The Uncertainty Principle

2008-04-14T15:14:00.003+00:00

As you've probably guessed...

This blog is dead. It's not you, it's me.

I am alive and well and twittering. Follow me!

2007-02-06T14:30:00.000+00:00

Maybe you'd go away and never call / And a taste of honey is worse than none at all

You know me. I'm not one to make judgements about the way people live. What consenting adults do in their own free time is a matter for them. I'm not trying to deride anyone here, merely highlight a past time that I was not previously aware of.

Last Thursday night I was making small talk with a guy, about 10-15 years older than myself who I didn't know very well. I knew he was born in Southwark and worked in IT. I was struggling for small talk. A nice guy, he makes it easy for me and announces that the weekend started for him that night, as he was off work on Friday.

"Good work!" I said, chuffed with his feeder line. "What are you up to?" I followed the framework he offered.

"Oh me and a few mates are heading down to the Forest of Dean to going LARPing. Gonna be coool. We're gonna be part of the monster crew running around in the cave system down there. Going to be a laugh."

"Excuse me? Larping?"

That's right readers, LARPing. Had anyone else heard of this?

For the rest of the tube journey I became obessed with finding out as much about LARPing as possible. On my train home I jotted down as many of the terms as I could remember resolving to look them up when I had a moment. I say 'look them up' as a proxy for 'google and wikipedia the hell out of them'. But you had already grasped that.

So. Larping. A cross between Dungeons and Dragons and historical re-enactment. An excuse -but not a very good one- for grown men and women to dress up and beat eachother up with fake Elvish swords.

My colleague's membership of the 'monster crew' references his role as a functionary of the game, building the narrative, moving props around behind the scenes, and being cannon fodder for the paying participants.

As with so much of this Science-fiction and fantasy role-playing world, the charm for me stems from the baffling complexity of the theory and unnecessary rigour of the preperation and rule making, juxtaposed with the somewhat amateurish costumes, and I imagine, fairly shambolic actual delivery of the games themselves.

Like I said, I am now getting increasingly fascinated by all of this. How do they sustain the role-play? What happens? How does the fighting actually work? I didn't want to ask too many queries of my tube companion, just in case he mistook by curiousity about LARPing in general for an interest in participating myself.

Internet to the rescue.

Many LARPs utilize some sort of game system that promotes the growth of a
character, to maintain player interest. Some LARPs use a point system, where a
player is awarded points based on attendance of events; s/he can apply these
points to his/her character to provide growth and mastery of the character's
chosen traits. Advancement might be in the form of a "level-based" system, where a character starts at level one and advances levels using awarded points. It might also be a skills-based advancement, with no measurable increments, where a character uses points to simply acquire more traits - wikipedia
The Lorien role playing System combat rules provide a quick and effective method of resolving live combat with a minimum of interruption to the flow of the game. The combat system is generally self-policing. This is to say that it is the players themselves who are primarily responsible for taking their hits and for taking the reasonable care not to hurt one another. Head hits are generally discouraged, and all blows must be pulled to reduce the force of impact...With the exception of some total body or special creatures, all characters have six body locations. These are the head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg and right leg. Each body location has a single hit. The number of hits a location has can be increased through skills, magic, items and special powers.... - Lorien Trust

Every time your character is hit on a body location you should deduct one hit from the armour on that location (provided that you are wearing a phys-rep for your armour and have the skill enabling you to use it). If you are struck on an unarmoured location, or on a location covered by armour with a current armour value of zero, you should deduct one hit from the location struck. If your character is hit on a body location by an arrow, a bolt or a quarrel fired from a bow you should deduct one hit from the location struck whether or not that location is armoured. If a body location is reduced to zero hits it is rendered unusable. - Lorien Trust

My favourite bits of the Lorien Trust's comprehensive rules and guidance is on spellcasting.

All spells have a vocal and action component. The vocal components of a spell
must be in English and must be as similar as possible to those printed below.
The only exceptions are spells or channelling effects that must be cast over a
period of time (for example ten seconds). The vocal component of these spells
and effects may be anything the caster wishes, but must end with the vocal
printed below. All magic and channelling requires that nothing be held in the
casting hand. This hand is used to tear the held power card and if required, to
point at or touch the target

So, in reality, you have to tear up a piece of paper and yell things like "By the power of the dark Ancestors I wound you!"

I presume these sort of events don't usually attract spectators. But check Youtube. In the world of live action role play as in so many other realms of life, the Germans run tingz.

2007-01-30T16:43:00.000+00:00

People say believe half of what you see, son, and none of what you hear / I can't help being confused / if it's true please tell me dear?

Amazon reviews are all well and good, but do you use them? I mean, have you come across a book, a 'listmania' list, an album, or even, god bless you, a 'video game' and been swayed by reviews.

I can think of two examples where I have been. Firstly, in the same way that i'd listen to an 'ask the audience' answer or the results of a mori poll. Don't necessarily do as they say, but use them as a useful barometer of opinion. Secondly, as an outrageous bit of ex post facto rationalisation when it is the end of the month and the only way I can justify an amazon purchase to myself is by arguing that so many other people think it is excellent that I must be missing out.

My new past-time: collecting amazon reader comments from books and albums I've read or thought about reading / buying.

"OK but songs not really good enough"
- amazon.co.uk review of Marvin Gaye's I want you.
"...there are entire chunks that just went right by me. For example, I am still not completely sure whether or not the male Quentin had sex with his sister Caddy, and if maybe he was her daughter Quentin's father (why else would she name her daughter after her brother?), or how exactly Benjy was castrated. And overall, I am simply not that impressed with the book." - amazon.com review of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury
"Life on college campus...I liked the sports." - amazon.com review of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons
"Plenty of potential, but Jon Ronson came across as such a whining geek on his TV show that I'll never read anything by him again." amazon.co.uk review of Jon Ronson's Them.

2006-12-18T15:38:00.000+00:00

I crept out last night behind your back / The little they know might be the pieces I lack

For those that haven’t seen it yet, m’colleague TUPnews has posted his highlights of New York Times Magazine “ideas” issue 2006.

Inspired by this, here are my own offers for ideas and concepts which I think will make it big over the festive period and well into next year.

Withdrawal symptoms

In which individuals who usually maintain a close watch over their personal finances lose all notion of their actual bank balance. A phenomenon attributed to excessive use of debit cards in shops and pubs and increasingly long queues at fewer and fewer cash points meaning less frequent visits to ATMs and more consumers ‘feasting’ rather than ‘nibbling’ at their stash.

The Oppenheim Principle

Whereby, averagely attractive males suffer a revolution in rising expectations after continued success with a more attractive girlfriend. After several happy months insulated from the realities of single life, they trap themselves in a fallacious understanding of their opportunity cost, “Well, if I am managing to successfully date X; imagine who I could be pulling if I was single?”. By the time the sufferer realises dating X was an aberration rather than a sustainable change in his fortunes, it is usually too late.

Thierry Ennui (hat-tip to Marty for this title)

In which talented and flamboyant foreign players deliver a consistently below-par performances because they have either become bored of the Premiership or have not yet adjusted to the workmanlike nature of the English game or their position within the squad.

Café bar outliers

In which the few tall men in a standing party at noisy bar or club are restricted to talking amongst themselves. The background noise and physical distance from the shorter female companions combine to prevent them hearing m any conversation below the median height of the ears and mouths of the rest of the party. Some outliers try and mediate against this risk by leaning in at regular intervals with an irritating “what was that you were saying about Sandra?”, but they are not fooling anyone.

Ad hoc marketing

Whereby PR types and advertisers get thoroughly bored of intelligent cause-related marketing strategies and clever-clever product tie-ins (like Gordon’s Gin for Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen nightmares), and instead take their inspiration from internet pop-up adverts for nonsensical and non-sequitur promotional linkages. E.g. “shoot all the ducks to win a camera phone”.

Golingo

In which the inevitable surge in popularity of the ancient strategy game of Go permeates popular discourse. E.g. football commentators describe a two-on-one attack by central midfielders on goal as the defensive team being held in atari. The phrase ‘taking liberties’ is widely used to describe what happens when someone new moves into the spare room in a shared house.

2006-12-12T13:15:00.000+00:00

Where are we from? NORTH WEEZY! / How do we make money? REAL EASY!

So my flat was okay. This is a frank relief.

My girlfriend phoned me at work on Thursday lunchtime and let me know that she had just seen on the Yahoo news front-page that there had been a hurricane in Kensal Rise.

Her tone was more “The funniest things happen in that London of yours”, than “Come quick! There’s been an accident at the plant!” I had a gander on BBC news and see that yes, there had indeed been a tornado, all up in my endz.

At this stage I didn’t know whether to feel more surprised that,

1. My girlfriend gets her news from Yahoo
2. a tornado had hit Chamberlayne road, which my road connects with.
3. Yahoo news was bang on the money.

As more camera phone pictures were uploaded to BBC news throughout the day I didn’t know whether to be more surprised by:

1. The havoc caused to homes within a couple of hundred metres of where I live.
2. the sheer number of people who were at home at 11:30am on a weekday and ready to be vox-popped by the BBC.

By mid-afternoon I was slightly concerned that I might be homeless and would arrive back in NW10 to see the living room from the street. I reluctantly cancelled my pub-quiz plans, and tried to head home, which took me an age.

The walk home from Kensal Green station was rather novel. I imagine my trepidation was similar to that of a parent returning to the family home after a weekend away with the suspicion that their adolescent children had held a party in their absence. The nearer I got to my road the more evidence of damage there was. A bit of broken glass here, a few roofing tiles there. Noticeably more, and more substantial debris than the usual fried chicken flotsam.

I started pacing through a few scenarios in my head. Roof tiles? I could lose a few roof tiles, who’s counting? Maybe I could hack the loss of a window or two? I mean it would be a hassle, but I would get the time off work. But what if all the windows had had it? And Kensal has gone all New Orleans on us and someone is right now looting my Amazon rental DVDs? On the plus side, I thought, if society had collapsed I could make some profit on this, and loot the local cost-cutter for Transform-a-snack and Double Deckers. It would be harsh, like, because they’re a good bunch of lads, but needs must…

I was jolted back to reality of the then and there by the police presence (I mean, of course, the community support officer presence) at the corner of the streets below mine connecting with Chamberlayne road. Each were the same, a cordoned off road and non-plussed support officer.

The road below mine had now cordon, and neither had mine. I turned the corner and glanced up. Absolutely nothing. I got in to the flat and checked the windows, pausing at the front door, expecting a Buster Keaton moment where the door remains in place and the whole front wall of a house comes crashing down over him. But, instead, nothing. Later on I took a jaunt along to Chamberlayne road to see what’s what.

I didn’t know whether to feel lucky that my road seemed to be spared completely, or unlucky on the behalf of my ‘hood that we were the victim of the kind of event a Londoner has no real frame of reference for. “you lost your home in a tornado?...really?…erm…well done!”

I took an early night and resolved to feel lucky that God, the great player of the original Sim City in the sky had saved my green residential square when he had got bored and clicked on the disasters menu.

Peace in the North West.

2006-11-30T10:34:00.000+00:00

I've got a good face for memories

Rearrange the letters in the phrase below to give the names of three European capital cities. What are they?

THE RAMSHACKLE DOGMA COMPONENTS

You never see adverts for Mensa in the papers anymore do you?

I remember logic puzzles, brainteasers and the like, laid out for the Guardian reader with the promise 'if you can solve this you can join our club'.

Where are they now?

Further evidence of the collapse of modern society, or increasing democratisation? I mean, we have so doku now, don't we?

2006-10-04T10:47:00.000+00:00

I don't feel bad about letting you go / I just feel sad about letting you know

So, Labour Party conference over, we have only a matter of months to get used to the idea of Blair actually leaving office.

At least we can console ourselves with the kickass downing street exit strategy.

I hope that soon I will be able to purchase the below image on a t-shirt.

Tony + Konnie 4eva, basically.

2006-09-28T08:28:00.000+00:00

Since you took it right on the chin / you have lost that bright toothpaste grin

I'm going out on a limb here, but does anyone else get Alan Pardew and Andrew Fastow easily confused?

Alan Pardew:

Andy Fastow:

2006-09-12T15:27:00.000+00:00

Somedays won't end ever and somedays pass on by / I'll be working here forever / or at least until I die

Is there anything more annoying in Microsoft's Outlook than the 'high importance' and 'low importance' tags to emails?*

After coming back to hundreds of emails following a week away from work, surely one should be able to prioritise the messages according to their significance? No chance.

As per usual, the fault as often lies in the man, rather than the cards he is dealt. And in this context: the selfishness and lack of forethought of our office selves.

If, for instance, you have a deadline coming up and you want comments on a document before the end of the day, it is naturally tempting to flag it as high importance to emphasise your urgency, without resorting to red text or capital letters like some sort of crazed-fool. Fair enough?

No. The deadline may be urgent, nay, critical for you. But not to me. Of high importance, perhaps, but to whom?

High importance, low importance and 'standard' are far too crude a system of gradations for me. I am hoping they can sort out a sliding scale for the next edition of Office. Something like:

1. Urgent and important

2. Not urgent but important

3. Urgent but unimportant

4. Not urgent and not important

5. Important, but not to me

6. ephemeral, but of great interest to me in my continuing enjoyment of the esoteric and quaint.

*Some may claim that that smug helping paperclip is in fact more frustrating than this. I disagree. I'm warming to him. He helped me out a few months back.

2006-08-24T12:29:00.000+00:00

Somewhere in the quisling clinic there's a shorthand typist taking seconds over minutes

Who is your favourite ambassador? Sir Christopher Meyer? John Bolton?

Anyone for Shah Zukang, Chinese Ambassador to Geneva?

Last week, as you may have heard, he gave an interview to BBC news, tackling the resiliant canards of Chinese military build up and the Taiwan question.

You would be forgiven for thinking that a professional diplomat would parry and duck the issues, fight questions with rafts of meaningless information or just - because this is China after al l- refuse to answer at all.

Far from it.

Clearly off his mash on caffine, the boy Zukang went all out. Yes it was frightening, yes it was a barnstormer.

"Why blame China? … It's better for the U.S. to SHUT-UP and keep quiet. It's much, much better."

"It's the US's sovereign right to do whatever they deem good for them — but don't tell us what is good for China. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!"

And as if it was the 1930s again, and Stalinism was all the rage:

"We will do the business through whatever means available to my government.
Nobody should have any illusions on that. We will do the business at any
cost."

If you haven't heard it - I recommend you listen to it here; you can't get the cadences without hearing it yourself.

2006-08-14T13:21:00.000+00:00

Must be something in the atmosphere / Let me be your volunteer / I thought I heard a signal coming through / In a language that I never knew

Now the ceasefire in Lebanon has kicked in, I am hoping our collective attention can turn to an overlooked dimension of Middle Eastern reportage.

There is a particular issue that has been bugging me over the last six months or so, an issue cruelly underreported by the woefully biased British-so-called-Broadcasting Corporation.

Where has Jeremy Bowen's moustache gone?

He used to look like a windswept and interesting Dad. Slightly eroded by the sun, a weather-beaten, authoritative reporter with a glint in his eye. The kind of guy, in short, with a few salty tales to tell.

Check him out.

These days, he's looking like an emaciated Michael Winner.

Bring it back Jeremy. Bring it on back.

2006-07-27T13:24:00.000+00:00

Oh if the customers like it then they'll keep on paying / If they keep on drinking then they'll end up staying

Over the last ten years or so, government and others have been getting to grips with 'outcomes' . If, like me, your project, your work and indeed far too many hours of your life are spent on worrying about funding from government and how to get it, chances are you've had to bite the bullet and ask, but what's the change we're making?

The frown and wince that that is the standard response to that question serves an impressive unifying function. It spans the sectors, bringing together the bored civil servant writing a project initiation document, and the tired charity-worker scrawling out a funding bid in one massive exasperated sigh.

Government and loads of other funders are increasingly dissatisfied with funding people, projects, policies and organisations on the basis of number of events held or reports produced. Quite rightly, they want to know what change you are expecting to make beforehand and how you can demonstrate that once you've got the money.

So far, so splendid. But, if you were big-chief government man, how do you set the outcomes you want people to work towards?

The boy Layard has been all over the airwaves in the last year, riffing about how policymakers should focus on increasing "happiness" rather than wealth, prosperity, health or social welfare, per se.

Should happiness be taken into account? The consistently interesting Chris Dillow suggested what this might mean.

Now, Jamie Whyte lays it down. Introducing happiness as an aim of government policy assumes that everyone's idea of happiness is the same. Bad idea.

Some will say my greedy friends are making a mistake. Professor Layard, for
example, says they are in the grip of an addiction from which it is the
Government’s duty to save them through punitive income taxes. It is, of course,
tempting to think that those who do not share your values are crazy. But it is
also an alarming pretext for state intervention. Free men should fear the happy
brigade.
To have been born British is to have won first prize in the lottery of
life. This is almost as true now as it was when Cecil Rhodes said it. But not
because the British are or ever were the happiest people on earth. It is
because, unlike those happy Nigerians, we are prosperous and free. Which means
we have just about as much happiness as we want.

2006-07-12T08:40:00.000+00:00

Just because you're nobody / It doesn't mean that you're no good / Just because there's a reason / It doesn't mean it's understood

Trying to ease myself back in to the wonderful world of blogs. Yes. That's my preferred term to blogosphere.

A brief list of phrases that I can only assume are euphemisms for certain practices, that nobody has let me in on. I offer up,

Horizontal marketing

Oral History

Organ scholarship

'the prominent actress...' *

Anyone else?

* As in the Wikipedia entry for Salman Rushdie, which describes his wife, Padma Lakshmi, as 'prominent Indian model and actress'. (her screen roles have included: an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, Glitter with Mariah Carey and ITV's Sharpe's Challenge).

2006-05-25T11:09:00.000+00:00

We came here to rock the microphone

Once again, more evidence that there is insufficient emphasis on spin and presentation in British politics.

'And reality TV - Pop Idol, X Factor, Fame Academy, there's so much talent
out there. It's great to see people getting the chance to show their
potential.'

Grandad, what was Fame Academy?

2006-05-16T13:55:00.000+00:00

You can get money for blood / Blood money for doing no good

Theodore Dalrymple takes it to the range in today's Times,

I take it as axiomatic first that human existence is always to some extent
unsatisfactory, and second by that most, or at least many, men desire
transcendence in the sense that they want their lives to have some larger
purpose than the flux of day-to-day existence. Shopping and going to the pub are all very well in their way, but for people of larger spirit they are not enough.

Radical politics answers the need for transcendence and provides a
plausible, though erroneous, explanation for the existential shortcomings of
human existence. It kills two birds with one stone. It gives a transcendent
purpose to life, by allowing participants the illusion that they are helping to
bring about a life that is completely without dissatisfaction.

2006-05-03T09:36:00.000+00:00

I catch you taking liberties and they do not impress me

Taking a break from my break from blogging, as it were, to bring you some up-to-the-minute news.

To cut to the chase : my three all-time least favourite British TV drama characters.

3. Johnny Allen, East Enders
2. George Green, London's Burning

1. Sgt. Bob Cryer, the Bill

2006-03-27T14:55:00.000+00:00

Every Elvis has his army / Every rattlesnake its charm

With the end of the financial year on me, I have suddenly -through no fault of my own-been immersed in project management. I should have spotted this loophole in the job-description, but it is too late now. The grey beast of March has swallowed me whole.

Any enclosed community likes to create their own language. It breeds self-value and what might more foppishly called, 'bonding social capital'.

No harm in that, you might say. Professional groups have interests in common and it benefits all if they associate and bind themselves together in networks, strengthening the bonds of civil society. Don't get snooty. It is not only management consultants who have conferences after all.

However, when it comes to language, these ties are lengths of piano wire, they constrict and suffocate rather than build.

One of the first things professions do to insulate themselves is develop their own argot. This is not to facilitate communication but demonstrate their membership of an exclusive community and the value and distinctiveness of their discipline. For evidence see Human Resources, sociology, law etc.

A humble west country boy like myself can easily get lulled into affecting the language in a feeble attempt to demonstrate competence and maturity. A couple of months into managing a project and phrases I once would have snorted at now sneak into my own documents, emails and conversations.

Every now and then I catch myself off guard. An 'opportunity' has a certain a 'window', every project, its 'interfaces' and certain issues must be described 'in terms of' other processes, 'as the project moves forward'.

A friend of mine who used to work in parliament has recently moved into Public Affairs consultancy. He was genuinely surprised that people use the word 'stakeholder' seriously. Baring in mind this is someone who has worked for New Labour for some considerable time.

I was all like, 'Dude, I abandoned my opposition to 'stakeholder' years ago. It was a different me back then'.

2006-03-21T09:23:00.000+00:00

We'll ride still fired on the beat down low

As an enthusiastic consumer of junk food, I was interested to read the cover story of the current edition of Marketing Week.

It isn't my journal of choice, but I was bored of pretending to read The Economist when waiting for a train at Euston. And if you try and browse any of the music magazines, you end up getting in the way of estate agents lunging after this week's edition of Nuts.

Anyway, Nestle Rowntree are in trouble. In marketing terms, I imagine. So much so that Nestle may consider jettisoning the Rowntree franchise in the coming year, unless a slimmed down product portfolio can turn things around.

The story in Marketing Week came from an ex-managing director, slagging off Chris White, ex-head of marketing of Nestle Rowntree. The enbittered executive was criticising the Australian marketer for bringing his fancy notions from the world of ice-cream to the cut-and-thrust chocolate market.

In the ice-cream market, products tend to last for a season, so Nestle could happily go to town on new product launches each year. This doesn't happen in the land of chocolate. Not now, not ever, but especially not now. Consumption patterns are shifting, with people eating less chocolate, but prepared to spend more money on it. At the same time, Cadbury have been consolidating their products under the Dairy Milk brand.

Instead of trimming down, Nestle Rowntree had it large. Brand Republic lists the Nestle Rowntree new products 04/05 as:

April 04: Lemon Yoghurt Kit Kat (limited edition) May 04: Low-carb Kit Kat and Rolo editions May 04: Fruity Smarties June 04: Seville Orange and Caramel Kit Kat editions September 04: Aero Caramel October 04: Christmas Pudding two-finger Kit Kat March 05: Rowntree's 'Get real' campaign removes artificial colours and preservatives March 05: Caramac four-finger Kit Kat (limited edition) April 05: Aero Bubbles May 05: Milky Bar Raisins May 05: Strawberries and Cream two-finger Kit Kat (limited edition) June 05: Red Berry and Mango and Passionfruit Kit Kat editions July 05: Wonka Range (tie-in with film release) August 05: Smarties Hexatube August 05: Texan bar revived October 05: After Eight Straws and Quality Street Pizazz

According to the article, Nestle Rowntree are now trying to get a grip, concentrating new product offers in the Kit-Kat stable. However, there are concerns at Nestle that Kit-Kat brand isn't as flexible as Dairy Milk.

I don't know what all this means for me and the way I live my life, but I do find it considerably more interesting than the recent loans-for-peerages 'scandal'.

2006-03-03T16:47:00.000+00:00

This is the job that people die for / I hope you're ready for the next stage

"How are you?"

"Oh, fine thanks. Just busy. You know, work. You?"

"Yeah, busy."

Back in the day we used to boast about how much free time we had, now we define status by how busy we are.

There has been a well-documented and cross-nationally consistent growth of feelings of ‘busyness’ through the last part of the twentieth century. But there has also been an equally well-documented and very substantial long-term growth in leisure time in pretty much every country for which we have appropriate evidence. How can we make sense of this apparent paradox of busyness in a world of shorter working hours?

...the meaning of ‘busyness’ has changed in a systematic way. A hundred years ago, Thorstein Veblen argued that the prestige of leisure reflected its association with the daily practices of the dominant class – the owners of shares and idle money balances, and inheritors of property in general. It is possible that a similar degree of prestige is now attached to the relatively long hours of work that are a characteristic of the best-placed individuals in today’s society. Activity patterns that previously signified low social status may now suggest high social status.

Thanks, ISER.

2006-03-01T17:37:00.000+00:00

the division of Labour / divided the neighbours

Remember that stuff that was red-hot in 1997? All that 'constitutional reform'? Yeah, crazy times.

Well it is back! And now it is hotter than ever! You see, quite a few people haven't been voting. So the PoWEr Inquiry came along to set fire to a few arses. Their report has been published, and suddenly everything is all 'double devolution', 'democratic deficit' and the like.

Like most analyses, the Power Report assumes a couple of basic truisms. Firstly, the assumption that the radicalism and high political participation in Britain in the 1960s and 70s was not an exceptional period brought about by certain socio-economic and political factors, but the gold standard of popular politics it is our duty to emulate.

Secondly, it weighs in with the argument that 'many people feel they lack information or knowledge about politics', with the underlying assumption that this is the fault of poli-so-called-tics, and not individuals making an decision not to get involved.

I'm not against the enterprise. There are a load of good proposals in there, particularly the ones designed to bulk up parliament, which are most of them. They've also put in some stuff, just for japes, like 'limits should be placed on the power of the whips'. Brilliant!

But for a report which diagnoses a major social ill, the focus is narrowly set on parliament and local government, assuming both these institutions have a larger impact on public attitudes and mores than is actually the case.

Me? I am all for active citizens and direct democracy. Come on!

You have to be careful though. Democracy is not just a product that has been poorly marketed. People will always say that the reason they don't vote, just like the reason they don't eat more healthily, is because there is insufficient information for them. In other words, it is someone else's fault. Democratic engagement is brilliant, but you can't just set up new structures, beef-up parliament a bit and expect the kids to come flocking to become citizen jurors. Citizenship requires its own set of knowledge and skills. You have to actually invest in the skills of people if you want them to participate. Otherwise, it will only ever be the chuffs, gadflies and geeks who will get involved. You know the sort, the kind that already choose to go to meetings.

More than this, the whole drive for active citizenship seems to be grounded on a civic republican model. It is back to Machiavelli (which means that someone like me is all over it). Citizens are defined by duty: rights are contingent on fulfilling responsibilities. As individual citizens get more involved in governance, risk and responsibility is shared between the citizen and the state.

So far, so splendid. But, when civil society developed in most European countries in the eighteenth century, it emerged as a distinct space in which people could debate and discuss stuff, separate from the state and not as a way of getting people more engaged in decision making. In other words, far from boosting participation in formal politics, civil society was founded on the 'the right to be left alone'. This undervalued concept is in direct conflict with the whole PoWEr agenda.

People shouldn't be disenfranchised because they lack the voice or skills to participate. But it doesn't follow that the only way to have a democratic culture is when everyone is involved in everything. High levels of political involvement usually occurs during periods of strife, flux and social tension. Maybe we should celebrate apathy a bit more, and argue that there is something noble in sitting around in your pants, eating crisps and watching Bergerac.

2006-02-20T17:15:00.000+00:00

A monkey stole my face / took me down to another place / now I am leader of their race

I don't know about you, but I glossed over the 'face transplant' story from a few weeks ago.

This is not to say that I ignored it, I just didn't take it all in. I read the headlines, looked at the diagrams, and thought 'Great, a feel-good-about-medical-science-story' and continued with the important staring I have been doing recently.

The thing is I already feel damned good about medical science, (it is fantastic!). So, I reasoned, I was only going to get so much mileage out of any news article on the face transplant.

It is only now that I learn why the transplant was needed in the first place. Did everyone else know the event that led to it? Am I in a minority of one? The only person who didn't know that,

Mrs Dinoire lost her nose, both lips and her chin after she was mauled by
her pet Labrador while she slept in June last year. The dog was later put down,
against the family's wishes.

Isabelle Dinoire took some sleeping pills, fell asleep on her sofa and woke up to find her pet dog had eaten her face off.

Yes. Her dog ate her face right off.

Can someone explain how this element of the story was not a red-top news extravaganza in itself?

Man Alive! what's happening with the world? Do the laws of nature still apply?

Man's best friend has turned against us, will life ever be the same again?

It is in times like this that I am reminded of the Simpsons' episode where Aunt Selma marries Sideshow Bob. Asked where she got her money from, Selma explains, 'I bought shares in Mace just before society collapsed'.

2006-02-17T09:20:00.000+00:00

The movies save on conversation / And the TV saves on sight

Like many, I found the whole controversy surrounding those Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad rather depressing. However, For me personally, there were some silver linings to this particular cloud.

I was secretly delighted that my close friends -usally so quick to point out any feeble resemblance - missed a trick.

That suicide-bomber impersonator / Bedford-based drug dealer, Omar Khayam (22), looked like an Asian me. Look!

Thus Mr. Khayam joins that exclusive club of people who I have looked a bit like.

For reference, other members include,

Me at age 10: Woody Allen, (though this was largely an attack from my big brother, who made the accusation when I had to quickly get a replacement pair os specs from Specsavers at short notice when I broke my normal pair before a family holiday. My emergency pair of glasses had thick brown plastic frames)

me at age 11-12 : Cliff Richard, apparently.

me at age 13: Skelator

me between the ages of 14-16: Mark Lamarr

me at the ages of 17-20: New Zealand cricketer Daniel Vettori and / or the lead singer from Semisonic. (Looking back on it, this was probably my prime, I won't see those kind of days again).

Age 22/3:Trevor Horn.

Brilliant.

2006-02-09T18:08:00.000+00:00

Put the book back on the shelf / I know the company you keep

I am working like a fiend at the moment.

Today, I travelled back from Sunny Norwich on a train. At Ipswich, a posse of six thesps got on. Noisy and ostentatious conversation flooded the carriage. It transpired that it was some sort of outing to the West End by a delegation from a stage School. The two elders were drama teachers, retired treaders-of-the-boards, both. Their wards were upper middle class sixth form drama students - the boys all neatly moussed hair, short scarves and studiously dropped 'g's.

I am not usually good at eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers, but today I couldn't avoid it. I was caught in the crossfire.

I warmed to the two camp pedagogues immediately. The first one began proffering one of the students some unnecessarily loud insights on how to get an agent, 'You know Freddie, what you need to do is get 'Contacts', Y'know, that one that lists all the agents, and just fire off letters to them all, offering them your show reel - you might get a nibble'. Priceless.

As the journey progressed, they tired of their set pieces, the gentle ribbing of their students, and got down to the brass tacks: bitching about professional actors. I offer their judgements up for public consumption.

Apparently, lots of professional actors arn't actually very good.

Daniel Day-Lewis is an "An extraordinarily mixed-up kettle of fish....Those Hamlet stories are very worrying, no?"

Anton Lesser too was condemned by my carriage-buddies. The older drama tutor had once appeared in a TV production in which the character Lesser played had a hump. Though according to these guys, he cut up rough in make-up and argued that he could just bend his back a bit for the role. His case was sealed by the other tutor,

"I once described Lesser to someone as a short David Essex".

2006-01-25T17:40:00.000+00:00

Every rave is so predictable / and I don't mean the tunes we listen to / word gets out of what I did and what I didn't do / so here's what is and what isn't true

While m'colleague TUPNews is drifting off to an exotic slide show in the function rooms of lavish hotels, I'm shivering in cold halls, huddling round an OHP for warmth, getting my knowledge on.

There's a lot to learn. Evidently. I am pretty much on lockdown for the rest of the week, getting through as many presentations as I can eat.

I am not a natural doodler. When I get an idea that I want to capture, I scribble it down in the margin, and mark it for my attention with an emphatic rectangular boarder. In my mind, I would return to all of these later, and with a glass of brandy in one hand and rueful smile on my face I would plot out a million dollar business plan. If I am feeling risque, these lumpish boxes of text are accessorised with arrows, question marks or asterisks. Though this is only when I feel the need to pretend to myself that these thoughts are somehow part of a greater whole, something substantial. They are not.

These bits of self-regarding margin banter always remind me of that ancient papyrus note discovered by Egyptian archaeology. You know the one? It's always used as an example of brevity. It reads:

Appollonius to Zeno.Greeting. You did right to send the chickpeas to Memphis. Farewell.

Neat and apposite, clear and simple. I'd be delighted if that was my own little footnote in history.

Sadly, the longer the day, the less work related and the more discursive my peripheral jottings become. The margin becomes a holding bay for the flotsam.

"We Bless the notes in margins", sings Darren Hayman in Hefner's 'China Crisis',"... in the books from the libraries / they tell us what to feel / when to love and how to heal". My notebook bloody doesn't. My margin notes say:

What was it like to ride a penny farthing?

(Not much additional explanation required here)

no cream cracker adverts on TV?

(They go brilliantly with cheese and cost just 20p in the Supermarket. Buy.Buy. Buy.)

And:

The housing market = a tiresome oaf.

Yes, I hate the housing market. Somewhat unoriginally, this is because I can't imagine being able to afford a house before I am 40. More importantly though, I hate the way that just because our economy rests on home ownership, we all have to go on about them and their sodding 'market'. Do I care if the fundamentals are sound? Ha! I don't even know what the 'fundamentals' are!

Here, we make the classic mistake of confusing what is important with what is interesting. Since when did high house prices become an indicator of anything good? I understand that given that so many people own them, it is good that they increase rather than decrease in value, but unless you want to move from Fulham to South Yorkshire, you're never going to realise that value. Okay, Okay. I am overstating my case.

But high house prices are always included in the basket of indicators for an area with a high quality of life. When, in practice, it means for the money of a two bed house in Yorkshire, you can squeeze into a bedsit in Camberwell.

Note to self: buy a notebook.

2006-01-05T09:39:00.000+00:00

A girl with a trick and a man with a calling / Trying to make a living out of your downfalling

The same issues that confront our public services - collapse of deference, rise of individualism, a desire for involvement apply in equal measure to the conduct of politics. I don't have all the answers. I don't have all the levers. The other parties... has [sic] a role to play here...The alternative is a return to self destruction, the perennial disease of centre-left Governments. Never let us fall for the far left's eternal delusion: that if there is dissatisfaction with a moderate centre-left Government this can be manipulated into support for a far-left Government. It results only in one thing. Always has. Always will: the return of a right-wing Tory Government....The test is to listen, adapt and move forward.

Tony Blair's Speech to Labour Party Conference,2002

Tony Blair's closest Cabinet ally admitted yesterday that David Cameron's new-style Tories pose a serious threat to Labour as the two main parties compete for the centre ground of British politics. [my emphasis]

Toby Helm, Daily Telegraph, 4 January 2006

He speaks and now it is so; our political culture is changed. All hail Tony Blair. The most successful post-war British Prime Minister?