Do developers dream of agile sheep?

Circumstances being what they are I’m currently working in a very small team. That would be the team of one, starring Chuck Norris. There are some advantages, besides the ability to fight off terrorists with my bare hands, such as worrying less about reviews whilst maintaining quality. I still review; it was the memory of past conflicts that always had me worried. I’ve been lucky to have worked with some personable people for several years, thus the process was relatively untroubled, but have been around long enough to remember a few toxic environments; where failure was less an opportunity to learn and more a chance for one-upmanship and the establishment of hierarchy.

Somewhat behind the curve I’ve been thinking a lot about Agile, this despite the mention of daily stand-ups. I didn’t pay much attention to this element at first but recently it’s occurred to me that far from being a euphemism there are probably some who interpret this literally – who require it. Having no first hand experience I’m ill-placed to comment, but who’d have thought keeping a meeting on-point would require something so prescriptive? Certainly not me; anyone who’s been in a meeting with sales knows that standing up won’t help… though running away might.

However I’m still fascinated, I always liked rapid application development. It’s the potential of seeing it done well that grabs the imagination; to interact with others on a regular basis with constructive comment given and taken, driving the project forward, continually improving the outcome. Only I’m not sure how the more ‘robust’ personalities are encouraged to value others as much as they value themselves. Perhaps this isn’t in the remit; yet I’ve read a blog or two that hint at the possibility. Wouldn’t it be great if a methodology enabled better product and better people? Or should I just go and hug a tree?

HTML madness

I’ll have to stop this. Given blogs ought to be about content I spent a ridiculous amount of time tinkering with the layout yesterday. I think I’ve become slightly unbalanced; this is very sad but I’ve been having a lot of fun.

It started early last week when I discovered that you could create pages in Blogger. This feature could have been there for ages before I noticed but thankfully this time it really is new; new to Blogger that is, WordPress has had it forever. Typically I decided to style the page list control, for which I have to thank the contributors to the help forum for pointing out where to look, but it was unfortunately the start of a slippery slope.

It wasn’t long before I started to experiment with overlaying elements. First I wanted a static non-scrolling image and then I spent an eternity with some relative positioning of the ‘contact’ images; Twitter, Facebook etc. Relative positioning alone was troublesome as it affected the layout where the images would have been. Relative inside an absolute positioned element did the trick until I found that Chrome, my browser of choice, rendered differently to IE and Firefox; you’d have thought IE would be the odd one out. I got it in the end but it chewed up an obscene amount of time. One of these days I’ll learn to organise it properly but I’m enjoying the novelty.

Today I watched the football instead, like a normal person; though I can’t escape the feeling I should get out more. I don’t think the trip to the tip counts and if I arrive at work tomorrow morning wondering where the weekend went, who am I going to blame?

It’s anarchy

I’ve always thought of anarchy in its pejorative sense; as such anarchists were to be pitied at best, and at worse full of violence, a general urge to destruction and dangerous to the ‘common good’ – though I’m uneasy with such a term. Possibly an unfair generalisation and I am reminded of a conversation with a socialist activist friend who despaired at the appearance of the Socialist Workers Party at every demonstration. Some people, she explained, are full of anger at an injustice whereas some are just full of anger.

I’ve not a lot of time for people railing against a system without providing (credible) alternatives; thus anarchism came even lower down than socialism in my estimation. However I recently came across this quote from Gustav Landauer:

The State is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution, but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.

I like that. Anarchism, like socialism, would appear to have many sometimes competing facets. Gustav Landauer was murdered by soldiers one day after being arrested during the November Revolution. It serves to remind me that when I win the lottery, for which I’d have to buy a ticket, I must look to further education and the study of something “useless”. There’s nothing to stop me now of course, except time and a general weariness, I’d just like the money; though in some anarchist systems I wouldn’t need it... apparently.

I can see clearly now

Some time ago my old CRT television faded away and I ordered a new HD TV and Blu Ray player. I’d been waiting for an excuse, though my old friend rallied briefly before being switched off and dragged to the garage; where it will remain because it’s too heavy to carry any further. With my new boxes of delight I attempt to discern the difference between a standard and high definition picture; there is one, but it’s quite distracting looking for it. Now I’m in a no-mans land of indecision trying to decide between lovely cheap up-scaled DVDs and their “improved” Blu Ray counterpart.

It’s a perfect diversion from the real world which likewise seems undecided on what to do with me. That’s bollocks of course, though I do seem to be waiting for something; after which I will presumably move forward with my life. Meanwhile I put my head down and plough through the work ahead whilst wryly noting how much longer everything takes, longer than even I expected, when there are so few people around.

It’s proving a good opportunity to look at things that might otherwise have passed me by and I’m enjoying, if that’s the right word, the challenge; but it is very tiring. I miss bouncing ideas around, random Star Wars quotes, overhearing in-character discussions on the latest Xbox game, 5-a-side football, complaining to my boss, spoiler discussions on 24, arguing over whose turn it is to make the coffee. I miss my friends.

Half way to being the new Robin Hood

There's a great moment in Blackadder the Third in which Baldrick describes his new hero, The Shadow:

What a man! They say he's half way to being the new Robin Hood... he steals from the rich, but he hasn't gone round to giving it to the poor yet.

This was my first thought on hearing of the new Robin Hood tax campaign; which it is suggested would be the first tax in history that wasn't somehow passed on to the consumer. Such a thing isn't possible, the market will always adjust, but the trouble is that in this country the consumer is also a sucker; probably believing there really is a big stack of unused cash ready to be spent on good causes. This is to say nothing of his gullibility as to the causes that any revenue will support – in reality existing expenditure would get cut to zero as soon as this new source of funding was secured.

Whilst we may not be the customers of the proposed targets, the market has an astonishing ability to pass on the cost, from institution to institution, all the way down a chain of which we're at the bottom. It would be more efficient to prop up the banks with less of our money and tax us directly rather than indulge in all this smoke and mirrors; but then even the suckers would know what was going on.

An atheist in sheep’s clothing

Here’s the thing; despite what my profile may say, I’m probably an atheist. All this agnosticism is an attempt to disassociate myself from that rampant in-your-face element. Edward Aveling once said:

'Agnostic' was but 'Atheist' writ respectable, and 'Atheist' was only 'Agnostic' writ aggressive.

I get that. I don’t want to fight anyone and I’m not concerned with changing their belief, kicking out a crutch provides no satisfaction, being merely cruel. On the other hand, practicing atheists (for want of a better term) seem determined to give battle. Why do they care so much about other people’s faith?

The tenet that religion is the ‘root of all evil’ is a convenient fiction; a conviction that absolves one section of society from any blame. The reality is that our ills stem from a lack of tolerance; Christian to Moslem, Moslem to Christian, theist to atheist, atheist to… everyone else. I don’t doubt there have been terrible abuses, but if religion is culpable am I to blame atheism for the appalling (and more recent) crimes of Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and others?

Yes, Pat Robertson’s comment on the tragedy in Haiti was idiotic, as most of his comments are, but I find it interesting that Richard Dawkin’s response was less critical of Robertson than it was of those Christians who denounced the remarks. One might suspect that a Christian condemnation didn’t ‘fit’ and was therefore ignored as an anomaly, but of course his argument was that Robertson, unlike his critics, was being consistent with Christian teaching. You see Dawkins is like many of my hard-line brethren; in addition to only believing the one truth (sound familiar?) they like to interpret everything they read literally – oh, the irony! That must make for a terribly boring life, and one that leaves me to ponder yet again; how is it that some intelligent people can be so utterly simple? Bless them…

Would the real liberals please stand up?

Might I make a small request to the BBC? When it comes to reporting foreign politics, particularly in the U.S, could they try for a little more balance? I like Obama as much as the next person, I listened to his victory speech in full (thank you BBC iPlayer), but the love-in of the last few weeks to ‘celebrate’ his one year anniversary is a little over the top; as was the ‘flags at half mast’ response four years earlier when Bush won his second term in office.

The BBC would do well to avoid the simplistic ‘Republican equals bad, Democrat equals good’ message that it’s been pumping out, but since this has been going on for years I imagine that’s a forlorn hope. It reminds me a little of an idiotic article I read many years ago in The Guardian newspaper, in which they gave over a whole page to a portrait of the ‘typical’ Conservative-voting woman. You can probably guess the tenor of the piece, full of stereo-types more likely to be found in an airport novel than the real world. I wonder who the journalist was, I have no idea but I bet they’re now in politics or writing 'working class' drama for Auntie.

Likewise I’ve no idea what happened to the earnest young socialist who visited my school and whose only memorable comment was to question Margaret Thatcher’s femininity. It’s a common theme I’ve encountered all too often; when some liberals talk about the opposition, be they Republican, Conservative or anyone who dare hold an opposing view, the gloves come off. Women who don’t toe the line have something wrong with them, non-whites are portrayed as betraying their race and whites are inherently racist. So many labels; I’ve lost count of the number of times the BBC has used the term “black Americans” or “white Americans” – are they kidding me?

I really shouldn’t have been surprised therefore to read another crude ‘news’ report on U.S healthcare reform; Why do people often vote against their own interests? Reform seems eminently sensible to me, but I know several Americans who oppose these measures. I respect their opinion, they’re not idiots, they just happen to have a different outlook that no-one, least of all the BBC, can be bothered to explore properly. In the same report Drew Weston, an ‘exasperated Democrat’ is quoted as saying:

Obama's administration made a tremendous mistake by not immediately branding the economic collapse that we had just had as the Republicans' Depression, caused by the Bush administration's ideology of unregulated greed.

It’s an extraordinary statement with not an opposing view to be found. Indeed the story is so sloppily written it's not always easy to tell where the quote stops and the journalism begins. A balanced report might have pointed out that it wasn’t Bush who deregulated the banks, a measure widely held responsible for the start of our current economic mess, but his cigar loving predecessor Bill Clinton. If memory serves me correct, wasn’t he a Democrat?

Of course greed and countless other unpleasant attributes can be found all too easily in politics, but to be naïve enough to believe, and irresponsible enough to suggest that they reside solely on one side of the political spectrum serves no purpose. It's playing to the home crowd, it’s lazy but more than that it’s wrong. Just as conservatives need to stop throwing around ‘socialist’ as a form of insult, there are some liberals who need to be little more… liberal.

Just what is international law anyway?

Though I’m loathe to side with either Jack Straw or Tony Blair (particularly our former Prime Minister) in the Iraq inquiry, I have to admit I’m somewhat bemused by the question of whether the invasion of Iraq was legal. In touting this query I’ve heard numerous references to ‘international law’ without any mention of the precise law that is supposed to have been broken. International law is often nothing more than an agreement or commonality across existing states; where there is no common ground there is no law. Does anyone seriously believe the US under either a Republican or Democrat administration would acquiesce to a requirement for UN authorisation of military action?

The real issue remains how the UK government misled parliament with such spurious military intelligence. The ‘45 minute’ claim was quite clearly rubbish; my only surprise when I originally listened to the presentation in the House of Commons was that no-one expressed any doubt. In this respect the guilt lies not just with Tony Blair but the entire Labour party for being so compliant, though the Conservatives do themselves little credit having provided such poor opposition. Indeed the only party to come out of it with any standing is the Liberal party – and I never thought I’d hear myself say that.

Proportional (non-) representation

Imagine living in a constituency where your parliamentary representative isn’t the person who received the most votes.

Imagine living in a constituency that voted for an independent candidate not allied to any of the major political parties, who is thus prevented from representing you because being independent they have no visibility at a national level. Conversely a party that has minority support across the country aggregates their national vote and is ‘allocated’ a place in parliament. Imagine that ‘allocation’ is your representative. Imagine they belong to the BNP.

Imagine a Member of Parliament having to vote on a bill that is unpopular with their local constituency. Elections are near, you have a narrow majority as it is but ‘the party’ can ‘guarantee’ support in the form of transferred votes; side with your constituency and you’re on your own. Imagine how this will affect the decision making process.

All of these scenarios are possible with proportional representation; a system that favours the political party whilst disenfranchising local electorates. What many people in the UK forget is that when we vote we are voting for an individual and not the party to which they might belong. As such our representatives are directly accountable to us. The appalling parliamentary ‘whip’ system  is an indicator of what will happen on a much wider scale with the introduction of PR - one purpose of this system is to ensure an MP votes "the way their party wants".

I’d rather have a system where our political representatives vote the way we want.

Downfall

For the first time in an age I found myself snowed in and unable to get to work. It was 50:50 but a text message from an ex-colleague who lives not far from the office persuaded me of the futility in making an attempt. So I found myself at home with no remote access to work and had to take the day as leave.

I watched Downfall; a film I’ve wanted to see for a long time yet somehow managed to miss despite the numerous repeats last year. Though it’s a tremendous film, its real achievement is in portraying the various bunker occupants as human beings rather than unique expressions of evil. As the film critic Roger Egbert wrote:

...he [Hitler] was not a great man, simply one armed by fate to unleash unimaginable evil. It is useful to reflect that racism, xenophobia, grandiosity and fear are still with us, and the defeat of one of their manifestations does not inoculate us against others.

In avoiding caricature we are prevented from writing a line under this history, in humanizing the protagonists we are reminded that such evil could happen again; and this is what makes Downfall a truly great film.

It was a wild rumpus

It was a film I admired and could easily become a film I love. Where the Wild Things Are was made by people who remembered what it’s like to be a child; everything from Max’s relationship at home to his adventure with the wild things spoke of the truth. The wanton destruction, the picking of sides and the unexpectedly violent mud-clot fight; it was wonderful.

My favourite book last year was The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. I have admittedly not read much, something I hope to rectify this year, though I seem to remember saying something similar in the past. I have two borrowed so there’s somewhere to start. However as a warning familiar to many, never express an interest in anything specific. For Christmas I received three books on the Roman Empire, one on the Persian Empire and one on Ancient Civilisations. I can’t recollect the last time someone gave me non-fiction on a period subsequent to 1066AD.

For my favourite album there was slightly more to choose from. I’m not the music buyer I once was, there are no longer stacks of CDs purchased on a weekly basis, but now that DRM on online purchases is a thing of the past MP3 downloads are becoming the norm. I’ve downloaded on many occasions this year… yes, it’s a miracle. A lot of good albums but standing out was Tale to Tell by The Mummers.

It is the most uplifting magical music of an age and such a shock to read that the composer behind the group, Mark Horwood, had committed suicide.

A time of goodwill to all movies

I feel so ashamed, sitting in my ivory tower (cunningly disguised as a mess of a spare room) pronouncing on the stupidity of the general public from whom I naturally exclude myself... and then I decide to watch 2012. Disaster movies are my Achilles heel when it comes to good taste and I’m particularly vulnerable to the apocalyptic end of the world “we’re all goin’ to die” tale. An unimpressed colleague described the film as akin to being on an overlong rollercoaster. But despite the obvious plot devices, the naff dialog, the implausible escape from a seemingly certain end, the sense that one ought to be more emotionally involved when witness to the death of millions... Well put it this way; I knew it was rubbish but all I could manage was “wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee”.

It’s a film with a good cast that includes John Cusack (of the brilliant Grosse Pointe Blank), George Segal (a big name from the 70's) and Danny Glover (only two days from retirement). As mitigation I could suggest that they rose above the material but this would be to evade the truth. My work colleague described it as two and a half hours of her life wasted. I on the other hand will no doubt watch this ridiculous piece of rubbish again. Roland Emmerich flattens The White House once more and leaves my critical faculties in ruin. All I have to do now is enjoy James Cameron's Avatar and my journey to the dark side will be complete.

When I was king, I was a truly great king

From director Spike Jonze, the man responsible for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, comes his latest film, Where the Wild Things Are. Since I liked both those earlier films I have high hopes for this latest effort, indeed I’m counting on it to restore an eroded sense of wonder, if only a little.

It’s not that I haven’t seen any fulfilling films this year. I found the Danish film After the Wedding intensely moving; I saw it twice and cried both times, though that probably says as much about me as it does the film. I remember once watching The Elephant Man with my daughter and having to work hard at preventing her from seeing any tears; I’m not sure whether I was successful or whether I needed to be. Probably. I'll have to look into that.

But this film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s famous book promises something else. That sense of awe I felt as a child on returning from a voyage with Doctor Dolittle, the scene in Joe Versus the Volcano where Joe looks to the outsized moon and thanks God for his recaptured humanity, or the opening scene in Toys to lift my forgotten spirit and remind me of the glory of Christmas. Interesting that those two films are disliked intensely by a number of my friends and dismissed as mawkish sentimentality, though sometimes it seems any sentiment is regarded unfavourably.

Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect so much but I stubbornly refuse to let that dent my enthusiasm; every so often we need to be reminded that the world can be beautiful. Will this new film suffice?

Not waving

Some bad habits you never grow out of. Such as wanting something, not being sure why you want it, and then not being sure what to do with it once you’ve got it. Such is the case with Google Wave. I logged in, changed my profile picture and… logged back out again. The thing is I don’t have the time to invest and I can’t really think of anything to communicate. I do at least have one contact, that’d be the wannabe writer, the one who deserted me to go and do something more worthwhile instead and who it turns out can write a good tale. Perhaps he could make it up to me by collaborating on a way to hold back time so I can become only slightly adrift.

I am so far behind schedule; the number of constantly snoozed reminders has reached double figures, I see red flags all over Outlook and I’ve been off work ill. I still feel like crap. I’ll feel worse I’m sure when I run through my e-mail. For some light entertainment I may start the day by comparing the mail requiring me to complete my compliance training (ethics and some such) with that explaining the consequences of failing to adhere to the change request process as documented on the company SharePoint. One was undoubtedly from an external service provided to the company… one managed a firm yet friendly warning of what was required… and the other threatened the recipient with termination. Well you’ve got to laugh. At least that’s the rumour…

Hope

On Tuesday evening my daughter and I walked into town to see the Christmas lights switch-on. I wouldn’t normally indulge but children change everything. As a child I remember random moments of wonder and adventure, but over time they dissipated to be replaced with that thing called life; work, earning a living, the usual suspects. And then, unexpectedly, my wife and I discovered that contrary to previous advice, having children may be possible. Even then I was somewhat ambivalent; I didn’t marry to propagate the species, though listening to some you’d think that was the only reason to marry. But my wife wanted a baby and I wanted an easy life. That’s right; I wanted an easy life so we had a baby.

Eight years later and it remains the greatest moment of my life, or to be more accurate I should say the last eight years have been peppered with great moments. There have been trials too, health worries, job worries, marriage worries; life continues to threaten with maudlin regularity. I have many bills, little money and the vast empty expanse of the New Year to contend with, but I am armed with my daughter and the Christmases yet to come, together we remain invincible, undefeated... and I have hope.

Lies, damned lies

I’m spending a little too much time ‘task switching’ as opposed to ‘task doing’, but I suppose it’s better to be too busy. I like busy. Being able to see the value in your work helps, but it's not that way for everyone.

I have a developer friend who was once tasked with consulting and updating reports for another department of his company. It was all for a good cause, to determine their internal efficiency. Unfortunately it turned out the department had been taking the term ‘internal’ all too literally and, as if unaware of the outside world, managed to cut the customer out of the equation. Imagine your job is to take data from a customer, manually process the data and then hand it back. Not surprisingly the company want to know how efficient that process is. But the department doesn’t have the tools to record the time taken for data coming in, processed and returned to the customer on the same day; it does however have a tool that records the amount of data waiting to be processed that came in on a specified day.

Oh dear. The department reasoned there was no cost to queuing data coming in and queuing data going out, no internal cost anyway. Hence there was no need to ask for any engineering resource. When the company asked how long it took to process an item they may have meant ‘how long until the customer gets their data back’, but what they got was an answer to an entirely different question. How many customers did they lose? We’ll never know; my friend doesn’t work there any more. Very few people do.

There’s no place like 127.0.0.1

For the past fortnight I’ve been intermittently without a home to go to. Indeed home became so unreliable that yesterday I dropped any references and set about messing with the DNS, or to be more accurate trying to undo the mess that I created. There’s nothing more annoying than heading for home when the outcome is uncertain; and there’s nothing more anal than periodically clicking Home to check the result.

It’s only a temporary residence too. Google Sites has its purpose but mine was to build a website. I’m a little hazy as to why I wanted to do that but I’m sure given time I’ll come up with a reason. Not surprisingly, I have a random approach to establishing a web presence. I start blogging and only later grasp on the idea of addressing it with my own domain. And I’m determined to use a ‘blog’ sub-domain. And if you’ve got a ‘blog’ sub-domain then you need to have a ‘www’ sub-domain too. Don’t ask me why, you just do. Google Sites was an accident but it serves a purpose in acting as a placeholder. For a while my blog distracted me with a little HTML play, and then I remembered how I’d wanted to understand the various pieces.

Ah yes, maybe that was the reason. So now I look to the ‘Build your own website for people who ought to already know’ books and hope that I really can. Maybe email a few former colleagues for advice. Maybe I’ll use a few technologies along the way... and maybe I’ll even learn something.

All of this has happened before

So the hurricane came and went leaving a trail of devastation in its wake... completely untrue but I rather like the way that sounds. It was nothing personal; it was business though it still hurts. The axe fell in an unexpected quarter, the sales department... as you’d expect, I’m devastated. I’d almost convinced myself that this time, this one time, it really was going to be a ‘state of play’ visit; you’d think by now I’d know better.

Some cynics may suggest the loss of a sales department is no big deal, it’s karma for a lack of investment in product, but one thing is definite; if you don’t have sales people then you don’t have anything to sell. I figured that one out myself. The other clue was when the boss said “we’re not selling that anymore”.

It’s safe to say the patient is on life support and with no hope of recovery. We think he stands a chance of making it into the New Year but the prognosis beyond then is certain. Meanwhile I’ve entered a bizarre alternate reality in which I genuinely like the sales people who survive. Me and sales; who’d have thought it possible?

Since I’m old enough to have seen it all before and wise enough (don’t laugh) to not take it personally, I get on with what work there is; though having said that, due to staff shortages I’m making very little progress. I’ll probably get fired for that. I blame it on my friend and ex-colleague, the artist wannabe, who up and quit work the other week to pursue something worthwhile, rather than wallow in a collective doom and see it through to our inevitable and bitter end. Fucking writers, eh?

Sign o’ the times

We had a fire drill on Thursday. The last one I remember, a year or so ago, resulted in approximately 30 employees crowding into a car park whilst waiting to be counted. Yesterday we numbered seven. Still, at least we all got out safe… and our boss is visiting us next week.

Also in the news; I read a book and I’m thinking of reading another. The one I read was Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I can see why its polarised opinion and those not liking the book make some valid points, but they also point to the reason I liked it so much. I’ve missed reading; I should do more, much more. So I bought another but starting will be the key. I need a few clear hours to open with and then some regular time to invest… now there’s the trick... and our boss is visiting us next week.

Equality to equals and unequal alike

Plato, through Socrates, described it thus;

...a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.

Or as I once remarked to a friend;

The thing with democracy is that ultimately it’s about allowing morons to vote.

Plato’s ideal system, an aristocracy led by wise men that are (crucially) reluctant to lead, seems inherently dangerous given our understanding on the ability of power to warp the best of intentions - not to mention the scarcity of wise men. So unless we subscribe to this utopian vision or perhaps the benefits of a benign autocracy (and I’m surprised to find there are many that do) we are, for all its perceived limitations, left with democracy; though are these limitations really a weakness?

One might think so since the BBC have invited Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP and a holocaust denier, to appear on Question Time; their most prominent platform for political debate. However such people are a fact of life whatever the system; brushing repulsive individuals under the carpet not only disenfranchises, it’s counterproductive. Who can be persuaded the error of their ways by being denied the right to speak?

I can think of few people who deserve to be ridiculed more but a more constructive act might be to engage them in debate or, to use language his party would understand, debate the sh*t out of them. There are undoubtedly dangers; putting Griffin in a civilised environment may result in some believing the participant himself to be civilised. In addition I would hope the other panellists can avoid indulging in a game of “who hates the racist the most”; it’s a trap the BNP would be delighted to spring.

Yet despite these risks we must engage in debate; not necessarily because we hope to change minds, though occasionally we may, but because this is how a society grows. If unwilling to face up to its more unpleasant members then how can it be worth fighting for? An unchallenged society is doomed to failure.

Pay peanuts...

Hypocrisy; there’s a lot of it about. I’ll bet there are a large number of people receiving benefits in kind that are completely unrelated to their job. Whether it’s a subsidised canteen or gym membership, being able to claim for a television is no different - it’s just a little more expensive.

The current MPs’ expenses scandal has rightly provoked anger on the issue of "flipped" homes and the dubious methods for avoiding capital gains tax. However this fury has impaired the critical faculties of many to the point that any unusual payment is seen as suspect. If televisions and furniture are part of your remuneration then you have every right to make a claim; whilst unusual, they are an inevitable result of paying our elected representatives such a comparatively low wage.

The basic salary for an MP is £64,766, if we allow for a ‘London weighting’ this equates to a little over £56,000 outside the capital. It’s a lot of money but is it enough? This is the salary of a middle ranking bank manager, not one for a person who represents the interests of over 68,000 people; someone responsible for policy that affects every part of our lives and those of our children.

The UK has a first-past-the-post electoral system. Technically we vote for the individual we wish to represent us, not the political party to which they may belong. A Member of Parliament however is still subject to two often competing forces; those of the electorate and those of his or her party. This situation is aggravated by the large number of junior ministerial positions available that naturally carry an additional salary.

If we want people who truly represent us then we should be prepared to pay enough such that politics is more than a vocational choice for the well off. If we want people who think of their electorate first then we should pay enough such that any threat to withdraw party privileges has relatively little financial impact. If we want a simple and more transparent expenses system then we should be prepared to pay the going rate.

But if we’re only prepared to pay peanuts, we shouldn’t be surprised at the result.

Failure is your friend

I remember driving in to work one weekend to try and catch up, but on arriving hitting problem after problem; the result being that five hours later I appeared to have gotten nowhere. In reality of course I’d made progress since, come Monday and with all those failures in the past, I could move forward. I’m trying to use this as I wrestle, not always valiantly, with a VB script problem in Excel. I’m not a big fan of Excel, or rather VB script; it’s like being told to play with stickle bricks instead of Meccano. Why do the other kids get the cool toys?

This isn’t what I meant to write about, at least not directly. I guess I was reminded of these challenges on reading a terrific blog on the spirit of scrum. I can’t say I know much about agile software development, let alone the scrum method, and in passing I wonder where or even if, rapid application development fits on the evolutionary path. Scrum would appear to exist beyond the confines of a software development methodology, though this is only part of its attraction. I suspect I should read more of Tobias’ blog, Agile Anarchy, before passing comment, but I will venture to say that what appeals is its... humanity. I could be way off the mark but I’ve read enough to want for more.

I will doubtless be plagued by the cynical voice that warns I’ll never experience it in practice. Perhaps not, but a good idea is a good idea and anyway, just this once I think I’ll aim high.

Unpretty too

One of these pictures is of an ex work colleague and I outside his house, the other is a picture from the brilliant Norwegian comedy Elling; a film about two startled inmates released from a state institution and trying to make their way in the world. I am thus reminded in a most gentle way of how much I’ve aged. My hair used to be black you know.

Me, Leonard Cohen and the Family Stone

I edged out Leonard Cohen in a bicycle race last night. Just as I passed I could hear him singing “everybody knows the race is fixed”… but it didn’t stop either of us trying. Pedalling as fast as we could into a pitch black room, not nearly enough room, I can’t remember what happened next. Darkness and then…?

And then this morning I watched a Christmas gathering of The Family Stone, which was rather unsettling as the most sympathetic character was the uptight type played by Sarah Jessica Parker. The family itself displayed that worrying right-on yet vicious liberal sensitivity; God help anyone who doesn’t share their view of the world. Which is a shame as, though it was a refreshing reminder that unkind behaviour has no political or social boundaries, it also made it difficult to care for any of them. It was a little bit different but it had the potential to be so much better, which like the family made it annoying too. The Family Stone were mean. I’m not sure I’ll be spending Christmas with them again.

World cheers promised 25% increase in level of ignorance

World leaders yesterday lauded another ‘landmark’ announcement from Gordon Brown who, in addition to reducing the number of UK nuclear-armed submarines from four to three, has promised a proportional reduction in the number of people with a rudimentary knowledge of physics.

Whilst some have questioned the need for such a measure, arguing blinkers would prove more cost-effective, sources state that Brown has fallen under the influence of a shady group of neo-realists led by the enigmatic mad monk Alastair Darling. It is thought the Chancellor, whose eyebrows have yet to be authenticated, was reminded of the futility of removing nuclear arsenals after running the economy into the ground at a velocity approaching the speed of light. This near meltdown prompted the hitherto heretical belief that the knowledge of how to destroy ourselves might prove just as dangerous as having the means.

Emboldened with such a vision, Darling arranged a summit at a secret service station on the M4 where he met with the Prime Minister and Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Schools and Stuff… and Peter Mandelson, who they bumped into at the KFC. Several family buckets later they produced the Membury Manifesto.

In it is laid the foundations for making the world a safer place, or as Gordon Brown describes it, “a kinder, more stupid Britain”, by engineering a progressively less intelligent UK population through measures such as The Daily Mail, Sky Television and discouraging students from higher education. “The only way forward”, added the Prime Minister “is backwards.”

Shoot 'em up

A part of me died whilst watching Shoot 'Em Up, the rest of me wasn't so lucky. You know how sometimes you think you ought to give a film a second chance, perhaps you weren’t in the right frame of mind the first time out; there are also times when you should leave well alone. I get that it’s over the top, I get that it’s tongue-in-cheek, I get that some of the puns are deliberately bad. On the other hand it’s not often that you cheer the arrival of each action sequence for the sole reason that you won’t have to listen to any of the characters speak.

There was even a point where I found myself saying “no please… PLEASE DON’T do the BMW versus porcupine joke”... only my appeal was in vain. Michael Davis, the director and writer (so he has no excuse) of this entertainment was no doubt hoping to fool the audience, or at least those capable of rational thought, into thinking it’s a parody or perhaps some kind of ironic statement. I’m pretty sure it isn’t.

But if we must find something to praise, let’s praise it for the full-bodied Monica Belluci; she’s lovely. But what’s not to love about a drug-free lactating prostitute with a heart of gold? Monica uses her considerable charm in the film’s only worthwhile sequence, which manages to show some originality in combining the obligatory sex scene with yet another preposterous shoot-out. Yes it’s true; I did find that bit funny. Also we should commend the film on its length. At 86 minutes it’s mercifully short, but then anything longer and I might have become quite negative.

A perfect blend

Don’t you just hate reading a blog entry that’s no more than a flimsy plug for a restaurant that the blogger has happened to eat in? Well since you’re used to it, here’s one more. Blend Café Lounge in Thornbury makes the most heavenly beef burger and chunky chips I’ve ever tasted. The BLEND burger alone is worth a mention, but with the most amazing chunky chips it’s an unbeatable combination. I hesitate to recommend a place on the quality of their chips, it sounds like a backwards compliment, but you’d have to eat there to understand. Perhaps if I mention that they seem to have cornered the market on relaxed and friendly staff...

Paint the whole world

I had a frustrating day yesterday. By one measure it was productive as I learnt something new… eventually... but it wasn’t as quick as I’d like and I’m impatient to learn more. I was in work at 7.45am and, aside from a break for lunch, didn’t leave until 6.45pm. It would have all felt worthwhile if I’d figured out my LINQ problem, but a solution eluded me and I drove home defeated.

It’s usually enough to dent my entire evening though I ought to know better; experience, or advancing years if you prefer, has shown fresh eyes in the morning often does the trick. But I’ve always found it difficult to separate myself from work once separated from work, thankfully nature made yesterday evening an exception; I saw the most beautiful rainbow. I know that sounds ridiculous, it looks ridiculous written down but ‘beautiful’ is the only way I can describe it. Not dissimilar to this picture and possibly prettier, I could see both ends rooted to the ground and each clearly defined colour in the spectrum arcing over the motorway ahead of me. All I could think was to share the information with my daughter, knowing how excited she’d have been in the car with me, despite the appalling weather. I was on the M48 and it was wonderful. It’s not often you can say something like that.

…and my problem with LINQ? Sorted first thing this morning.

The National Health Service’s new clothes

I’ve been rather irritated by the current disinformation campaign of the Republican Party in response to Barack Obama’s health plans. As far as I’m aware there are no plans to create a National Health Service, so holding up the UK as an example of what can go wrong is highly suspect.

I’m equally bemused by the response of most politicians in the UK who’ve rushed to the defence of the NHS; fighting to proclaim their love is true, that their love will last. Love is blind. It won’t be long before one, probably over-compensating Conservative, starts singing to the tune of all nurses are angels and all doctors are God. Absolute drivel – though I’ll admit to having met a few doctors who acted as if they were God. I'm presuming those wearing the rose-tinted spectacles have never had to wait a year (sometimes more) for treatment, or been misdiagnosed with Parkinson's disease and only after TEN years had the treatment corrected; this happened to my mother. Nor have they been victims of the 'postcode lottery' of NHS treatment after moving 20 miles, and in the process happening to move from one health trust that would fund treatment to one health trust that wouldn't; this happened to my wife.

The NHS is a glorious principle in which I whole-heartedly believe, but those holding it up as a paragon of virtue are about as useful as 'death panel' comments from Sarah Palin, or the idiot Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan describing the NHS as a 'sixty year mistake'. Slightly sinister, though hardly unexpected, is the response of Health Secretary Andy Burnham who described Mr Hannan's comments as unpatriotic. Do my comments make me unpatriotic too?