that day we are nothing!

“Dear mother it’s a bugger...”

*Dickens died in 1870

Iconography

2012-01-09T21:22:00.000Z

Since the days of cave dwellers, icons have been an important part of communicating with each other. In these days of computers, smartphones and touchscreens icons are a big part of the processing command chain. Icons like pictures are capable of representing many words. They allow the receiver to interpret amounts of information very quickly. Much quicker than a wordy equivalent. But then I’m telling you what, as a computer user, you already know. Icons enable you to evaluate and take action fast.

Just before Christmas we had a few days away in Chichester. When we have the odd night or two away we tend to stop at Premier Inns. In terms of chain hotels we find them very acceptable. They're clean, efficient and offer value for money. This trip in particular certainly offered all those things as we managed to book their £29 per night deal. Didn't think that was possible. Premier make a big play of brands. They use well known brand leaders or top brands. It occurred to me that this is probably quite a hard trick to pull off. In a four star (or plus) hotel this sort of in yer face branding would be seen as tacky and tasteless. But for Premier it is a great selling point. In the bathroom the shower gel is Imperial Leather and the hand wash is Carex. At the breakfast table it’s Costa, Heinz, Kellogg’s etc. Brands with a track record convey a perceived quality. They are icons. Icons that say these products are of a known quality.

When it comes to shopping I rarely buy branded products favouring shops-own brand. But then I suppose shops are a brand, as are hotels. Marketing people really do run things.

Another icon of the modern age is the designer label. Whilst a brand normally suggests a certain quality, depending on reputation, the designer label conveys much more as it speaks volume about the consumer of that label. It says I’m a complete twat with more money than sense. I have a deep distrust of anyone who buys a designer labelled product purely because it has a designer label. The same applies to certain brands as well. Many people seem to buy certain brands just because they are fashionable, the thing to have. They have the mentality of sheep. On the rare occasion that I got out shopping for clothing I try my hardest to avoid buying anything with a visible brand on it. I don’t always succeed but I do manage to keep it to a minimum. Some of my coats are the exception to the rule.

Last February we had a fantastic holiday in Iceland. The island not the supermarket chain that is. So this time last year I went looking for a decent, warm, water resistant coat. I almost bought one made by The North Face. I was prepared to look a twat for the sake of comfort. But what finally dissuaded me from making what was a very expensive purchase was the zip (zed-eye-pee). Yes the zip. You pay above the odds for a man’s coat and they can’t even be bothered to get the zip right. It would appear that all coats made by/for The North Face zip up on the girls side! Now I’m quite at ease with my sexuality and being in touch with my feminine side that I wouldn’t worry about that sort of thing per se. That’s not really the issue. If they are so fucking arrogant that they can’t be arsed to accommodate the British (possibly European???) market then why the hell should I be bothered to lash out on something that is going to cost me that deep in the purse? Besides I’ve spend fifty odd years buttoning and zipping up coats etc. the ‘man’s way’ why should I change for some lazy, arrogant, capitalists? I ended up buying a Berghaus ski jacket instead. Admittedly it is branded. But the icons of Berghaus branding are relatively subtle and I’ve never been disappointed with their products in the past. It proved to be a very good buy, especially as it was cheaper than what I was proposing to buy from The North Face.

The only other fashionable brand that I have spent money on in the last couple of years is Apple. I bought an iPod Classic. And the only reason I bought that was because there just wasn’t anything else that will hold that much music. I have a very large record collection. I have no intention of buying anything else with the Apple brand if I can help it. Especially as Samsung stuff, in my opinion, seems far superior.

Don’t be fooled by the brand name myths and the brand name hype. Owning certain brand named products doesn’t make you a better person. It doesn’t make you attractive to others, unless they are equally as shallow of course. Don’t sell your soul to devil of consumerist bling. Be more sensible shoe and less plimsoll. The golden idol is a false idol. If you worship iconography then there is probably no hope for you.

What education?

2012-01-01T00:05:00.001Z

Is education dead?

I think it probably is!

As an old fuddy-duddy fifty-something it is easy to dismiss the education system as not being as good as it was when I was a lad. Nostalgia has a habit of distorting perception. But I do worry about the way we educate our young people these days. And, that last sentence is part of the problem.

No amount of money could have ever persuaded me to become a teacher. I am full of admiration for anyone who teaches. It can’t be an easy job. The poor souls are knocked by government, industry and the gutter-press constantly. I suspect most teachers do a great job under very difficult circumstances and in my opinion should be freed from much of the checking and measurement of their performance that is the order of the day. Teachers and teaching are not the problem with education.

The main problem with the education system these days as far as I can see is that it doesn’t educate, it just equips people with skills. In my opinion education, which incidentally should be a lifelong process, should be about the discovery and understanding of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and not about training individuals solely as job fodder. A society where people go to university just to get a good job is a morally bankrupt society.

The right to learn and indeed the desire to learn should be a lifelong process and not something that you get out of the way in your formative years. In fact I would venture to suggest that too much emphasis is put on education at a young age. There is far too much emphasis on growing up at a very young age which is bizarre given how life expectancy continues to increase. Education should be a much more fluid process than it currently is and with less emphasis on ending, or course completion. The mechanics of learning need to be given a much higher priority as well. Getting the right answers is all well and good but communicating how you got there is equally important. The edges between learning, working, leisure and retirement need to be blurred so that it is hard to tell where one starts and another finishes. And, opportunities for learning need to be equal and open and available to all.

Life and learning are intertwined journeys. Getting off at the first stop for either shouldn’t really be a voluntary option.

Anti-American sentiment

2011-12-31T12:54:00.001Z

The occasional visitor to my blog might be forgiven for thinking that my odd rantettes about American language mean that I’m in some way anti-American. I would like to emphatically state that I am most certainly not!

For the record:

I work for an American owned company
I have nothing against American people
I’m not against American culture – I listen to American music. I watch American films and sometimes American television programmes. I like an amount of American art.

What I don’t like is American imperialism both political and cultural. It’s their arrogance in thinking that their language, culture and beliefs are über alles that infuriates me. It’s an arrogance born out of insularity. Unfortunately the impact that American cultural imperialism has over here is amplified by stupid British people, who use Americanisms because they don’t know any better, or worse still because they think that it is somehow fashionable or clever. And, it’s a situation made even worse by what was and still should be the bastion of British culture and language, Auntie Beeb. Sadly the BBC seems to love Americanisms. As a consequence we are doomed!

Stewart Lee to guest edit R4's Today tomorrow

2011-12-30T19:37:00.000Z

Just a reminder that the clever, astute and very funny comedian Stewart Lee is to guest edit the Today Programme on New Year’s Eve.

The selfish festival

2011-12-30T17:07:00.001Z

I was amazed to see this link, entitled “How to sell unwanted presents” on Yahoo finance. The article epitomises one of the aspects that has encouraged me to hate Christmas. “Christmas comes but once a year, and when it comes it frequently brings with it a load of tat that you wouldn't be seen dead with. Here's how to off-load it.” That statement sums up the sheer pointless stupidity of it all. Christmas is fuelled by ignorance, greed and ungratefulness. It is not magical it is just a facade. Christmas is a lie!

Mustard or tomato sauce?

2011-12-28T18:50:00.000Z

In need of a breath of fresh air I wandered out on Boxing Day afternoon. We live close-ish to the Riverside shopping area in Norwich and all was quiet as I walked across Morrison’s empty car park, but I was surprised to see much activity as a bunch of shops on the far side hove into view. I hadn’t realised just how many shops open on Boxing Day. It would seem that even though many people had overspent at Christmas they were still keen to part with hard earned dosh or dosh yet to be earned. There was hustle and bustle in the clothes, electrical, household and hobby shops. People even had need for things at a pound. I was truly amazed. What is wrong with people?

I have only ever seen shopping as a banal chore. How anyone can derive pleasure from it is beyond me. I do have this feeling that the sort of people that see shopping as recreation also watch soaps and reality programmes on the telly, will see celebrities and the monarchy as something to be interested in and be hoodwinked by every fad and fashion that the media dictates; sheep!

I suppose one can dismiss such behaviour as shiny bead syndrome; people are hypnotised by what is put in front of them and fed to them. Whilst not really understanding it by interpreting it like that I can sort of accept it and leave it at that. As I walked by the open shops I noticed that there was a hotdog stand on the footpath, and not only that there were between six and eight people queuing for hotdogs. That perplexed me totally. No doubt after the excesses of the previous day why on earth would anyone what a hotdog whilst out shopping, and why would anyone queue for such a pointless comestible?

Stewart Lee chats to Oliver Cromwell

2011-12-25T10:18:00.005Z

Stewart Lee chats to Oliver Cromwell about Christmas:

The man who temporarily freed us from the tyranny of monarchy would have been horrified at what Christmas has become. He would no doubt also have been horrified at our stupidity in retaining a monarchy.

"Comedian Stewart Lee, who will be guest editing the Today programme on New Year's Eve, brought puritan Oliver Cromwell back to life to find out whether he is as disproving of modern Christmas shopping as he was when he was Lord Protector."

Keep taking the tablets

2011-12-24T18:10:00.000Z

On the first of January this year I purchase a Samsung Galaxy Tab, which is I guess a tablet PC. It is much more versatile, in my humble opinion, than the over-hyped bling that is the iPad. It is packed with so many great features, and one in particular that I love is its ability to display eBooks in a number of different formats, thus allowing me to buy books from a number of different sources. I’ve purchased a read quite a few books in this format now, plus I still read yer actual physical books as well. I read the Jon Richardson book that I reviewed here on it. The only criticism that I have of reading books electronically is that I had no real concept of where I was in the book and as a consequence the end can come unexpectedly sometimes. I suspect that you can set it to show your progress but I haven’t bothered to work that one out. To be fair a little bar does appear when the book appears on the screen but this soon fades and if you become engrossed in the reading it is easy to forget. The advantage it has over a Kindle is that it is back-lit so you can read it in whatever lighting conditions.

But enough of the e-reader apps the Galaxy Tab can do a whole host of things. It is very much an over-sized phone so you get a camera, you can text and make phone calls on it, surf the web and much, much more. I do much of the shopping on it. But more than anything else I use it to tweet on. Since owning this piece of kit I have developed a mild addition to Twitter. The operating system is Android which means that there are thousands of apps and you are not tied in to buying stuff via Apple.

I now use the Galaxy Tab as my mobile phone. I don’t actually make or receive many phone calls as such on any phone. I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise when I tell you that I don’t like talking on the phone. Give me text every time! Clearly I would look an even bigger twerp than I already am if I was to hold the Tab to my shell-like so I have invested in a Bluetooth earpiece which it has to be said works really well. Again not wishing to look the part I don’t wear the earpiece all of the time. This approach creates another problem; what to do with the slightly fragile earpiece. The solution was provided by a local ‘head’ shop as below:

Soup rules okay

2011-12-22T21:11:00.000Z

Etiquette and manners are all very fine but there is only one rule that matters when it comes to soup, and that’s to do with an accompaniment, bread. Bread and soup go together so well. And the bread you choose will vary depending on the type of soup. But there is one crime so heinous that it should never ever be contemplated. That crime is to put butter or margarine on the bread. It is fine to dip your bread in soup, or to mop up the last soup dregs lurking in the bowl with some bread, but you should never ever put any spread on your bread!

Edward Burra

2011-12-15T22:05:00.000Z

Last weekend we spent a couple of days in picturesque Chichester. Our main reason for going was to see an exhibition of the work of Edward Burra 1905-1976. My favourite period in art and design is around the 1930s and as it turns out many of Edward Burra’s paintings that I like the most are also from this time. Much of his subject matter from around this time is of the seedier side of life and features night creatures from bars, the theatre and the streets.

His style of painting, which has presumably inspired others that have followed him, for the most part has a rounded soft silky quality. His people have shiny fine fabric like skin, curvaceous heads and bodies, with eyes that look into the distance as if looking nowhere at all. He breathes life into inanimate objects. You might well want to stroke the Lorries he paints from later in his career as if they were a cat or a gerbil.

As well as the sizeable collection of paintings at the Pallant House Gallery there is also a video presentation in which we learn that he liked to travel and would go off without saying where he was going. That he would slide out unnoticed from social gatherings. He liked to have a good time but didn’t much care for ‘fuss’, and when he was awarded a CBE he managed to get out of going to the palace to collect it, usefully citing ill health as a reason for non-attendance. Edward Burra seemed like an okay dude.

If you get the chance this is a must visit exhibition and it is on until the 19th February 2012

Trouble at the front

2011-12-14T23:55:00.001Z

@vintagetrouble

I’ve seen the future. The future is R&B. The future is Vintage Trouble. Just when you think that there is no longer any heart and soul in music along come the messiahs to deliver us from the wilderness of popular music.

Tonight Vintage Trouble played The Waterfront in Norwich and blew the audience away. Vintage Trouble is a beat combo that I feel sure is going to go places. Well they’ve already been places; since their memorable performance on Later With Jools Holland they seem to have been touring virtually non-stop. They play a mix of up tempo R&B, soulful ballads and good honest blues. The lead singer is hot, the bass player is oh so cool, the guitarist grinds and weeps while the Animal on the drums glues the outfit together. We were given nearly two hours of their distinctive sound delivered with enough energy to light up the whole of Norwich. You can’t keep still to Vintage Trouble; even the dead would get up and dance.

“Lord have mercy on my soul!”

The Blue Meanies are all scoundrels

2011-12-09T20:59:00.001Z

As I’m sure you can imagine I have no truck with nationalists or patriots. I’m with Oscar on that one. The concept of a British identity is as impossible to define as a sense of Britishness is laughable. And, don’t get me started on the Bulldog-spirit or the retro-racist-speak from circa 1940. It’s all phoney. It has nothing to do with national identity or interests and everything to do with oppression.

It can never be said enough but I am no lover of capitalism. I don’t like it but accept that until a majority want it changed that’s the way it is going to be. Having said that if I had a choice between the partially-regulated (and one may say highly successful) capitalism of mainland Europe and the rape and pillage model that the Tories love, I know which one I’d plump for!

David Cameron is an even bigger tosser than I ever thought possible for effectively giving away any influence that we might have had in Europe. This is particularly foolish in my opinion because I’m convinced that the €uro will bounce back, aided by the new disciplines that will be put in place. This will put the €uro-zone countries in an even stronger position within the EU. The €uro-zone will be firmly in the EU driving seat. Cameron’s made us the fat smelly spotty lad that no one in the playground wants to play with. We are the Shit-Leg* of Europe

The company I work for is a manufacturer. Yes we are that rare commodity, a company that does engineering/manufacturing in the UK! Guess where the majority of our customers are? In the €uro-zone of course! If our economy is to survive and bounce back it’ll be companies like ours that will need to thrive. If a country doesn’t make things then it is lost. Even Switzerland has a manufacturing industry! The way the Tories are acting UK plc is rapidly going to become an offshore banking business, and nothing else; a place where only the rich can afford live permanently; a place where the non-rich servant-proles are bused in on a daily/weekly/monthly basis to do the menial tasks and are then sent ‘home’ again. If the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish have got any sense they’ll break away from the United Kingdom. For us English that aren’t millionaires I guess we’ll be forced to live in Calais and beyond. I suppose it could be worse, couldn’t it?

*a reference to a poor persecuted lad at my school all those years ago

Scrooge

2011-12-08T13:29:00.000Z

So much of Dickens' writing has passed into everyday parlance and the term Scrooge is no exception. It has metamophosised from a noun to an adjective and is used to describe someone who is penny-pinching, miserly or a hater of Christmas. But is this the correct way to use Scrooge? Surely the story is about a repentant sinner therefore shouldn’t the emphasis be on the positive? So by calling someone a Scrooge you are saying that they have changed for the positive in your eyes. I commend this motion to the house.

People need to stand on their own two feet!

2011-12-02T07:51:00.001Z

Amongst the narrow-minded rich and middle-classes there is a concept of the undeserving poor. The idea that those at the lower end of the income and wealth spectrum are all feckless and lazy continues to pre-occupy those that can only think in black and white. Sadly what most of them fail to grasp is that if we had some fairness in society, a level playing field that truly put us on the road to genuine equality, then less of what they see as government hand-outs would be necessary. Incidentally I've always thought that in the main 'those on benefits are living a life of luxury in abject splendour' is a myth that is as far from the truth than it could possibly be. And before you offer up examples about so-and-so who's never done a day’s work in their life base your utterances on pure fact rather than supposition.

If people are to work and ‘pay their way’ in the world society needs to get real. Those misinformed Daily Mail* readers et al need to understand that there are no quick fixes and that some fairness needs to be applied. There are far too many forelock-tugging cretins spouting things like “there’s plenty of jobs about, they just don’t want to work” etc. etc. For a start there are more unemployed people than jobs to go round and of the few jobs that there are so many are far too poorly paid. Society seems to accept employers exploiting many many workings with the same indifference with which it accepts the obscenely overpaid people at the top.

In principle I’m not agin the notion that people should provide for themselves economically. Although I would always be concerned that there were enough safeguards in society to provide for those unfortunate enough to not be capable of doing so. But if we are to enable more people to provide for themselves and not have to suffer the indignity of relying on the welfare state a very simple framework of provisions will need to be put in place. Those will include:

Decent affordable housing for all (the most important foundation for a stable life-style)
Affordable transport for all
Free Numeracy and literary skills courses for adults
Relevant training schemes for those looking for work
A living wage as the very minimum for any job
Enough jobs to go round

*the paper that supported Hitler

The knob Clarkson

2011-12-01T21:32:00.001Z

We must thank Jeremy Clarkson. Not for his utterances but for awakening the spirit of right-minded people. Thousands complained to the BBC and Twitter went ballistic. This has to be good. The left need to learn from this. To win the hearts and minds of the majority we need to convey our reasoned arguments via every means possible, and in great numbers. We need to speak to the masses as if as one voice.