Google Street View is a “service to burglars”

announces the Daily Telegraph. It concerns the fact that 95% of Britain’s roads are now covered by the Google Street View service, knowledge that immediately made me check whether our house is now featured; and I’m delighted to say that it is. But how can Street View be a burglar’s aid, I wondered? Burglary surely is an activity requiring the burglar to be in close proximity to your house at the time, typically after “casing” it from a number of different angles while standing immediately adjacent to your property. How can a 2D picture taken of your house an indeterminate time ago be of any assistance? Time to read further into the report.

Google Street View, which has now been expanded to cover more than 95 per cent of Britain’s roads, is being seen as a “service for burglars”, according to new research.

Hmm. I see what you did there. The words “service to burglars” in the headline were placed between speachmarks, so you think you can get away with it, but I’m not sure you can. I don’t think that the fact that research suggests that Street View “is being seen” as a service to burglars can justify a headline saying the Street View “is a” service to burglars, do you? And what of the evidence gleaned from this “research”?

The report, which was carried out by a discount website, myvouchercodes.co.uk, found that two-thirds of the people polled thought that Google Street View images were ‘intrusive’.

The company interviewed 1,317 people – 57 per cent of which described the street mapping service an ‘intrusion’ while 24 per cent said that they believed it was simply ‘a service for burglars’.

Right. So this isn’t so much “research” as “market research”; or rather, it’s a survey. Now, let’s put aside the fact that unless they asked two separate questions on whether the interviewees found Street View both “intrusive” and an “intrusion” (and I doubt it) the Telegraph thinks it’s reasonable to equate “57 per cent” with “two-thirds”. Instead let’s focus on the statistic – if that doesn’t debase the term – that informs the headline: the fact that 24% believe Street View is “simply ‘a service for burglars’.” In other words, the only thing that even attempts to justify the statement in the headline is the fact that just under a quarter of the people surveyed agree with a statement as put to them by the survey team. Presumably, then, any question that a researcher deems to ask, and which anyone feels they can agree with, can be portrayed in a Telegraph headline as a fact that researchers have unearthed. Amazing.

But perhaps I’m being unkind? Perhaps there is something, somewhere in this sad article that can support the assertion that Google Street View is a service for burglars? What do the police have to say on the matter?

Thames Valley Police told The Telegraph there was no evidence to suggest that the service caused an increase in burglaries.

Well what would they know? I’d rather go with the opinions of a quarter of the people who were asked to agree or disagree with a statement when they were stopped in a shopping precinct as they were racing to the butty shop in their lunch hour and no they couldn’t really stop but will it be quick oh alright then. Any day.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you our best-selling quality daily.

Update: The Telegraph has now updated its headline to a more anodyne “Google Street View: survey raises privacy concerns”, which is more accurate, especially seeing as the survey literally did raise those concerns by asking the questions in the first place. The rest of the article remains intact, to the best of my knowledge.

Seeing as Andrew Rawnsley does apparently believe his words to be utterly reliable, I can only conclude then that he is either deluded, a fool, or a deluded fool. Let’s take the example in the news, Rawnsley’s allegation that Gus O’Donnell verbally warned Gordon Brown about his bullying conduct towards his staff. Rawnsley defends his story as being “100%” accurate, his source “24-carat”. Utter, utter arse. Let’s assume that this conversation did take place; the only way he can credibly insist that the story is 100% accurate is if he was there, and he wasn’t; even if he were, we’ve all been in situations where our account of events and our reading of a situation differs markedly from others who were also there and whose opinions are just as legitimate as our own.

So, in the absence of actually being there, the only other way Andrew Rawnsley can seriously claim that he has covered events with anything like a 100% accuracy is if he has spoken to both parties involved, and I think we can be pretty sure that, in the case of O’Donnell and Brown, he hasn’t. In order to justify his 24-carat claim, then, Rawnsley has all but admitted that he has spoken to Gus O’Donnell and has his first-hand version of events; but if we are to believe that there are two sides to every story – and I think we should – then that must leave us with Rawnsley’s account being 50% accurate at best. Add in all other factors – O’Donnell, being human, will have all manner of reasons for overplaying or underplaying his part, even for outright lying when briefing a journalist – and I’d rate the veracity of Rawnsley’s story at about 27%; the quality of his source may be 24-carat, but the quality of his sources story is more like die-cast metal. Which is not to say that the story isn’t true, mainly or wholly, just as die-cast metal is perfectly good when it comes to the manufacture of Space 1999 Eagle Transporter or Star Trek USS Enterprise toys. But just as you wouldn’t want to be handed a die-cast metal spaceship at the altar on your wedding day, a die-cast metal story hardly seals the deal. Apart from anything else, one day you’ll drop that Eagle Transporter on you aunt’s kitchen floor and snap the engine off in a jagged white break; and the bay doors of the Enterprise will get loose over time and then you’ll lose that orange plastic space shuttle that clips on underneath, and you’ll never find it, no matter how often you check the back of the sofa, and it won’t ever turn up, not even when you move house, although you’re twelve-years-old by then and no longer bothered, because it must have gone up the Hoover, let’s face it.

I digress. The point is that Andrew Rawnsley has been told something, written it in a book and claims it to be true; but he can’t know that, so it’s just a story he has been told and cannot possibly verify. He was on Newsnight yesterday along with Daniel Finkelstein who similarly stated that he knows these claims are true because loads of such stories have been going around Westminster for years. Well that’s a slam-dunk! Received wisdom is now historical record! Frankly it calls to minds the dubious police practice of “trawling” for allegations rather than actual evidence, yet Finkelstein even referred to these allegations – my choice of word, since that is all they possibly can be at this stage – as being examples of the sort of “facts” that journalists should report (although, since he doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the word “pedantic” that could merely be down to his poor knowledge of English vocab). Honest to fucking God it makes you want to cry. Whatever happened to a bit of journalistic scepticism? Is it left behind in the cloakroom when they enter the lobby? Are they too dim to countenance that at least some of these stories could be the ulterior imaginings of Brown’s opponents, or is it that they are too busy congratulating themselves on being “in the loop”? Are they naïve or arrogant? Judging by Rawnsley and Finkelstein’s performance on Newsnight I’d say the latter, actually.

Look; I’m not saying that these stories aren’t true, I simply don’t know and yes, I can well believe them. But the likes of Andrew Rawnsley and Danny Finkelstein don’t know either, unless they were actually present at any of these alleged incidents; the difference is that while I entertain doubts and keep an open mind, they seem to have abandoned their critical faculties so as to confidently claim an insider’s total knowledge based on the self-serving rumours that swirls around parliament’s bars and tea rooms. Well they’re welcome to their credulity, but the rest of us should bear in mind that these are stories, authored by politicians and the like, and adapted by journalists with books to sell and column inches to fill. That’s hardly a recipe for accuracy, reliability and truthfulness in my book.

to: #Group:Emminent_Economists
cc: The Obscurer

re: UK economy cries out for credible rescue plan

Dear All,

Thank you for your latest letter concerning how to deal with the UK budget deficit. As many of you will know this is indeed a priority for the Treasury at the moment, and we are taking a large number of soundings and looking at all the options available to us regarding exactly how and when we should deal with the current situation, and we do indeed value your input. Thank you for spending the time on coming up with your own considered solutions.

Sadly, you appear to have omitted the attachment in which you detail how exactly you would go about cutting the structural deficit in the timeline you propose, and all we have received is the covering preamble which, while of interest, merely makes some bland and somewhat meaningless pronouncements. Still, they do whet the appetite for the meaty specifics to follow and we eagerly anticipate seeing your full proposals, so please forward them with some haste.

In particular, we note that you say that

• “In the absence of a credible plan, there is a risk that a loss of confidence in the UK’s economic policy framework will contribute to higher long-term interest rates and/or currency instability, which could undermine the recovery.” We agree, but admit that we are having some difficulty in drawing together our various strands of thought into one credible plan. As such we are excited to learn that you must have completed your own plan on how to deal with this matter. We look forward to receiving it so we can see how it moves us forward.
• “The exact timing of measures should be sensitive to developments in the economy … and there is a compelling case, all else being equal, for the first measures beginning to take effect in the 2010-11 fiscal year.” We are, however, (and also ceterus parabus!), struggling to pin down that exact time, as we are uncertain when the economy will have recovered sufficiently. You appear to have less uncertainly than ourselves and so we would welcome you own precise proposals regarding timing (something that, being a small detail, we are surprised you omitted from the email we received, but which we look forward to seeing once we have your complete correspondence in front of us).
• “The bulk of this fiscal consolidation should be borne by reductions in government spending, but that process should be mindful of its impact on society’s more vulnerable groups.” Aye, there’s the rub. The problem here is that while it is a commonly held view that the public sector is stuffed full of non-workers fulfilling non-jobs, according to a recent report by Reform – a think-tank you would expect to be sympathetic to that view of the public sector – any cuts to the government’s workforce would soon “hit bone” and affect frontline services. Cuts will have to be made and we are working on them right now, but we have found that it is far easier to propose cuts in government spending than it is to define where these cuts will be made; therefore it is gratifying that you have done the heavy lifting here and we look forward to your own specific plans on which departments to close and who should be made redundant.

Everyone here at HM Treasury is tremendously excited that you must have already managed to produce just the credible plan that you require of us, and which is currently eluding us; we are only disappointed by the regrettable delay that has been caused in your oversight in not including this plan in your email. However, we are sure that this can be speedily remedied, and together we can crack on with the vital work of restoring the nation’s finances to balance.

Yours faithfully etc.

That was two days ago, and sadly I have not been copied into the economists’ reply. I can only assume that someone noticed the error, and when forwarding their detailed plan for economic recovery they also ensured that I was removed from the cc. field. Well, I assume that is the case, and I assume that these foremost economists have produced and forwarded on their own detailed plan. Haven’t they? That can’t be it, surely? I can’t imagine that such an illustrious band of experts-in-their-field would make such a wishy-washy list of statements and requests from others without something of their own to back it up, would they? Why, because if they would then that would make their letter to the Sunday Times appear to be just an empty gesture, a substance-free waste of time? It would suggest that writing the letter was a mere vanity-stunt and a exercise in self-importance, with about as much value as some bloke on Grumpy Old Men – Richard Madeley, say – sounding off about something he doesn’t really understand and which he has no solution for?

No. That can’t be it at all.

• Single – I’m pretty poor at getting into new music, but I like to think that I get there in the end. My occasional listens to either 6Music or Radcliffe and Maconie on Radio 2 tend to do the trick and top me up, and that was the case with Fleet Foxes’ Mykonos which I stumbled upon at the start of Adam & Joe one Saturday, and which was handily the first song they’d played that day and so instantly re-accessible via listen again for a week. Seven days later I was still humming it incessantly and so decided to buy their splendid album. Mykonos is a swooping, swooning piece of timeless folky-beauty that feels like it could have been written in any era but which fortunately for us was written in the current one, and hopefully the Fleet Foxes can build on their impressive start at give us more of the same in future.
  
  
• Album – Doves also got off to an impressive start in their career, but after a bit of a stumble with their patchy second album they returned to top form with 2004’s Some Cities and continued last year with Kingdom Of Rust. The title track was an early single and suggested that the new album would be Doves-by-numbers; certainly the boys aren’t exactly branching off in a different direction here, they’re staying comfortably in their comfort zone, but personally Doves-by-numbers suits me down to the ground. So many good songs that it’s hard to pick out individual highs, although if I had to pick one stand-out track it would be the stunning 10:03, one to turn up loud and which I would love to see them play live.
  
  
• Book – Tim Winton’s Breath, or breathe as I keep pronouncing it, was a book that Simon Mayo’s book panel were so effusive in praise of that I snapped it up the minute I saw the paperback version in the shops. It’s a very easy read, drawing you in from the first page as the narrator recounts a period in his teens when he and his mate, both of whom would spend their days engaged in risky stunts, are befriended by a local surfer, and the book follows the trio as they push their skills to the limit as they compete against the waves, themselves and each other. Friendship is severely tested by events, jealousies and the surfer Sando’s girlfriend, and throughout there is a tone that tells you it isn’t going to end with everyone happily sharing a beer together. While reading this book it owns you completely and the quality of the writing is simply wonderful; surfing, like skiing, is something I think of as being for other people, but Winton’s descriptions make you understand the exhilaration you must feel when catching a big wave. An exquisite work; the only problem is that it’s so good that I’m reluctant to give his other books a go as I fear I’ll be disappointed.
  
  
• Film – Bolt is a sort of animated anthropomorphic Truman Show where the eponymous dog believes he has super powers, when in fact he stars in a television programme about a hero dog. Cocooned in his fantasy world he breaks out when he thinks that his owner – and TV show co-star – is in danger, but once in the real world he gradually realises that things are not what they seem. In many ways it is a retread of some earlier Pixar themes; Bolt, like Buzz Lightyear, has to get accustomed to the fact that he is not what he had assumed he was, the cat Mittens knows what it is like to get left behind as children grow up, like Jesse in Toy Story 2, and so on. There are better animated films about but it’s all mildly diverting, and the only film I saw in the cinema last year. Hold on, though; wasn’t Bolt released in 2008? Oh bugger. But I think I only watched it in 2009. Does that count? I dunno. Oh forget it.
  
  
• Sport – I’ve already mentioned the First Ashes test at Cardiff, and I’ll stick with that for my sporting moment; a perfect example of Test Cricket, as tense a sporting occasion as I can imagine, and the antithesis of the supposedly more exciting Twenty20 as, on the fifth day, England’s last two batsmen, unconcerned with actually scoring runs, were instead hell-bent on just hanging on to their wickets as the final overs ticked away. Unforgettable, yet something that England seemed to be making a habit of in the recent tour of South Africa.
  
  
• TV – The funniest TV moment of the years has to have been on Noel’s HQ, with Noel Edmonds completely losing it on national television (albeit on a Sky 1 programme that no-one watches). It looks like an appalling show, one designed to take each spurious pile of cack from the tabloid agenda to make it appear that Britain is going to the dogs regardless of any real evidence, and to uncritically present such bollocks as fact in front of a baying mob. Specifically, on this clip Noel featured the story of an injured soldier who had been denied planning permission for his family to build a new adapted home for him on their land. There may be something in their complaint, although the local authority did say they were happy to speak with the family to try to resolve the problem; what really seemed to get Edmonds’ goat through was a council spokesman’s refusal to appear on Noel’s HQ because it was what he described as an “entertainment show”, a statement that drove Edmonds into a fit of apoplexy while the audience for this programme dedicated to keen investigative journalism booed and waved those massive foam hands in the air, just like we used to see on World In Action and Weekend World Gladiators and Robot Wars in their pomp. What an oaf. (For genuinely good television, I really enjoyed Red Riding, The Street and the Doctor Who special The Waters Of Mars.)
  
  
• Radio – I’ve never read John Irving’s A Prayer For Owen Meany, although I’ve always fancied it. So when Radio 4 adapted it for The Afternoon Play early in 2009 I decided to save myself the bother and to listen to its five parts. It was a brilliant and moving production; the always excellent Toby Jones was excellent as Owen and the typically dreadful Henry Goodman was excellent as the narrator John, as we entered the world of their peculiar friendship which endures despite an incident in which Owen hits a baseball which strikes and kills John’s mother, and which assists Owen in thinking that his life is part of some divine plan. Owen is also beset by a recurring dream in which he believes he knows the time and some of the circumstances of his own death, but not the where or why other than that it will be part of God’s plan. An ominous inevitability then hovers over the piece until the final act and the full picture is revealed, at which I shed some tears for a few minutes before packing my daughter in her pram and left to collect my son from school, drying my eyes as I did.
  
  
• Blog – Although I had read a few of his posts before, 2009 was the year I really began to read Anton Vowl’s Enemies Of Reason regularly. Anton specialises in taking some old toss from a newspaper and ripping it to shreds, exposing it for the duplicitous, disingenuous or outright deceitful load of nonsense that it is. It would be easy to criticise this as shooting fish in a barrel as we all know how bad the papers are, but Anton is a hugely likeable writer and finds endless variation in describing the papers’ failings, often finding just the right words in doing so. And it is all done with the most honourable of intentions; it doesn’t take much to show the Daily Mail up for the hateful rag it is, but Anton stresses how he doesn’t just hate the Mail, he would like it to thrive and be good, and seems genuinely sad that it isn’t, a magnanimous attitude which has affected my own views on our actually-existing media. He is also something of an evangelist for the idea that, while many journalists may often look down their noses at “mere bloggers”, in fact the best bloggers have nothing to learn from and much to teach their professional counterparts, and Anton himself is a great advert for that line of thought. Recently Anton stated he would be branching out a little more, covering issues other than the media’s decline, and that is certainly a journey I will follow him on.
  
  
• Castle – Although I’ve been to Falmouth a few times – munching on a pasty in The Waterman pub overlooking the harbour, estuary and St Mawes is a regular treat – we’d never been to Pendennis Castle, but we remedied it last summer. Our trip coincided with the August Bank Holiday and it was an exceptional event; just £20 bought our family entry to two jousts, a juggler, a performance of medieval music and the finest falconry display I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few. Oh, and the small matter of having the run of Pendennis Castle itself, of course, with its many rooms and ramparts and staircases, all great fun for an inquisitive six- and two-year old and their aging dad lagging behind. Extraordinary value for money, so much so that we’ve decided to join English Heritage as a result (which, along with our existing membership of the National Trust means that there aren’t many old wrecks left in the country that we haven’t got covered, and I think we more or less own Stonehenge and its immediate vicinity outright).

Right, that’s that. I don’t think I’ll bother with this crap next year. But then I say that every year.

One of my big problems is that I really love the taste of beer, which is why the aforementioned Kaliber is out of the question. As a kid I was always baffled when my mates moaned about the taste of beer, saying it was disgusting but, if you wanted to get drunk in those pre-alcopop days, you just had to get it down you. Were that mad? Beer’s lovely, I thought. From sipping my dad’s home-brew stout while watching the Five Nations Rugby Union, to passing around a sneaky Roughneck flask filled with the contents of one of those diddy cans of Heineken one school lunch time (which, amazingly now, I remember as tasting impossibly bitter), I’ve been hooked on beer; but more on the taste than on the variable effect. So, finding a drinkable low- or non-alcohol version of the fine beverage was always going to be tricky.

But not impossible, as I found out during the course of last year, and one of my many concerted efforts to cut down on the booze. So if you’re struggling with your New Year’s abstinence and certain that trying a Kaliber will almost certainly turn you to drink, here are my top choices for low-alcohol drinking; drawn, in fairness, from a not very wide sample.

• Bohemia: 0.0% abv. This is the one that started it all it all off, a chance purchase that I was delighted to discover was not only not disgusting but was in fact actually quite pleasant. The first thing I noticed was that it doesn’t smell nasty, with that vulcanised rubber scent I had found with other alcohol-free brews. Instead it has a lighter, almost floral smell, and the taste itself I can best describe as exhibiting a subtle “lager flavour”, with a slightly bitter malt finish. Unlike most alcohol-free beers that pride themselves on being made in the normal manner but with the alcohol (and flavour!) removed at the last minute, Bohemia is brewed so that no alcohol is produced in the first place. The result, I guess, is more a beer-flavoured soft drink, which rather than trying and failing to taste like a real beer instead gives you something that is reminiscent of beer, rather in the way that cherryade is reminiscent of cherries without quite tasting like a cherry. But that’s fine by me as it’s still nicer than some regular lagers; Robinson’s Einhorn, I’m looking at you. Bohemia is especially good on a sweltering day when you could murder a cold one, or with a spicy curry or a chilli where it successfully fools me into thinking I’m having a real beer (until I finish the curry, that is, when the illusion is shattered and I tend to bail out). Bohemia is widely available in most supermarkets – Morrisons, Sainsbury and Tesco certainly stock it – and you can buy it in 33cl bottles and cans.
  
  
• Erdinger Weissbrau Alkoholfrei: 0.5% abv. Bohemia is great if you fancy a swift half, but what should you do if you’d like a longer drink, perhaps a few beers while watching Top Gear on Dave Ja Vu? Well, I’d rather go to the pub myself, but if for some unfathomable reason you actually like watching Top Gear on Dave Ja Vu and want to accompany it with a few alcohol-free beers, what then? Well the clue is that I’ve started this paragraph with the words “Erdinger Weissbrau Alkoholfrei”, as that is the beer I would suggest. It comes in a decent-sized 50cl bottle, and for the benefit of non-German speakers is an alcohol-free wheat beer. First impressions aren’t encouraging; opening the bottles reveals that familiar Kaliber-like smell, and when poured into a glass it froths up unnaturally in a manner unlike any normal beer. An inauspicious start, then; but once it has settled down it looks much better, being reassuringly cloudy, and the taste, I reckon, could easily be mistaken for that of a real beer, a nice premium larger. You get a hit of sharpness at first, initial grapefruity-citrus notes, which then gradually give way to a smooth, mellow, and genuine wheat-beery finish. Very pleasant to drink at anytime, and it is certainly one I can enjoy a few bottles of in its own right, rather than something I’d take as a grudging alternative to the real thing (unless I want to get shit-faced, of course). Just when you think it can’t get any better you find that it’s even brewed in accordance with the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516, contains a mere 125 calories a bottle, is isotonic, apparently, and is rich in unspecified vitamins. What more do you want (except alcohol)? Erdinger is available from Tesco and The Alcohol Free Shop, and this entry would have a red “Best Buy” star on it, if I could be bothered.
  
  
• Bernard Free Amber Beer: 0.5 abv. But what if I don’t like lager, you ask? Well, then I’d say that you need to pay better attention because I’ve already told you; then I’ll take a deep breath and again refer you to the words in bold at the start of this paragraph, because Bernard Free may be just what you need. It smells and looks like the real deal straight off, like a genuine dark Czech beer, which is pretty much what it tastes like; it has a delicious mildly-bitter nutty taste, a slight hint of burnt treacle, and just a lurking of liquorice. Very nice indeed. So nice that just as you’re thinking you’ve found the perfect alcohol-free winter ale the taste suddenly fades away to a watery nothingness and you realise it doesn’t have much depth to it; the answer is to take another swig, I guess. This wateriness may be the reason why I found that a bottle at the back of my fridge had actually frozen solid, so I tend to leave it in a cool corner of my kitchen instead. Still, the flavour is very nice while it lasts, and is an interesting alternative to the above lagers. You can buy it in 50cl bottles from Tesco; it actually won an award in the 2009 Tesco drink awards so I suspect it may be exclusive to them, but you may find it elsewhere. I haven’t, though.

So, they’re my three favourites so far, but it is just my opinion, and you may well disagree. I know people who like Beck’s Blue, for instance, and while it does taste impressively authentic it is just a bit unremittingly hoppy for my tastes. Others rate Cobra 0.0%, but I personally file it alongside Bitburger in the Kaliber bin with all those other unreconstructed alcohol-free beers. I’ve also had a couple of bottles of Holsten in the pub when the designated driver, and they seemed okay; but in truth I’ve had too few to give an opinion.

My main reasoning in writing this post was to a) fill up some space on this almost-forgotten blog, and b) tell people who’ve never looked at alcohol-free beer for years – not since they feel Lawrie McMenemy betrayed them over Barbican – that this stuff may deserve a second look. And there is much more to explore than those mentioned here as The Alcohol Free Shop website makes clear, with many more varieties of beers and a huge selection of wines also. And I for one feel far more virtuous tipping a load of Bohemia empties in the recycling; even if, to the casual observer, it still probably makes me look like a piss-head.

So, what will you be drinking tonight? Fancy a wheat-beer? Interesting. But will it be a brain-rotting, sclerosis-inducing Hoegaarden, or an alcohol-free, low-calorie, not to mention vitamin-rich Erdinger? Well, speak for yourself, but as I’ve a tense football match to get through I’m going to hunker down with a crate of full-fat Stella. Don’t look at me like that. I’ll be good tomorrow.

Next Week: Is Pol Pot machine-washable?

Ha-ha, do you see what I did there? Meanwhile I just find it depressing that City’s current owners – who hitherto had seemed to be doing just about everything right at the club – decided to take a leaf out of the Big Book of Football Stereotypes and act in the impatient and short-termist way that foreign billionaire owners are expected to. It doesn’t take much to squander the vast reserves of goodwill I had for them, as I was grateful that they took over from Thaksin Shinawatra then behaved impeccably and honourably from thereon in; but that’s what they’ve done, and it will be a long hard slog for them to earn my respect again (although, being a fickle fan, winning some trophies will go some way towards doing that, no doubt).

But I’ll give them their due; they’re feeling their way into this football club ownership lark and I know where they’re coming from, as I’m feeling my way back into blogging since my recent hiatus. That’s perhaps why, on reflection, I wish I hadn’t bothered with that last post on the bankers’ bonuses, a clumsy collection of loose semi-thought bundled together in a post, the existence of which is partly thanks to the fact that I had a free afternoon. So as I’m approaching my usual Christmas sabbatical I’ll try to tidy this place up a bit and not make such a mistake again. Some hope. But in that vein I’ve ditched those weekly twitter digests that were just cluttering the place up in the absence of any other posts. If you want to read my twitterings then you can always follow them here, and they are also duplicated on my tumblelog over here; there really is no need to triplicate them, so now, if I can’t think of anything worthy of a full post then this site will simply go quiet, but I will always be back.

While in the mood to tidy up I think I’ll finish off this story from last year, because I hate leaving loose ends lying around, I really do. You’ll recall, perhaps, that British Gas had doubled our direct debit payment, despite our being in credit? Well they had. And last Winter came and went, we shovelled money to the gas board hand over fist, and in the Spring we found that those payments had just about covered our seasonal usage, and so we were still over a hundred pounds in credit. Time, perhaps, to rethink the level of our monthly payment? Well British Telecom and E-On thought so; our telecoms provider gave us two free months as we were in credit with them, while our electricity supplier refunded our credit and lowered our monthly payment. But from British Gas we heard nothing.

Summer arrived, then Autumn, during which, of course, our gas usage plummeted while our payments remained sky high, and by the time of our October statement we were now some £315 in credit. Time, now, surely, to readjust our payment amount? I’d have thought so, but perusing our gas bill I found a notice warning against this, as British Gas said that they strongly suggest we all wait until the Spring before any payment amount is altered. If only they’d stuck to this policy the previous year, when they’d hiked our monthly direct debit in Summer and Autumn; then, perhaps, our account wouldn’t have gone in credit to the value of China’s trade surplus? Well anyway, I couldn’t be bothered waiting until Spring, and I couldn’t be bothered negotiating with British Gas, so we skipped over to E-On for a dual-fuel account, a process that took around six weeks, but which time our account had become £415 in credit. Only then, once we had left, did British Gas finally repay us.

So a happy story in the end in which everyone is a winner. E-On has a new customer; British Gas earned a paltry sum of interest on our money; and I have a tidy lump-sum to spend as I wish. I know I could moan about British Gas earning interest that should have been mine, but unless yields on pissing money against the wall have risen sharply in the past year I wouldn’t have done anything of note with that spare cash. As it is, their crazy direct debit policy has turned out to be an unlikely savings plan. So ultimately, and ironically, I end this tale with a sincere and honest “Thank you, British Gas”; because this year, after a fashion, Christmas is on you.

The thing is that, unless you are a bingo-playing pensioner who receives child benefit, there is something for everyone to grouse about from the PBR, and the bankers shouldn’t think themselves anything special. As a public sector worker I’m hardly overjoyed about the forthcoming 1% cap on pay, or the reduction in employer’s pensions contributions; but you know what? Despite the fact that my area of government can hardly be blamed for the more-than-doubling of the national debt that we are going to see, we are where we are and we all need to do our bit to get that debt down, eventually. Others have suffered far worse in this recession. “We’re all in this together,” as someone once said.

The banking sector, I would humbly suggest, bears a somewhat larger responsibility for that ballooning national debt, whether you agree that it was the cause of the crisis, or merely the meek recipient of astonishing sums of public money to prop up its ailing industry, or a bit of both. They have more of an obligation to do their bit, you could argue? And yet what are those City bankers supposed to be moaning about? Will their pay rises be capped at 1%? I doubt it. Have their pension plans just been thrown into doubt? Shouldn’t have. No, they’re apparently complaining that if their bonus – and it is just a bonus, mind, not their salary; and not even their contractual bonus, but rather any discretionary bonus they may receive on top – is greater than the median annual wage in the UK, then their employers will have to stump up a bit more tax. Well my heart bleeds.

Now, I’ve a pretty easy-come-easy-go attitude towards bonuses myself; perhaps it’s because I’ve never come to expect one, the most I ever received amounted to a little more than a couple of a hundred quid, and even then I never felt I especially deserved it. I guess I could see things differently if I relied on my bonus to enable be to buy a Maserati outright, with a discount for cash. But as it is I actually feel somewhat ambivalent on the whole subject of City bonuses. Others, however, are more forthright, and make what do seem to me to be valid criticisms; Chris states that City bonuses are a form of legal extortion, while Duncan claims that in fact the performance of RBS bankers, for example, has in fact been far from stellar. Me, I guess that if bonuses are a problem – and being manifestly unfair may not the same thing as being a problem – then regulation is a better way to deal with them than to impose a quirky, one-off novelty tax to coincide with an impending General Election, and which can probably be easily flirted in any case. In the meantime, though, my searing analysis of the situation is that if that “talent” in the City really is up in arms about something as ephemeral as their bonuses being taxed while others have lost jobs, had their hours reduced or received pay cuts, then those brightest-of-the-bright must be a bunch of utter twonks.

Paul Auster, in The Invention of Solitude, meditates on his father’s death and talks of how, the instant he heard the bad news “I knew that I would have to write about my father”. Michael Dennis, on the other hand, said “I’ve experienced a great sadness over the past month or so, but this blog isn’t and was never meant to be confessional; while I’m happy to share some of my life online, there’s much that I keep to myself.” I figure I must be somewhere in the middle; but where? I’m unsure whether I should write here on the matter, I certainly don’t feel a need to write, and it would be far easier for me to simply pass; and yet I simultaneously feel I can’t not write something. This was never intended to be a personal blog, but how can it not be? I’ve already posted on births and deaths, such things can’t help but define us to some extent, to inform our world-view, and despite the pseudonymous nature of this blog – or perhaps because of it – I do write here from the heart.

But deciding that I can’t not write something doesn’t solve the problem of what I can write about. I must have missed the “How To…” guide to blogging for grieving sons. I could write a detailed and glowing celebration of my dad’s life, but to some extent I’ve done that already, in the script we gave the minister at the funeral. I could talk of all our happy times together and express how much I love him still, a love undimmed by circumstance; but that is perhaps just too personal, and those memories are ones I want to cherish and treasure, and keep to myself and my nearest. As this is my blog then perhaps I should simply fulfil my blog’s remit, which is to get things off my chest. I think that’s all I feel I can muster, and anyway, mere words will always fall short of what I want to say, frankly I’m not a good enough writer to successfully say what I feel truly. So here, finally, is the next best thing, version 7.4.35 of this post, the hardest thing I’ve written, and an account of my past few months. And soon I’ll press publish and be done with it.

The death of a parent is the usual tragedy, to paraphrase someone, I think; for my dad it began with the mundane and then promptly accelerated out of control. So, there was the shocking rapidity at which a concern over likely gallstones became the fear, then reality, of a tumour; how the onset of jaundice, an anaemic collapse that led to hospitalisation, a shortness of breath that necessitated the constant wearing of an oxygen mask, all seemed like minor setbacks requiring treatment which would surely lead to the road to recovery, but which instead turned out to be little more than marker posts on a relentless, steep decline. In the middle of August I left my dad to go on holiday, where I tried – and usually managed – to enjoy myself, all the while expecting to see him again, an expectation that did not come to pass. My last real sight of my dad was of him sat at home on the settee, too weak to get up, hugging his grandchildren the day before we drove to Cornwall, as we told him we’d see him in a fortnight on our return. We did manage a couple of brief webchats as we huddled around the laptop in the Sandbar at Praa Sands on our first Wednesday and second Sunday, but the final act came just the following Wednesday as I watched Radiohead play “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” from the Reading Festival via the Red Button. My mobile rang at 11:30pm; a time, to quote Auster again, when

No one calls…unless it is to give news that cannot wait. And news that cannot wait is always bad news.

And of course I knew at that moment. But there were still other possibilities, perhaps – my father, like Schrodiger’s cat, was neither alive nor dead – until I picked up my phone, and Caller ID informed me that my parents were ringing. But it wasn’t my parents, it was my mum, with the news I didn’t want to hear. Eventually I placed my phone carefully back on the window ledge but missed and let it crash onto the floor, and then I went through to my wife. In the morning we told my son, packed up, and headed home.

Small consolations occasionally broke into my mood as my wife drove us back. Given the hand that my father had been dealt, and the illness he’d suddenly been saddled with, he wanted to go when he did, he didn’t want to hang on. Over the following days there would be mood swings as I enjoyed waking in the morning, relishing that half-second before my memory would tap me on the shoulder and remind me that my dad had gone. I could be fine, talking – even laughing – in those situations where I wouldn’t expect my dad to be present, until it would hit me that there were no situations at all where he would ever be present again. I would casually refer to popping to my “mum and dad’s house”, then break down as I’d realise how redundant that term now was. Different days would lead to different emotions, as I moved through loss, anger, and feeling bereft. The day before the funeral was perhaps my lowest point; I felt hollowed out, knowing I could put it off no longer and thinking that in a day’s time my dad would finally be gone for good. The following week I returning to work; too soon, I now believe. I dreaded going in almost as much as I dreaded the funeral, and during a particularly busy hour I pretty much went to pieces, the office walls tumbling in around me.

Feelings of loss turn into a feeling of having lost, and while not exactly sorted I’m more or less adapted to the new reality now. I still hate going into work, but now it’s for all those old, boring reasons, plain old job dissatisfaction; to that extent I am back to normal. It jars less, too, referring to my dad in the past tense – although the fact that it jars less does still jar – and I am gradually getting accustomed to having joined that legion of people who begin sentences with something like “I remember once, while my dad was alive…” Many things don’t change; all my memories are still intact, I still have all those photos, it’s just that neither can ever be added to. Much of the time it still doesn’t seem quite real; it’s far easier to imagine that my dad just happens not to be here right now than to accept that he’ll never be here again; in that regard the funeral wasn’t the end of anything, as I can still happily assume him tucked away safely at home with my mum, merely a phone call away. Then I’ll be thinking about something like my daughter’s forthcoming third birthday party, planning ahead and visualising him being there as clear as day, large as life…and then I’ll heave a heavy sigh.

But I can still hear my dad’s voice in my head all the time; when I watch the match, if I pop to the shops, as I listen to the radio, especially when I hear the news. I can still anticipate his fury at the latest proposals from the government, his despair at the latest announcement from “that Gordon Brown”. While I’m unable to confirm what it is my dad thinks, let’s face it; I know. I’ve lost the person whose wrong-headed political views were always so close to hand. Wherever he is now, he’s no doubt found some sort of enlightenment and realised that in all of our many arguments I was right all along. Me, I’m going to have to find another locked door to push against. I guess this old blog could come in handy after all; so please don’t hesitate to hang around here and tell me that I’m talking bollocks. You’ll be fulfilling a vital service.

Of course, that would involve me actually writing something here, and I will, in a bit. But when I do I will still write from time to time about my father, when appropriate and fitting, as I have done many times before. In this way his story has not died, not while his loved ones still live. Yes, it’s now time to look forwards, but while my dad’s influence still remains, as strong as ever, I think he still has his part to play.

IV: Reveille
from A Shropshire Lad by A E Houseman

Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.

Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

Up, lad, up, ’tis late for lying:
Hear the drums of morning play;
Hark, the empty highways crying
‘Who’ll beyond the hills away?’

Towns and countries woo together,
Forelands beacon, belfries call;
Never lad that trod on leather
Lived to feast his heart with all.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.

Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;
Breath’s a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey’s over
There’ll be time enough to sleep.