Say hello, wave goodbye

I’ve hardly been idle but I need a break from thinking about work whenever I look at the screen, hence I found myself playing around with the ‘share’ options on the blog, again. After adding in the Facebook button I’ve been contemplating Google Buzz; who uses it? I never post to it and rarely read from it, I’m not sure what to do with it; apart from a few short conversations all it does for me is aggregate feeds which makes me think I’m missing something, or maybe it’s missing something. How many ‘buzz’ but don’t ‘tweet’ anyway?

I know Google are serious about social networking since Google Me is in the pipelines and every now and then they buy up some media-related company - they’re up to something, massing their forces, and I'm thinking that the conversation of which I had so few may be the differentiator. So it’s hello to Buzz and goodbye to Google Wave, for which I also had an account and similarly never used; at least in this respect my apathy was shared. I had this suspicion it was less a product and more a framework, a new paradigm for sharing, or something, and I wanted it to succeed - despite not really knowing what it was.

They’re moving in herds

When I was in school and involved in one of those teacher-inspired debates about nuclear disarmament and disarmament in general, and generally upsetting our teachers by saying it was a bad thing, one of the questions raised asked what would happen to the thousands employed in the defence industry. I always regarded this as a duff question but the answer given was every bit as naff. The honest answer would have been “they’ll have to find jobs elsewhere”, the answer proffered, by a teacher, was that they could make something like tractors instead. This is why upsetting teachers can be a good thing.

Fast forward to the present day and the TUC conference, where various delegates show every sign of inhabiting the same land of make believe. Apparently what we need to do is invest, though it’s a little unclear as to what with (since we don’t have any money) and what we’re supposed to invest in. People probably, that’s suitably vague.

One could argue that a strong and vibrant economy does far more to protect employee rights, as it requires employers to compete for their services, but in less certain times a Union can play a vital role against employer excess; those, for example, who might be tempted to sack their workforce on a Friday and re-employ them on a Monday at less favourable terms. However, I have no time for Unions promoting a fantasy world that makes product for the sake of making it, regardless of whether anyone wants or needs it. The private sector can’t afford such nonsense, you either make money or you don’t and you go out of business. But how does one objectively measure value in the public sector? The answer is you can’t, hence it becomes easier to indulge.

We have school classroom sizes of around 30 not because this is ideal, we’d like them smaller, but because that is what we can afford. I’d suggest we pay for all public services this way. Since what we can afford fluctuates, our spending might sometimes adjust accordingly. I have the greatest respect for many working in the public sector, some do a job the difficulty of which I can barely comprehend, but contrary to what we hear the cuts won’t bring an unfair burden; this is a burden that those in the private sector have had to bear alone for the past twelve months. Pay cuts, redundancies, employer pension contributions stopped. Welcome to the real world.

Phil Ruse vs. the World

Judging from my blog statistics, or at least those I can understand, which isn’t a lot, I need to calm down a little lest I come over as some kind of Dwight Schrute-like right-wing reactionary crazy. I’ve noticed a worrying tendency creeping in; taking myself and the world around me far too seriously - that'll never do. There are real problems and they bear discussion but there’s also fun to be had or at least that’s what I heard. I’m not finding much ‘fun’ at the moment and maybe that’s why I’ve slipped into ‘negative me’ a little too often. Letting off steam has a purpose but large doses of cynicism are so defeatist, so unattractive, so difficult to maintain. Constructive criticism on the other hand… I like the challenge of writing a few sentences without inducing torpor.

Torpor is the least likely reaction when watching Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a film adaptation of a series of graphic novels (Question: what’s the difference between a graphic novel and a comic?) it couldn't be accused of taking life too seriously. The scenes are cut so frenetically it takes a while to gain a sense of flow or feeling for the characters, but I caught up and ended up enjoying it - stupid but a lot of fun. I learnt a lot about myself too; mainly that Kieran Culkin is a good looking guy in an odd kind of way and I really like girls who dye their hair.

Some of my best friends are socialist

Take one Conservative politician and a statement of affairs (for want of a better word) on more than one subject. The first deals with accusations of an improper relationship, the ‘evidence’ for which is staying overnight with his special advisor in a twin-bed hotel room. The second deals with rumours of marital problems; my wife has had a number of miscarriages, is the response, and this has put a strain on our marriage but we are working through it.

Now sit back and watch the ensuing confusion on the Labour left. They can question what qualifications his special advisor has for the job but, as has been pointed out elsewhere, such a role has no specific qualification and anyway, why have his critics waited until now to raise this?

They can hardly criticise someone for staying in a room with another of the same sex; why, some of their best friends are gay. This non-story is therefore problematic but the target so tempting that they have entered into an unintentional and some might say unholy alliance with of all newspapers, The Daily Mail.

We have left-wing wannabe politicos determined to destroy a Tory politician, a right wing newspaper out to destroy any politician, and a common straw man line of attack; that an attempt to start a family is no proof of heterosexuality. Well ‘duh’, you don’t say? Whoever said it was - certainly not the politician being examined.

I can understand though despise the antics of some newspapers in playing to their readership’s homophobia. Perhaps more despicable though are the antics of those on the left who lack the moral courage to see the wider issue and denounce out of hand as irrelevant the issue of any person’s sexuality, or indeed the state of their marriage. Instead they take an opportunist swipe at the old enemy, never mind the consequences.

In the middle

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.

Such is the importance of his role in the creation of the National Health Service that the idea of criticising Aneurin Bevan is equivalent in my psyche to that of criticising Winston Churchill. Shamefully I know little about this lifelong adversary of Churchill except for a few choice quotes, including the one above though it’s not a comment I care for. Voltaire said “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too”, but I find it difficult to square this message of tolerance with Bevan’s warning on indecision. I read it as more of a threat; get out of the way (or else) whilst we give battle to the Tory “vermin”.

Many years ago I saw an interview with a young member of an anti-fascist group; he use to be a fascist, he explained, but now he hated them. Commendable perhaps, but at the time I wondered whether it was hatred that continued to fuel his day, and the behaviour of numerous direct action groups since has done little to dispel this suspicion. They were different times and I suppose it’s not so much Bevan’s comment that concerns me; it’s the decision of others to revere it today. I much prefer “The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away”, it sounds almost Thatcherite.

…and on the way home I saw the sun

After a week at work most Fridays end with me slumped in the sofa late evening and falling asleep in front of the television. This week was a short family holiday that ended with me slumped in the sofa late evening and falling asleep in front of the television. I have fallen out of love, if it ever was love, with CenterParcs. Aside from a hint of blue sky on the Tuesday afternoon it wasn’t until I drove home that I finally got to see the sun. The rest of the time it rained… and rained... and rained.

Of course this is hardly the fault of my hosts, but just as good weather can excuse, the poor weather exposed the faults. Because when things are a bit shit you kind of want to make up for it at the end of the day with, for example, a half-decent meal. Alternatively you could try eating at Hucks, an American themed diner offering a ‘Juniors buffet’ for £5.50; or as my daughter found out, five empty hot plates. I tell myself, so long as my daughter enjoys herself then nothing else really matters, and lack of food notwithstanding she did. But I didn’t.

Terminator versus work colleague

It says much about my day that when I described someone as “like the Terminator” and then added “a psychopathic killing machine”, I subsequently spent several minutes analysing why that was the wrong thing to say.

Then I realised it’s because the Terminator isn’t a psychopath. A psychopath has an abnormal lack of empathy whereas a lack of understanding is de rigueur for your average T-800. Besides being more impressed than I should be for writing ‘de rigueur’ in a discourse on the true nature of cybernetic organisms, it got me to thinking again about the nature of evil itself. Which is worse – doing a bad thing and knowing it’s wrong or doing an evil thing and not knowing? Or is evil defined by an understanding that what is being done is wrong and not caring? Or are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ hollow constructs we place on what is an essentially meaningless world?

I started this train of thought whilst watching Terminator Salvation, starring the very angry Christian Bale. I liked the acknowledgement to its predecessors – “come with me if you want to live” and even the traditional “I’ll be back” – though I groaned at the old “if we act like them then we’re no better than machines” chestnut. It was probably about that time my mind wandered to the other films and how I’d never really rated Judgement Day, also known as “Cool, my own terminator”, and how Rise of the Machines was so much better (I really mean that) and Nick Stahl, who played John Conner in that film, also played the boy in The Man Without a Face and that must mean that Mel Gibson is really old now and maybe that’s why he’s so angry. It’s a fear of death.