Christmas Cheer, or not

Stories of seasonal goodwill are increasingly rare these days, especially ones that involve the US postal service, Santa Claus and legendary producer Steve Albini.
So prepare to have your cold, cold hearts melted by this joyous tale. According to the Chicago Tribune, Albini (best known for his work with Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Will Oldham, Shellac, oh you get the idea) loads a van with money, clothes and toys raised each year in a charity drive and dishes them out to cash-strapped families across the city. "There's so much money that it can literally save a family's entire year," Albini told the Tribune.
So why are we telling you now? Because The Man is trying to put an end to this seasonal giving, that's why. Albini knows which families to contact because all letters in Chicago written to Santa are diverted to potential donors in the city. But a change in US policy means that these names and addresses will now be blacked out on "Dear Santa" letters, which, according to the Tribune, means that Albini and his wife, Heather Whinna, "can no longer cull through the thousands of letters that amass each winter at Chicago's post office, looking for the neediest families".
The details of why the policy has changed are a little complicated, and as they involve an alleged paedophile in Maryland, are also not really in keeping with the Christmas spirit. What it does mean is the Albini and Whinna are having to look for ways around this problem in the hope that they can keep giving at Christmas. One word guys: reindeer.

...and they want to run the country?

Sky are showing footage of a stunt that the Tories have been performing on Westminster Green this morning. They called it the G8 race to recovery and had runners, dressed up to represent all the G8, ambling towards a finishing line. At the back the UK figure, wearing a Gordon Brown mask, staggered way behind holding a huge pretend iron ball labelled "debt". They were trying to make the point that Britain is the only G8 country still in recession and blaming Brown for running up too much debt.
Unfortunately, they seem to have got debt and deficit muddled up. Britain does have a monstrously large deficit (the amount it is borrowing annually to fund the gap between the amount it is spending and the amount it is raising through taxation). But the debt (the amount UK plc owes because of all the money it has borrowed over the years) is actually relatively low by G8 standards.

Tiger by the Tail

Tiger Woods has been complaining about celebrity culture in the wake of recent events and revelations.
To a certain extent - he is correct - all things being equal, his business is not our business.
However, things are not equal.

People pay a premium to attend events which feature Tiger Woods, with Tiger getting more than his fair share of those receipts

People pay a premium to watch events on TV which feature Tiger Woods, with Tiger getting more than his fair share of those receipts

People pay a premium to wear his clothes, carry his clubs, play on his courses

These people pay his wages and his sacrifice is...

Wake up Tiger.

Cluster Bluster?

A report released by Cluster Munition Coalition members IKV Pax Christi (Netherlands) and Netwerk Vlaanderen (Belgium) has found that 138 financial institutions worldwide still provide over $20 billion to the producers of cluster bombs.
One of the producers listed is Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defence manufacturer who amongst other things produce Trident, Hercules aircraft and Merlin helicopters - all staples of the UK defence forces, and hence funded by the UK taxpayer. I'm not sure what amnesty are actually trying to achieve here - yes cluster bombs are wrong but I find this approach to be misleading. They are quoting huge funding figures which are more likely to be related to work such as space exploration than cluster bombs.

The end of Whitehall

Back on politics already :-P

Tens of thousands of civil servants may be moved out of London in a dramatic downscaling of Whitehall under Labour plans to cut public debts and instil a culture of "smarter government''.

Leaked sections of a report to be published in a fortnight reveal that the government wants a review into the possibility of relocating some of the 132,000 civil servants and 90,000 employees of "arm's-length bodies" currently based in London and the south-east.

This has been mooted for a while so not really new and perfect common sense. I know our local council has been angling for a civil service department for several months. In this electronic age, the need to have the whole service collocated in London in no longer there, and especially with support services there is clearly a cost benefit.
It will also benefit the sites to where they go, providing a large beacon employer and additional support jobs around it. Places like Mansfield - which lack this kind of large-scale business/department would benefit greatly.

Big European Nights?

One of the advantages of following a Championship side is that you see the Premiership for what it is - a cash cow for the benefit of a few - it's not a competition. Derby may not be the best team in the world but they get 33k gates, have mainly British players and are very much party of the community. The league they play in is competitive and they play against similar sides - it's so much more interesting, than having 4 or, yes, 2 teams dominate. I'm from Glasgow so my heart will always be with the Gers but a levelling of the domestic playing field may be just what the Scottish game needs to rebuild.

Weddings

I have become bored with politics. It exists for itself, not for us. So I think I shall now be writing about life, and where better to start than the preoccupation of society with the dream wedding - that most exhorbitant of self-aggrandising exercises. These days so much effort is put into the day that people forget the basics. Is it any wonder that divorce is the logical end-point?

The best way to have a dream wedding is to concentrate your efforts and your energies on the marriage, not the wedding.

Think about the possible highs and lows of the rest of your life, think about how you can benefit from it and how you can overcome trials and tribulations that may come your way. See that together two are greater than one, and then start to think about "the wedding"

It's a marvellous day because of what it is and what it represents. It's not about the bling and the bubbly - it is about you and another person and the rest of your lives. Enjoy :-)

Apparently razor-sharp political comment comes from posting funny pictures of the government. Oh well...

It does amuse me that obvious Thatcherites decry the policies of the Labour administration which were ultimately based on the same ideals.

Why bother?

Have you been stung by exorbitant bank charges?

You're not alone - banks rake in an estimated £4.7bn a year from fees such as £39 for a bounced cheque and £28 each day an account is over its authorised limit.

But amid record-busting profits at the high street banks, a fightback has begun.

Consumers are winning back hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds in illegal charges.

 

All well and good but what of those who have paid their bills and managed their affairs properly to ensure that they do not go outwith the terms of their bank accounts? It seems like that knowledge and effort was not worthwhile. We could simply have not bothered. Can I have compensation for the wasted time and effort due to banks putting illegal restrictions on my account?

I thought not. Chavere ergo sum ;-)

Death

Post-Enlightenment thinking can't deal with death yet it is the only certainty we all face. Modern philosophy is based on empiricism and reason. You cannot define, categorise and explain something that you cannot fully report on. How is it after you die?

Dealing with the death of a loved one is looking into infinity, and an infinity defined by loss, absence and despair. There isn't an equation or a report that can deal with that. Ever.

You experience it relatively – in front of you is an infinite darkness, so what are you relative to that? Anything relative to infinity is nothing. You stand on the edge of a cliff above an infinite abyss and there is nothing inside you.

Your reason is gone as you can't explain this. There is no plan, no design, no route through this.

The only way forward is to step back from the precipice and walk along the edge of the emotional abyss until the infinity fades, a path appears on the other side and you can get close enough to that future that you can step across.

The one thing you cannot do, you must not do is let the emptiness consume you, because then you will float down into the abyss yourself. That is an easy path and A quick one. But there is nothing for you in that abyss. The future lies on the other side of infinity – an infinity that only fades with the healing of time.

Scorpions

The Scorpion and the Frog is a fable of unknown author, though often mis-attributed to Aesop. The story is about a scorpion asking a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion reassures him that if it stung the frog, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown as well. The frog then agrees; nevertheless, in mid-river, the scorpion stings him, dooming the two of them. When asked why, the scorpion explains, "I'm a scorpion; it's my nature."

It is often quoted to illustrate the purportedly insuppressible nature of one's self at its base level.

The government's flagship policy to revolutionise welfare by paying private companies to find jobs for the unemployed was in crisis last night as firms said there were too many people out of work - and too few vacancies - to make it viable.

Responding to warnings that his reforms will not work without major changes, James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary, has abandoned plans to announce the preferred bidders for the multi-million-pound contracts this week. This follows demands from the firms involved for hundreds of millions more in "up-front" cash. A crisis meeting between top department officials and the bidding companies was cancelled on Friday after Whitehall announced a "short pause" in the tendering process.

Colin Birchall, chief executive of Pertemps People Development Group, which has been bidding for eight contracts under the "flexible new deal", agreed that the government will have to release more capital at an earlier stage to satisfy bidding companies: "We need to review where we are, because we have a results-driven contract. Because the programme has become larger, the requirement for capital outlay from each company will be greater."

In a further twist, ministers have also been told by the industry that companies which decided last year not to bid for the contracts on the basis that there was not enough up-front cash on offer, may launch legal action against the government if it now offers more generous terms to existing bidders but refuses to start the entire tendering process from scratch.

Growing belief

The Bible is largely allegorical, written to make sense to cultures different to that of our own. Once upon a time it was organic and incorporated new knowledge and understanding, until such point as it was assimilated by those in power and became fixed. Hence in a more dynamic society like we have currently it rapidly loses relevance.
That however, doesnt mean that at it heart Christianity is wrong, and like most religions is a palimpsest of other belief systems which I think increases its validity.
I've often said I don't believe in God but I do believe in religion as a common set of customs, practices and general beliefs that hold a society together - and I think that does have a practical purpose in day-to-day life. The thing is - the more I delve into the heart and the underlying messages, I see that there is a spiritual core and that to me is increasingly what "God" is - not a supernatural being, but the essential element of the discourse. Our society is based on these beliefs so for it to exist, therefore so must "God".

When is enough well enough?

Has the time come for a revolution?

 

When the Government first bailed out the banks last year – they took Preference Shares in return for providing liquidity to the banks. Well – that was the plan. The problem with the preference shares seems to be that while they do not offer the Government voting rights in the banks, they hit them where it hurts – in their pockets by having a fixed tarrif that they must pay annually.

 

Well apparently that wasn’t enough to get the banks lending and the terms of the Government investment have been changed so that the Government now hold ordinary shares – in other words, the banks may have less control but they are now not obliged to pay a dividend. The upshot of this is that our Government’s investment and eventual repayment are placed further from us – the taxpayer who provided it.

 

This is out of control. Something has got to give.

 

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On Christianity

Religion to me fills in the cracks of the world that our knowledge and experience has yet to explain. Science has replaced it in that respect more generally and succeeds in answering the problem of "faith" by continually deferring the answer you are looking for. I don't believe in god, not at least as presented in organised religion which often has little to do with religion as described in the first sentence. But I do believe in religion as a common set of customs, practices and general beliefs that hold a society together - and I think that does have a practical purpose in day-to-day life. I was raised a Protestant and I think the values and beliefs that I learned in my youth continue to inform my life today, even if I don't actuvely participate in the faith. In fact the society we live in was founded on similar values.

This is A test

 

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