It's big...but it's not clever

My wife is pregnant.

I know, who cares. The knocked upness of my other half is, I am sure, a matter of supreme indifference for most people who fall into this site by mistake (perhaps led here by a porn search for lazy woman who stay in bed? Not that I'm judging mind)

I only mention my wife's condition to explain why it is I have been reading pregnancy magazines recently. Let’s face it; most men are highly unlikely to be interested in the (somewhat icky) details of pregnancy until they need to be. That's not to say that it is all boring; the whole breast pump business is quite fascinating - even if purely from an operational point of view. I mean really, how often do you get to see a cool mechanical device on the same page as a naked breast...except of course for car calendars, and men's magazines, and.....um I think I'm getting slightly off track here.

The point is I've been reading pregnancy magazines and, because I am a man, I've done most of my reading in the toilet. So I was sitting there the other day and, having finished the magazine articles (not all in one go you understand), I decided to read the ads at the back.

What I saw made my blood run cold.

There was an advert for pregnant woman's swimwear, offering suits, bikinis, wraps and...thongs.

Please, women of the world (yes Germans, I am particularly talking to you) hear me when I say - a pregnant woman in a thong is never going to be a good look.

Thank you for your time, I hope we can put this behind us and move on now.

Work harder, work faster, work longer (oh, and it would help if you could die younger as well).

I'm sitting here this morning basking in the warm glow that I get when I know that my government loves me.

In fact my government loves me soooooooo much that they want to make sure I'm alright in my old age by making me work longer before I can retire. Not for me a leisurely knocking off at 60, nor even 65 (as the initial rumour went). I can look forward to punching my time clock until the ripe old age of 67, although, given that I'm only 37, there's a good chance that the retirement age will go up again before I get there.

It's alright though because the government (a labour government mind) has told me that not only is this for my own good but that, according to their studies, I want to work longer.

There is a good reason behind this of course; the government pot is just not large enough to pay a suitable pension to the growing population. Therefore the only option is to make people work for longer and tell them to save more (how exactly is not explained). It hasn't been an easy decision for the government to make and to give them their due they have made every effort to address the pension shortfall. The first thing they did was to reduce their own overblown pension funds, recognising that they didn't really need a pension four times the average working wage of the public or free travel for life. They also upped their own retirement age; they can now expect to deliver after dinner speeches, at a hundred quid a pop, until well into their 60's. And really if they can make the effort to top their pensions up this way I don't see why we can't.

The government also took a good long look at its spending and decided that unfortunately the budget was just to tight to put any more money into the retirement pot. Not that they didn't try you understand. First they thought about taking some of the excess money that they pile into education, education, education; unfortunately even Gordon Brown had to admit that if they were to reduce the per head funding to less than the 5p they currently spend it might have a knock on effect on the country’s future. Similarly they couldn’t ban the TV license fee or the BBC might not be able to afford to keep running their wide selection of repeats, thus depriving future generations of valuable history lessons.

The possibility of using some of the funds raised from speed cameras, congestion charges and fuel tax were discussed but it was felt that these were better used to fund more speed cameras, congestion areas and fuel taxes. After all if the population were expected to work longer they would need to stay fit and ensuring that nobody could afford to own a car would allow them to get plenty of exercise walking to work. For the same reason it was decided to cut funding to public transport so as not to encourage slothful train and bus use. A similar keep fit incentive was encouraged by closing all the local banks and post offices forcing people to travel 10 miles to get their money out for free, or pay for the privilege of doing so at a local cash machine. While this brought in an additional £60m a year this money could not be used for pensions as it wouldn’t be right to give people their own money back. That would just lead to anarchy.

In desperation the government looked to their defense budget. Much thought was given to the necessity of keeping troops stationed all over the shop, but a quick chat, and a bit of a snog, with Bush soon convinced them of their moral right to save the world. Perhaps if they cut down on the quality of gear supplied to the troops? But then given that the soldiers were already paying for their own boots and desert kit this didn’t seem practical.

So then, there was just nowhere that the money could be found, perhaps the best thing would be for the government to spend a few million pounds on a campaign to encourage people to save more. As an added incentive the government made plans to crack down on company directors who absconded with people pension funds. Of course their power to address this problem was limited (they are, after all, only the government) but they did agree that it was very wrong that people could save diligently all their lives, only to have their money taken away when the company folded. Of course the government couldn’t make any changes to the law to ensure that people’s savings were protected, or that if a company went bankrupt they first paid out to the little people instead of to the managing directors. What they could do was ensure that the next time a pension company folded and the directors took the money and retired to live on a private island in the sun somewhere, that Tony Blair would be straight around to give them a damn good telling off ( and maybe ask for a small campaign donation since he was there).

Given that it is so obvious that the government cares for my best interests, why do you suppose it is that I am beginning to feel like Boxer the horse in Animal Farm?

BBC Optimistic Weather

Has anyone else ever noticed the BBC’s optimistic approach to weather forecasting?

When other forms of media are forecasting floods, hail, rain and doom, the BBC insists on taking the line that all is right with the World (or at least the English bit of it). I have been watching the difference in forecasts for some time and I think I have figured out how the BBC’s system works.

So for those newly arrived in the UK I hereby offer an interpretation of the BBC’s weather forecasts.

Speed (MpH)
Description (Beaufort)
Description (BBC)

0 – 1
Calm - smoke rises vertically.

God, but England’s a beautiful country isn’t it.

1 – 3
Light air - Direction of wind shown by smoke drift, but not by wind vanes

Summers that stretch on and on for ever you know.

4 – 7
Light Breeze - Wind felt on face; leaves rustle; ordinary vanes moved by wind.

Just like the summer of ’40 this. Back when our fly boys were giving the Jerry’s a bloody nose.

8 – 12
Gentle Breeze - Leaves and small twigs in constant motion; wind extends light flag.

‘Rule Britannia…’

13 – 18
Moderate Breeze - Raises dust and loose paper; small branches are moved.

Don’t forget those burn times when you’re outside today

19 – 24
Fresh Breeze - Small trees in leaf begin to sway; crested wavelets form on inland waters

Gentle breeze (lovely with all this sunshine we are enjoying)

25 – 31
Strong Breeze - Large branches in motion; whistling heard in telegraph wires; umbrellas used with difficulty.

Absolutely no point in taking an umbrella with you today

32 – 38
Near Gale - Whole trees in motion; inconvenience felt when walking against the wind.

Perfect weekend for a BBQ.

39 – 46
Gale - Breaks twigs off trees; wind generally impedes progress.

Good day to take the kids and Grandma to the beach.

47 – 54
Severe Gale - Slight structural damage occurs (chimney-pots and slates removed).

Ideal weather for working on the roof.

55 – 63
Storm – Trees uprooted; considerable structural damage occurs.

Now’s the weekend to get stuck into the gardening.

64 - 72
Violent Storm – Accompanied by wide spread damage.

Possible showers.

73 - 83
Hurricane – Air is filled with foam spray; sea completely white, driving spray; visibility seriously affected.

Ever considered taking up sailing?

The thing is, this sort of thing makes me wonder what the BBC response to larger things than the weather would be (not that there is any topic larger than the weather in the UK).

What, for example, would they make of the end of the World?

The latest forecast shows large outbreaks of fire and brimstone in the North of the country; so that should make temperatures pleasantly higher than usual for Scotland at this time of year. Fast-moving bands of plague have been reported over Wales; however as it is not a bank holiday it is unlikely that anyone will be going there anyway. In the South meteorologists say that we can expect to see a great deal of famine and pestilence; which they predict will reduce traffic congestion on the M25. Meanwhile the East can expect sporadic outbreaks of war with a possible spattering of isolated Messiahs. Otherwise fine.

A moment of clarity

Like most people I spend my days wandering around in a half asleep state, the normal working day coma under which we all labour. There is a school of thought that says humans have to exist in a semi-stupor because our brains are ill-equipped to cope with continual exposure to the harsh light of reality. If we were always fully aware of our surroundings then the experience of life itself would overload our minds.

Given all the trouble that just staying alive takes, it seems a bit unfair that our minds then spend most of their time blotting the experience out; but there you go.

To combat the issue of reality being too real our brains quickly process any new experience and make it ‘routine’. This creates two unique situations, one is that no matter how exciting and high adrenalin your daily life, it quickly becomes, for you, an accepted (and rather dull) version of normality. It is only when we encounter a new experience, be it bungee jumping or just foreign travel, that we feel ‘alive’ again. The other scenario is that our brains can occasionally be jolted out of their apathetic comfort zones by the most mundane things.

A good example of this is squirrels.

Okay, perhaps squirrels aren’t a really great example, but they certinally worked for me this morning. As normal on my walk to work (got to keep this Adonis-like body in shape somehow), my brain was just ticking over, not working too hard (it being Monday and all) when I saw a squirrel run across the road. Perhaps I should just point out here that back in my native New Zealand we don’t have any squirrels, so I tend to find them quite cute, rather than disease riddled hairy rats like the rest of population of the UK do.

In the six years I have lived over here I have seen a lot of squirrels, but for some reason this one tripped my brain wide open and I had a moment of great clarity where I thought, Jesus Christ, I’m living in England. How the hell did that happen?

Suddenly I saw everything in clear and stark detail, the world was unexpectedly filled with light and everything looked fresh and new. I felt the same surge of excitement and anticipation that I experience when I first get to a new country. Life suddenly seemed bright and full of adventurous possibilities. I breathed deeply of the crisp morning air and could actually feel it winding its way down into my lungs, energizing my body with a pure primal joy in just being alive. Then my brain said ‘Nope, bugger this, I’m going outside for a smoke’ and the feeling vanished.

Bastard brain.

In other news, the government’s controversial terrorism bill allowing suspects to be locked away for 90 days without charge (that’s suspicion of any crime, not just terrorism), was defeated in parliament...well, actually it was only reduced to 28 days. What a mediocre day for freedom…

Checkout obstacle course

No, I don’t have a store card
No, I don’t have a reward card
No, I don’t have a dividend card
No, I don’t want to sign up for any such cards
No, I don’t care that I will get future discounts
No, I don’t want any cash back
No, I’m not collecting any tokens, books for school or computers for kids.
I just want to be allowed to take my groceries and go home while I’m still young.

Honestly, I’m thinking about getting a T-shirt made…

(Un)Intelligent Design

Once again America is leading the way and it’s those crazy Ohioans that are right out in front. Or so some interesting science would have us believe.

I refer of course to the raging battle between the Titians of Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Despite loud proclamations to the contrary Intelligent Design (ID) is just Creationism wearing a slightly more sensible hat. The argument for ID is that life is just too damn complicated to have evolved naturally. ID says that Darwin is wrong, not based on any new scientific proof, but merely on the fact that his discoveries are ‘historical’. Unfortunately an acceptance of this colander-like thinking means that we can deem any scientific reasoning obsolete just because it’s old. So that’ll be the old school of gravity, magnetism and that whole ‘Earth round the Sun’ thing on the scrapheap then.

Knowing that outside of the USA support for ID is, to be charitable, a bit on the slim side, the supporters of ID claim that they want ID taught in schools as part of the curriculum on the basis that scientific objectivity is “not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased: an objective opinion.” While such an attitude is laudable and to be fully supported it falls down slightly in the case of ID as the movement behind it haven’t provided any science to back up their claims. None. Zip. Nada. The entire theory is based on personal feelings, interpretations and prejudice happily existing in a complete vacuum of facts and proof.

This is not to say that the proponents of ID haven’t published anything. To the country they have published a great many statistics pointing out how very much everyone else supports having ID taught in school. This is actually a great relief to supporters of Darwinism, because if the rest of the ID science, when it appears, is as flawed (some less charitable people might say underhand) as their statistical analysis then there is little to worry about. An example is the banner headline that reads -

’'91% of Ohioans Oppose “Teach Only Evolution”. (1)

Quite eye-catching isn’t it.

The little fly in the ointment here is how they arrived at this figure. The process went like this –

“Currently, the Ohio Board of Education is debating new academic standards for
public school science classes, including what to teach students about the
development of life on Earth. Which position do you support?”

“Teach only evolution 8%
Teach only intelligent design 8%
Teach both 59%
Teach the evidence both for and against
evolution, but not necessarily
intelligent design 15%
Teach nothing about human development 9%
Not sure 1%”

Total opposed to “Teach only evolution”: 91%

Based on this reasoning and given that ‘Teach only evolution’ and ‘Teach only ID’ both scored 8% the newspaper headline could have just as easily read…

‘’91% of Ohioans Oppose “Teach Only Intelligent Design”

Not looking so good now is it.

But anyway, believe it or not (given the rant above), I’m not here to try to upset the ID applecart. People can believe what they like; I just don’t think it should be taught in schools until someone’s done a bit of homework and come up with some actual science.

The thing is though I know, for an absolute fact, that ID is wrong. The give away is in the name itself – Intelligent Design. How the hell can anyone look at the world today and make any sort of claim that all this was designed by an intelligent being? What about the wars, what about the pain, the kid killers, the murderers, the rapists, the lawyers? What about disease and famine and crippled children?

No, no, no, no. If this world is anything it is the result of Unintelligent Design. Where’s the ID in old people being incontinent? Where’s the ID in half the world being so poor that they have to let their children die? Where’s the ID in my not being unbearably attractive to Nicole Kidman? People just walk along one day and suddenly fall down dead, previously docile organs turn on us and lead to our destruction, microscopic viruses invade us and cause our brains to melt and leak out our ears. This is not intelligent design.

But it is familiar.

Think about it, what else in common use dies for no apparent reason? What else is susceptible to attacks from viruses? What else needs to be constantly repaired and nursed along if it’s to survive?

That’s right. All the evidence to support Unintelligent Design is already right here in front of us.

It is obvious that we are the product of Microsoft Windows…and Bill Gates really is God.


[1] The Plain Dealer Poll published June 9, 2002. For the full report see -http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/EvolutionPolls.pdf

Toothbrushes

Toothbrushes are indicative of everything that’s wrong with the world today.

The thing is right, what is a toothbrush? It’s a pretty basic bit of kit isn’t it? It’s got no moving parts and, lets face it, it’s not like there’s a huge variety of mouth shapes out there. So why is it that there are so many designs of toothbrushes? It’s not like we need that many different types is it? It’s just that in order to keep making money the people who design toothbrushes need to convince us that the one we’ve got now is not as good as the one we could have.

It must be the worst job in the world being a toothbrush designer, trying to come up with a new spin on such a basic item. I mean, once you’ve made them different colours, bent the neck, straightened the neck, changed the size and shape of the bristles – well, what else is there?

You know what’s my favourite toothbrush modification? Non-slip handles!

Can I ask you something? How many times have you been brushing your teeth and your hand’s flown off the end of the handle? Have you ever lost control mid-brush and thought ‘’Wow, another lucky escape, I wish someone would make this thing non-slip before I have my eye out.’’

It’s never happened to anyone I know but someone, somewhere, has invested millions of pounds developing non-slip toothbrushes anyway. And that’s not even the worst bit. The worst bit is that there’s some poor bastard in a third world country somewhere slaving away to make me yet another piece of crap I don’t want or need. It’s no wonder the rest of the world thinks the West is fill of rich decadent arseholes when they’re scratching a living making that sort of tat.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going off on one about western guilt. Exploitation of the poor by the rich has always happened and always will. It could even be argued that the need for non-slip toothbrushes provides much needed employment opportunities for those less well off…although argued only by a complete twat obviously.

The reason that toothbrushes are indicative of the world's woes is simple. Of the myriad designs available they all have one thing in common. They all have large, thick (ergonomically new and improved!) handles.

When I am in a hotel room they provide the usual bathroom stuff, a crappy blunt razor, glasses wrapped in plastic, soap that doesn’t lather and…a wall mounted holder for my toothbrush. The thing is, the handle of my wonderfully designed toothbrush is too large to fit in the slot in the holder. Development of toothbrush holders has just not kept up with current toothbrush design. There doesn’t appear to be any connection between the creative design side and the practical, actually using the bloody thing, side

So, despite millions of pounds in design and development, further exploitation of third world labour and a never-ending perky advertising campaign telling me how lucky I am; my toothbrush still has to lie in the dirty, scummy water on the sink. That is why toothbrushes are the root of all evil.

There is a metaphor for life in here somewhere.

The simplicity of email

I recently received an email that consisted of a single line of text. Just your normal everyday quick little email note, taking advantage of the ease of communication that this age of modern wonders allows.

No big deal really. Except that on the bottom of this short message was this understated line of legal bumf.

NOTE: This communication is sent for and on behalf of the _____________.
However the views expressed within it are not necessarily the views or
policies of the _________. The unauthorised use, disclosure, copying or
alteration of this communication and any attachments is forbidden. This
communication and any attachments are intended for the addressee only and
may be confidential. If this has come to you in error you should
immediately permanently destroy it.
You should take no action based on it or copy or show it to anyone and
telephone the _______ immediately with any issues on _________ or any
other number provided in the communication. Please note that electronic
communication is not considered a secure medium for sending information
and therefore maybe at risk.
We advise that you understand and accept this lack of security when using
this form of communication with us. Although we have taken steps to ensure
that this email and attachments are free from any virus, we advise that in
keeping with good computing practice the recipient should ensure they are
actually virus free and should run current anti-virus software. Please
note that email may be monitored and checked to safeguard the ________
network from viruses, hoax messages or abuse of the ________'s systems.
Action may be taken against any malicious and deliberate attempts to
infect the _________ network.
The information contained in this email maybe subject to public disclosure
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Unless the information is
legally exempt from disclosure the confidentiality of this email and your
reply cannot be guaranteed.

Honey, does my arse look covered in this?

Pause for thought

Ok can we stop it now? It’s not big, it’s not clever and it’s starting to do my head in.

What ever happened to grief being private?

It started when the minute silence became a political point scorer. Now suddenly we are having a minutes silence for every disaster and the problem is growing. A minute is apparently no longer enough.

To demonstrate how caring and in-touch-with-the-people a government is they are now imposing two and even three minute silences. Parties are vying with each other to show who is the most sensitive by seeing who can shut up the longest. Ordinarily anything that shuts a politician up gets my vote, but these extended periods of silence do nothing but cheapen the experience and detract from the original purpose - to remember those who gave their lives in war time.

‘Least we forget’ – perhaps we should amend that to read ‘Least we trivialize’.

(On the subject of enforced silences can TV presenters please stop dragging out the moment where they announce the winner/loser/person about to be kicked out/results of the latest poll. It’s getting where most of a program is made up of supposedly (but not very) suspense filled silences. Stop it, stop it now).

Why write...when you can podcast.

Testing, testing. One, two, three. Tap, tap – is this thing on?

I’ve recently discovered the joys(?) of podcasting and, frankly, I’m a little concerned.

It used to be that if you wanted to moan, dribble or just generally subject your unfocused ramblings on the world you at least had to make a bit of an effort. Initially for most ordinary people this involved standing on street corners yelling at people. Writing remained exclusively for the rich and well educated. With the introduction of schooling for the masses it became possible for any Tom, Dick or Harry to pick up a quill and record their opinions for posterity.

Inventions came along to make this easier of course, better pens, bound notebooks, typewriters (closely followed by Tipex) and finally word processors. Soon everybody could note, jot and scribble to their hearts content. Of course it was still difficult to find an audience who might want to read your crap but then, with a heralding of angels, the internet appeared and solved that little problem. The point was though, you still actually had to sit down and make the effort to write what you wanted to say, hell some people even edited.

With the advent of podcasting all that has changed. Suddenly you can just talk, rant or rave from the comfort of your couch, pop it on the internet and, hey presto, instant global audience. The trouble is this easy approach seems to attract exactly the sort of people that you spend your time in airports avoiding, the kind that really really believe strongly in something (what isn’t important) and think that you should too.

There was a ray of hope offered by the large number of sites that offer podcasts on the subject of sex (imagine that, and on the internet of all places) but it quickly becomes apparent that listening to, inevitably, perky people discussing how fabulous porn is just makes you wish you’d spent your time downloading some pictures instead.

Actually now that I think about it, podcasting is merely the 21st Century’s standing on street corners yelling at people. We’ve come full circle folks, now that’s progress.