A Compendium of Mallin Miscellany

Other on-line booksellers are available...

2011-06-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

My attempts to resolve sign-up issues with a certain on-line bookseller have so far proved futile. I suspect the following e-mail sent today will bring me no closer to the hallowed status of "Vendor";

Dear Sir/Madam/Robot,

I realise I'm howling in to the wind here and really don't expect a reply but it'll be good to get it off my chest.

You didn't reply to my last e-mail to your "Help" desk either and I certainly felt better after I sent that.

I've got a huge pile of books I'd like to sell. Probably well over a couple of thousand pounds worth. I'd like to sell them through you because (On the face of it) your system looks terribly easy and clever.

Sadly your registration requires a 'Credit Card'. It's a shame you will only deal with the sort of people happy to pay 19% APR for cash, as I am not one of them.

As a result of only being the sort of undesirable who has a bank account with money in it, and a Paypal account, and a host of other online payment security methods at my disposal, I find I can't use your service. This, despite the fact I've been buying and selling on-line with other sites for years.

Might I suggest instead of letting me go half-way through the registration process to a page I can't safely log out of and making me enter my full card details before you decide my card isn't good enough, you just put "You must be paying a punitive rate of interest to a faceless corporation before you can sell with us now bugger off." in big red letters across your homepage.

Oddly enough your competitors Ebay have no such batty rules so I'll go there instead.

As I say I don't really expect a reply as your customer service offer has the reputation of Hermann Goering's tailor (Who'd put a man that size in powder blue?) but I thought it was worth a try. The fact I had to go through 3 drop down lists of increasingly stupid and esoteric possible reasons for why I should have the temerity to want to actually contact you suggests to me you don't really want to hear what I have to say.

On attempting to find the "Contact us" e-mail form I was reminded of the quote from Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide" in that, metaphorically speaking of course, "It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard".

No doubt you have an admirable record for the very small number of complaint e-mails you get. I suggest this may not be because your customers have very little cause for complaint, but rather because they have collectively dissolved into sobbing heaps in frustration whilst trying to negotiate the trap-ridden labyrinth that is your contact procedure. I would be surprised if adding "Utter rage" as a possible reason for emailing you didn't increase your 'customer service' mail traffic considerably.

Thanks for not listening, I look forward to never hearing from you.

Yours (or at least I would be if you'd let me join),

Wesley Mallin

On the occasion of the summer solstice - An atheist's diary.

2011-06-20T23:15:00.000-07:00

Well, happy new year all. Before I'm deafened by the collective "What?" allow me to explain.

For lot of years I've taken today, the summer solstice, to be my own little new year. To me it makes a bit more sense than doing it on 31st December.

There's something nice about greeting the dawn alone on the longest day (And before some pedant points out that Dawn and sunrise are different things, I'm generally up during dawn in readiness for the event and anyway dawn's a prettier word and it's my bloody celebration).

This morning I greeted the sun with fire and spirit, or more specifically, I stuck my head out of the attic sky-light, downed the last of my birthday port and lit a cigarette. I had a few minutes quiet reflection on how appalling the last twelve months have generally been and made the sort of resolutions I can stick to viz. Do a bit more, make the most of the opportunities which present themselves and get started on that novel. Then I went and made a cup of tea and had a cuddle with the cat.

Some people like to go to stone circles and get together with like minded individuals at summer solstice but previous bitter experience informs me that half four in the morning is not the best time for me to be humouring vegans.

I do like to think of Stonehenge at this time of year. I have this little picture in my head of half a dozen shivering blokes out on the heath in Wiltshire five thousand years ago with some sticks and a rope getting ready to put the markers down for the heel, slaughter and altar stones. I like to think the conversation went like this; "Look Terry, the missus has got this grand plan for a rockery and if we don't set it up in the next half an hour it'll be another year of moaning. You stand over there with Eric and when the sun comes up I'll tell you where to put the sticks in the ground. Then we can all bugger of back to bed. And well done for not bringing that bloody dog of yours. Last year was a farce."

And there's the problem. Nothing much is sacred for me. When I was about eight I told my parents I didn't believe in god because it didn't make any sense and could I not go to church any more please? Being the awesome parents they are they said that was fine. I've been a more or less evangelical atheist ever since. I still envy those with faith, but I just could never understand how chucking a disembodied third party in to the mix simplified things.

The solstice has the benefit of being a measurable instant in time and space. By one reading a dull and mathematical coincidence resulting from the predictable orbits of two roughly spherical bodies under the influence of gravity and some other stuff. On the the other hand the maths doesn't do justice to the scale of the dance we're unwitting partners in. This day each year I look at the ground I'm standing on, and the sun over there and think "Aren't we tiny?". It's refreshingly humbling and about as close to spiritual as I get.

There's also a deeply pragmatic reason for doing new year now. There's more to look forward to in the immediate future than the other new year. There's sunshine for a start. We're a couple of months from those lovely late summer evenings when it gets dark early but you can still feel the last of the sun's heat off the pavers and the sky's clear enough to see the stars. Much better than the depths of December when all there is to look forward to is trying to get the tree back in its box, realising for the umpteenth year in a row that Blu-Tack and wallpaper don't mix and waiting for the post-Christmas credit card bill.

And best of all I didn't end up in the embrace of some sweaty drunken stranger trying to sing a song neither of us either know or understand the words to.

Happy new year!

An open letter to all those who "Don't give a fuck" today.

2011-06-18T02:56:00.000-07:00

So, you've decided that today you won't give a fuck eh? Well good for you. I assume of course that this means for the other 364 days of the year you will actually start giving a fuck. That's the idea right?

Today you'll have a rest and then tomorrow you'll start campaigning for change?

Bitter experience leads me to suspect not.

I've been going to council meetings as a journalist for nigh on fifteen years and see the same thing every time; A public gallery entirely filled with the fresh air left behind by people who "Don't give a fuck". Every time I go to a meeting where public policy is being decided I think "Sitting at home are thousands of people who clearly don't give a fuck". Coincidentally, I suspect they're the same people who then infect my day with their impotent whining and ill-informed rants about perceived injustices they had every opportunity to influence but chose instead to do nothing about. "I don't give a fuck" is apparently cooler than "I'm an effective citizen of the world".

I suspect the majority of the people who've decided to latch on to "I don't give a fuck day" are exactly the kind of people who "don't give a fuck" the rest of the year. I suspect they're the kind of people who don't give a fuck about local democracy, don't give a fuck about voting, don't give a fuck about politics or third world debt or nuclear proliferation or any of those other things which apparently don't matter.

The seed corn of your apathy, fed from the well spring of your utter ignorance, will grow into a rich crop of negative bullshit which you'll no doubt insist on feeding to the world in bitter chunks of helpless, pathetic, miserly, intellectual poverty. Well done farmer. You made the world worse without any effort at all.

Don't congratulate yourself too soon though, because there are lots of people out there who get a great big kick out of you not giving a fuck. They're the people who run the show. They're the people making billions while your back is turned. They fill the airwaves with blandness and stifle anything creative because while you're not giving a fuck they're getting away with bloody murder.

So I'm sorry to all those friends and relatives who invited me to join "I don't give a fuck" day and who's requests I've ignored. You've probably wondered why. Here's why:

The whole project reeks of exactly the kind of mindless, pointless, tedious, shitty, nihilistic, adolescent posturing I hate.

Today you're all clever and smug because you don't give a fuck. Well done. Give the monkey a peanut.

In the meantime the minority of people who do give a fuck will continue to do it for you, until you grow a spine, get up and join us, because right now the people who do give a fuck are outnumbered, and we're losing the fight.

"Gordon's 'Bigot' Gaff" or "Labour Leader In Being Human Shocker"

2010-04-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

Somewhere, deep in the bowls of Gordon Brown (try not to think too hard about that image) there is a little bit of him which says "I wish I'd said that to her face".

How many times have you put down the receiver after a cheery conversation with someone and then leaned forward and shouted "TWAT!" at the phone? I'm willing to bet it's in the dozens if not the hundreds. We all have to be polite to appalling people on occasion because we're obliged to by our position. Cast your mind back to the last family wedding you went to.

Gordon's little slip-up is the equivalent of running into the toilet at the reception and saying "If Angela mentions that mutant child of hers one more time I'm going to find 'Sadie-poo' and wring her bloody neck!" only to find Angela's husband is having a shit in one of the cubicles.

That's what we're looking at here.

Quite a few of us, I'd bet, would have liked to have seen him front-up to the the old biddy. When dotty, self opinionated old women come up to me in the street complaining about immigrants, I tend to tell them the truth, which is that immigrants will stop being a problem when they and their entire generation of change-hating, reactionary throwbacks do the decent thing and die.

I bet she's the kind of woman who constantly mutters "It wasn't like this in my day" and "You can't understand what they're singing any more". You know the ones; When they sleep they don't snore, they tut. People who live for the noise made by air rushing over half-closed false teeth. People who've given up saying "Happy Christmas" because they can get more whinge-mileage out of pretending it's been banned by the council while simultaneously complaining all the shops have been selling advent calendars since mothers day.

The comment most likely to have provoked Mr Brown's opinion is her assertion that her home town was becoming like "a third world country". This shows her to be not just a bigot with no sense of perspective but also spectacularly short sighted. Of course it's like a third world country. It's Rochdale. The third world offers a marginally more attractive prospect as a holiday destination, largely because at least Somalia has the benefit of sunshine and indoor plumbing.

If Gordon Brown had kicked a puppy or shouted "One-Nil" at a blind kid while pointing at his right eye I could understand it.

Instead, this mildly irritated grumble is being held up as a show of Brown's legendary temper and his contempt for people with differing views. If that's him losing his rag then frankly he's got the patience of a saint. Faced with some of the arse-hats he has to deal with on a daily basis I'm surprised he hasn't been reduced already to a screaming, tourettic dervish, thrashing about on the steps of Downing Street screaming obscenities at passing civil servants.

Doubtless the other parties will have a field day over this one, taking the opportunity to get away from all that boring policy and concentrate on good old fashioned character assassination. I'm willing to bet all of the people who've been calling for politicians to be "Honest with us" will be there at their side with burning torches. This is why politicians don't say what they think. If they did the party political broadcast would say the following: "What you know about global economics and population dynamics can be written in magic marker on the back of the average sized grain of rice, so why don't you shut up and go back to complaining about seeing a nipple on Britain's Got Talent?".

Thought for the day:

Kipling wrote:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.

It's already a verse which could have penned for Gordon but I'd like to offer the following lines by way of a topical update:

If you can keep it to yourself and get back to the Jag,
Without calling her a racist old witch to her face,
Yours is the Election and everything that goes with it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Silence for so long and when I do blog ... it's about Basildon.

2010-04-06T13:32:00.000-07:00

Basildon council has erected a sign costing £90k which looks a bit like the one which looms over Hollywood.

"So what?" I hear you cry. As one commentator helpfully pointed out "It's not the angel of the north is it?". Well spotted Einstein.

What interests me about the story is the reaction, and what it says about our beleaguered democracy.

Bear with me, try not to yawn, I'll explain.

The story provoked the usual tooth-sucking tabloid furore with a healthy dose of predictable head shaking at a bonkers council out of touch with the public.

The Daily Mail, with it's usual rigour (or should that be rigor?) quoted the leader of the council. It was councillor type stuff, not really defending the spend or explaining where the cash came from. Now I'm a stickler for attribution when it comes to quotes so I went digging a bit. It is a quote but the dry bluster isn't a response to the Mail's precision questioning. It's from the council's press release. The Mail never spoke to him you see. It printed the quote as a response though and seems to have made it's mind up. You'd expect nothing less from The Mail. The slightly snide tone at the prospect of Basildon, of all places, doing a spot of re-branding. It's what makes The Mail the paper it is.

Have you ever been to a supermarket when you're a bit strapped for cash and bought the Bulgarian Merlot because it's £3.19? Ever felt slightly embarrassed because there's a guy standing a few feet away looking at the eye level shelf where the wine is all £10 a bottle and upwards. He is The Daily Mail. He'll look at you, judge you, and feel better about it.

If I can squeeze another analogy out of this already tortured metaphor then Basildon made the mistake of buying the Bulgarian Merlot and serving it to The Mail at a dinner party. (The Mail treated it like 'come dine with me' and had a conversation in the taxi on the way home about *those hideous curtains*. At some point he will have said 'gauche' without really knowing what it meant.)

The mail's not the only one sticking the boot in. Someone's started a Facebook page entitled "I LOL'd at Basildon's new sign". It is, as Facebook groups so often are, a crushing vortex of negativity and bad grammar.

One contributor posted;

"Local council obviously has too much spare cash floating around 90K is an extream (sic) when people are out of work and only get £64 a week !!! What a joke."

Now, I'll be generous and ignore the spelling mistake and multiple exclamations. There's another error which really worries me; She doesn't know the difference between central and local government. She hasn't a clue.

Local government don't do benefits. The leader of the council could paint his bum blue and jump off the public gallery of parliament and it wouldn't increase JSA payments by a penny. Neither Facebook nor the Daily Mail are going to tell her. They're not going to say, "don't worry love, it's not coming from your council tax". Neither are they going to tell her about the other £310 grand Basildon's got to improve street lighting and tidy up the main route in to the town.

She'll rumble on with her unfocused and terrifyingly arbitrary rage until next month (and here's the really worrying thing) when she gets to vote. Twice. Once for the council, and once for the government.

Her opinions will most likely be based on what she reads in the paper and what her friends say on Facebook, and neither of those are journalism.

Journalism is about truth (Stop sniggering at the back). It's about informing people about what's going on in the world. When I train journalists I tell them their job is to be the eyes and ears of people who are too busy living their lives. It's a sacred trust. It's what journalism does. I go to council meetings so you don't have to. That's the job of the press.

What we now have isn't a press though, it's a mangle, compressing everything down to a banal chant of "hell in a hand basket" where detail is irrelevant.

Life, the world, politics, economics are all freakishly complicated you see. For instance, the money that pays for the Basildon sign is central government tax money, so it comes from everyone with a job or who buys anything, theoretically more from people who earn and buy more, less from the rest. The Government gives the money to an agency to spend on stuff to achieve what the government wants, which is to see the south east get more business. Then a group makes up some targets for how to spend it and tells councils the cash is there. They then apply for it and a man in the agency, who's never met Gordon Brown or the leader of Basildon Council decides they can have it and gives them a cheque. No government minister ever said "Here's 9 billion quid ... see if you can tart up Basildon's welcome sign." but you'll never read that in the paper. Too complicated you see. Not punchy enough. Not what the punters want to read. You're also unlikely to read "Government earmarks 9 billion for south east regeneration". Not enough to lampoon there.

Here are two more nuggets of information our Facebook correspondent will never get to hear;

The money for the sign is coming from the Thames Gateway Fund, a pot of 9 billion pounds to boost business in the south east. That makes the £90k 0.000001 percent of the fund. The rest is going to build affordable housing and encourage investment to create new jobs. Not a penny came from the council tax in Basildon.

The Basildon cash is being paid to a local firm to make the sign. I don't know whether it's created any jobs because no-one bothered to speak to the company in any of the reports I read but I suspect the order was welcome.

So there you have it. My rant. About Basildon. You don't care about Basildon, I don't care about Basildon, neither of us care about the woman on Facebook. Neither does the Daily Mail. She's stupid, we're clever, she doesn't matter, it's all meaningless right?

Right. Go to bed, go to work, do what you do. It doesn't matter.

One more thing before I go though. In every general election since 1972 the party that won in Basildon was in Government the next day.

30 things you can’t do with a broken hand.

2009-11-26T04:20:00.000-08:00

It wasn’t until I broke my right hand in a “door related accident” that I realised 1) How much I use it, and 2) How utterly useless my left hand is. For the paltry 3 weeks the bulbous plaster and polyurethane 'gimp-fist' was on, I gradually compiled a list of things I simply could not do. I’d like to share a few of those with you.

1. Wash my left armpit:

I’m told you can’t lick your own elbow. As there is no earthly reason why you’d ever want to I suggest we replace this truism with the more potentially helpful “You can’t get shower gel and water into your left armpit without your right hand”. It would have saved me hours of trying.

2. Open ring-pull cans:

My mother suffers from arthritis in her hands and has always complained about these “new fangled” tins. I, being young and indestructible, always took such things with a pinch of salt. She’s still laughing at me.

3. Unscrew anything:

As a man I pride myself on the ability to open things. When adverts portray us as the brainless football watchers and sock sniffers in a female wonderworld of order and sense, I have remarked wryly that the fairer sex would at least be denied olives, jam and morello cherries were it not for us. Brothers, let me tell you now, the day you ask the fiancé to perform such a task for you is the day your masculinity dies.

4. Figure out what that revolting smell is:

I became convinced that the fiancé had gone on laundry strike because of my inability to do the other household chores usually reserved for me. Everywhere I went smelled of old socks. A chanced attempt to scratch my nose with the broken hand revealed that wrapping it in a nylon bandage, encasing it in plaster and not washing it for three weeks has the same effect as it would on a foot, only much, much closer to your face.

5. Wave convincingly:

You give it not a single thought. Simply lift your right hand and wave, but when it’s in plaster and permanently bent slightly at the wrist the effect is more the pawing of a needy puppy than the chirpy acknowledgement you had hoped.

6. Tear the tops off those little paper sachets of sugar:

I dislike paper sachets of sugar in restaurants. It smacks of penny pinching. Presumably the cost of having an employee actually fill a bowl and insert a spoon makes it worth giving your customers the impression they are not to be trusted to use a sensible amount if left to their own devices. If the customer has a broken hand however there is a real financial incentive. By the time they have opened enough sachets, the coffee is cold and they have to buy another.

7. Write:

Here's how it goes; I’m going to the shops ... I’ll write a list ... bugger. I’m watching TV ... must write down that website ... bugger. At a meeting ... I’ll put that in my diary ... bugger. Must get a lottery ticket ... now to fill in the little check box ... oh for goodness sake!

8. Sleep comfortably:

There is a very good reason no-one has ever made a teddy bear out of Gouda-scented plaster of Paris and polyurethane.

9. Sign my name:

My signature is, at best, a hieroglyph dredged from the “Other Side” where monsters lurk and envy our world. Once the hand used to execute this sigil is wrapped in an inch of plaster of Paris the hand tends to skid, stretching it to even greater lengths. My request for a book of those giant charity presentation cheques was met with a stony response from the bank.

10. Turn keys in stiff locks:

When it’s dark and wet and cold and the only sound above the rain is the rhythmic slamming of your forehead against the still-not-budging front door you’ll wish you’d fixed it before you broke your hand.

11. Get change from the pocket of tight Jeans:

How to make a queue. 1) Take one man with a broken right hand. 2) Put all his change in the right pocket of his jeans. 3) Place him in front of a parking meter in a busy city centre car park. 4) Allow to stand for fifteen minutes or until bludgeoned to death.

12. Shake hands:

Normally I shake men’s hands, women’s hands and dog’s paws as a matter of course. It’s part of my manners ritual. Holding up aforementioned gimp-fist and saying “I would … but…” really doesn’t provide a satisfactory alternative for either party, least of all the dog.

13. Swat flies:

The human male has one, conspicuous ability over his female counterpart; that of being able, in the presence of a wasp or bluebottle fly, to casually swat the offending insect without recourse to a dancing around like a cross between Michael Flatly and a southern Baptist speaking in tongues. When one forgets one’s hand is 18 ounces heavier, 2 inches wider and immeasurably harder, the result is either concussion or broken ornaments.

14. Execute the “Rimmer” salute:

*Twirl, twirl, twirl, flick, slap!* becomes *Twirl, twirl twirl, flick THUNK … “STRETCHER BEARER!”*

15. Learn from my mistakes:

Slapping your hand to your forehead when you’ve blundered is a mild self-administered punishment reminding you to not make the same mistake again. This effect is largely lost with a plaster cast on your hand as it renders you immediately unconscious.

16. Use gloves (Plural):

Two kinds of people wear just one glove; Micheal Jackson and Golfers. One is dead, the others might as well be. The broken handed get to wear one glove and a football sock. This is not an improvement.

17. Use pockets instead of gloves:

James Dean looked moody and rakish in Times Square with his hands thrust in his pockets. He may have had a broken hand, although I don’t recall Dennis Stock ever mentioning it. If he had there would also be an anecdote about the tragic star flailing around like a broken marionette trying to disengage the pot from the pocket.

18. Use oven gloves:

An ordinary hand fits in an oven glove, well, like a glove. A broken one does not. Figuring this out before the soufflé is ready is strongly advised.

19. Use the plaster instead of oven gloves:

Necessity, it turns out, isn’t the mother of invention. It’s the mother of second degree burns.

20. Do ... “Toilet things”:

Many people in the Middle East consider it almost an act of religious observance to use their left hand for the application of certain paper products to certain parts of the body for the removal of certain substances. They have thus had a lifetime’s practice. They spend less time in the smallest room than I do for this very reason.

21. Wear a suit:

A black suit, well fitted in chest and sleeve, is the mark of a man ready to do business. A black suit, torn at the armpit from the force of ramming an orthopaedic cast down a fitted sleeve is not. Add to the picture the crazy pattern of white plaster scuffs and it just looks like a cry for help from a man who asked for pinstripes from an epileptic tailor.

22. Fondle. Anything:

For centuries lovers, scholars and out of work physiotherapists have looked on the Kama Sutra with wonder and anticipation. Little did they know that the number of love making positions could be effectively doubled simply by disabling one of the combatant’s hands. While we’re at it (or not, as the case may be), a discussion of lovemaking in the context of metacarpal fractures would not be complete without mention of two words; Bra and Strap.

23. Use scissors:

“Cut Here” is not a simple instruction. It’s a cruel taunt used by apple juice cartons to mock you.

24. Put drawing pins in a wall:

Normal instructions: Place pin on wall. Press with thumb. Job done. Broken Hand Instructions: Place pin on wall. Press with right thumb. Scream. Attempt steps 1+2 with left hand. Retrieve pin from behind desk where it landed after skidding off wall and flying across room because of complete lack of coordination in left hand. Hold pin in place with left hand. Strike head of pin firmly with forehead.

25. Get my hand down the back of the sofa:

When you’re leaving the house in a rush … when there’s no time to stop at the shop and buy a Twix with a £20 pound note … and if no-one else can help … you need … sofa change. Fat chance with a hand the size of a boxing glove.

26. Accurately use a mouse:

Where “Click here for your chance to win X” used to be a simple and ignorable invitation to the gullible. It has now become an aspiration.

27. Play Pictionary:

In preparation for a night in with a few friends my fiancé suggests board games as a pass-time. “What did you have in mind?” says I. “Pictionary” says she. “You’re all heart” says I, holding up hand. “Ah” says she. I’m just glad we didn’t invite David Blunkett.

28. Play guitar:

I don’t play guitar. I didn’t before I broke my hand. In the corner of the office sits a guitar nevertheless. In three weeks I managed to convince myself that the only thing stopping me from learning to play the guitar was the damned plaster cast. This turned out to be untrue.

29. Do press-ups:

So far one of the very few benefits of the broken hand has been the release from the tyranny of the fitness Nazis. It’s like a golden sick-note. I’m considering having a fake cast made so that at dinner parties in future I can be exempted from the inevitable gym conversation with a wave of the pot and a shrug conveying the sentiment “I’d love to but…”.

30. Explain to anyone that I didn’t get the injury in a fight:

When you break the fifth metacarpal in your dominant hand, everyone over a certain age will tell you, in a knowing voice, tinged with disdain, that it is ‘a boxer’s injury’. It is more than mildly ironic, given I have never boxed, never particularly wished to box and currently cannot box, that the one time I really want to punch someone is for telling me I have ‘a boxer’s injury’. Next time when they ask what I did to break my hand I’ll say “I was talking to someone about having a broken hand and they said it was a boxer’s injury and I punched them so hard I broke my hand again”.

New car versus old car.

2009-11-13T02:14:00.000-08:00

Reading through a website for a range of sustainable luggage recently (Yes there is such a thing) I came across a question about the pros and cons of buying a new car. I answered their question thus:

"My vote would be on second-hand every time for four reasons:

1: Recycling. Buying a new car, even a so-called eco-friendly car, means paying for the mining of heavy metals, the use of thousands of gallons of water and tons of Co2 for it's production. Meantime the car you would have saved from the scrapheap goes to recycling where tons of Co2 and thousands of gallons of water are spent feeding its raw materials back in to the same eco-expensive system. Re-use will always be more effective than re-cycling.

2: Fuel Economy. I drive a 1993 Vauxhall Cavalier. It does 37 miles to the gallon. It does this because it doesn't have the side impact bars, extra airbags, sound insulation, Air conditioning and gadgets crammed in to newer cars. It doesn't weigh as much. As the meercat says; Simples.

3: Local economy: I don't pay £200 a month on leasing to a faceless international corporation's usury arm. I bought my car off a local dealer for £500 two years ago. Since then I've spent about £500 pound a year on repairs and MOT work. I don't have to go to a dealership to have the work done, there's a father and son garage at the bottom of my street. They'll do the work I can't do and tell me how to do the easy stuff myself. When I need a part I don't have one shipped from Indonesia. I go to the local scrapyard and pay a man who uses the money in my community. My car has 160k on the clock and starts first time, every time. When the engine goes I have a donor engine on a pallet at my local garage which cost me £80 and has 80k on the clock. It'll cost £100 to put it in. Then I'll have another 80k of cheap motoring.

4: Ownership: Finally, when I get in my car I know it belongs to me. I don't think "If I don't make enough money this month they could take this off me." It might not be much but it's mine, and if I look after it it'll still be mine for a good long while too.

I am biased. I don't like new cars. Sure I'd have a sporty executive type thing, a Bentley or an Aston if I had £100k to spend but I haven't. So why make myself poorer and more anonymous in the meantime with a tin box the same as everyone else? I'll keep my Cav thanks.

PS: Really. Don't buy a new car."

Thought for the day: For those interested in sustainable luggage you could do a lot worse then go here: Millican. If nothing else it'll make you think about how un-sustainable the rest of your posessions are.

Bish, Bash, Tosh! (Folk Myths of a PC Christmas)

2009-10-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

My interest was peeked this weekend by a shouty article in Birmingham's leading tabloid rag.

"Midlands Church Leaders in Battle to Save Christmas" screamed the headline. The article itself is no less polemic, announcing it as a gauntlet thrown down to "The Politically Correct Brigade" (whoever they are).

The Mercury quotes the bishop at length...

"We’re just getting to the season when the papers like to report on local councils who, out of concern for ethnic minorities, have banned Christmas in favour of Winterval or another silly name.

This year that kind of story is likely to be more than matched by stories of big firms sacking those people who want to wear a cross, a fish lapel badge or some other sign of the Christian faith.

Ethnic minorities are far more anxious about the rampant secularism and commercialism that erodes all Christian standards than they are about their host country properly celebrating its Christian foundations."

(Read the rest of it here http://www.lichfield.anglican.org/news&newsID=655)

Now I'm not arguing against the good bishop's right to express his fears but there are two phrases which need highlighting in the above paragraph.

"the papers like to report..." and "that kind of story is likely to be more than matched by...". It hasn't actually happened you see?

Trying to find an actual example of a local authority or a company banning Christmas is as difficult as trying to find a Muslim who's offended by cheap plastic baubles and borrowed pagan symbols. It's like trying to nail jelly to a wall, but the idea persists that they're all at it.

The Chronicle warns "it comes as a report reveals three out of four employers will not be putting up decorations this year for fear of offending staff."

I wanted to read that report, so I went looking for it. It was conducted by an employment law firm which deals with compensation claims against employers. Oh and it was done in 2006.

Despite the decrepit and potentially biased nature of the stats and the paucity of other proof, the Chronicle (and the Bishop) have responded as though the sky is falling, while Muslims and other minority faiths respond with utter bewilderment.

The "Winterval" scare is also an urban myth. Back in 1997 and 1998 Birmingham City Council came up with an idea to promote the redevelopment of it's city centre to everyone. What it wanted to do was include a whole grab-bag of celebrations without making anyone think it was just about Christmas. Among the events between October 20th and mid-January it wanted to celebrate were such foreign muck as; The Christmas lights switch on, BBC Children in Need, Aston Hall by Candlelight, New Years eve, various theatre shows, an open air ice rink, Frankfurt open air Christmas market and "the Christmas seasonal retail offer".

Fortunately for the headline writers, the Hindu Diwali festival, Chinese New Year and the Muslim festival of Eid ul-Fitr were also included. Right-wing knee-jerkers will often call Eid "Muslim Christmas" but it moves forward 11 days each year so most of the time it's nowhere near the Christian festival. Not in 1997 and 1998 though. Then it was slap bang in the middle. A perfect chance to make money off Muslims and Christians alike, not to mention BBC viewers and Torville and Dean fans. But the authority made the mistake of using one of those public service words which has the effect of turning tabloid hacks and god-fearing WI members into rabid attack dogs. That word is "Inclusive".

What started off as a marketing ploy to get more punters in to the town centre on dark winter nights swiftly spiralled into a national tabloid sensation, as editors scrambled to gain the high ground of moral indignation on what was always a hill of sand.

Commentators raged at "Political correctness gone mad" but consider this; If I go and ask a bishop the two following questions (as a qualified journalist) which do you think is going to get a more explosive response?

Q1) Birmingham City council wants to rename Christmas "Winterval" to avoid offending Muslims. What do you think?

Q2) Birmingham city council wants to get as much money as possible off everyone this Christmas so it's calling its major marketing event Winterval so it can include adverts for Diwali, Eid, Dancing on Ice and Children In Need. What do you think?

Guess which angle the papers went for? Here's a clue; The Sunday Mercury, bastion of fine editorial content that it is, has such gems as "Stourbridge widow was £1,000 per night hooker" and "Britain's Got Talent star offers sex for money" on it's front page this week. Incisive stuff.

Like a carpenter and his knocked-up-bride-to-be being refused a place at a Travel Lodge on the 24th of December, the Winterval story was just too good for them to miss. 12 years on it's still running. "A lie", they say, "will be halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on".

So I'm sorry to be a wet blanket on everyone's righteous anger but this is a tabloid inspired circulation booster.

A combination of lazy journalism and partisan paranoia have conspired to bring another non-story back from the dead. It is truly a ghost of Christmas past.

You've been had. Again.

Thought for the day: How many people who use the Coca-Cola company's image of Santa, hang pagan mistletoe in the hall and fight for a Christian Christmas have been to church in the last 12 months?

Dying to be green

2009-10-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

I'll not bore you with the thought process which lead me to my current conundrum but it occurred to me that my death, when it comes, will have an impact on the planet's atmosphere if I'm not very careful. We're all destined for landfill of sorts after all. Before your eyebrows migrate to the nape of your neck, this began more as a thought experiment than an eco-crusade.

Put simply, we're 18% carbon as we stand, but when we lie down to sleep for the last time it'll all be released as we rot. I'm only 11 stone so that's one run to the shops in a Fiat Panda in Co2 terms but there are an awful lot of us around. 7 Billion trips to ASDA worth of rotting corpses is a bit more of a problem.

It's not an easy one to solve either. My first thought was encapsulation. Bury me in Tupperware! But then there's all that oil and water to make the plastic and the inevitable junk male which would come from the production of a click-lock casket (I can see the JML ad now). Ditto glass. All that heat required to make me into a giant paperweight. Concrete, another candidate chucks out huge amounts of carbon dioxide as it sets so that';s an eco-no-no too. Nelson was pickled in brandy to preserve his body for the return trip from Trafalgar (Third class really meant something back then) but again, vineyards, wooden casks, transit costs and the fermentation process are hardly carbon neutral. Cremation's the worst of all. Most of the ovens are natural gas fired and would release my carbon faster than mouldering in the grave.

When you start analysing what makes carbon dioxide it really does get tricky. How do you dispose of a human without the funeral service being drowned out by the tutting of environmentalists.

I have however hit upon a plan which I think you'll agree ticks most of the boxes. I shall plant a rubber tree and harvest the sap until It's time to clock out. It'll bind up C02 itself and the resulting gluey mess can be used to encase my remains upon exit. Thus shrink-wrapped I shall ask to be transported north, by sailing boat of course, to the frozen wastes of the polar ice-cap where bacteria fear to tread. On arrival, dig me a hole. Deep frozen, my carbon should be safe and my neutrality in the cycle quite literally preserved.

Simple as that.

Thought for the day: The amount of Co2 generated by the computers used to compile this blog and for you to read it have made the plan utterly pointless.

Dancing in to danger.

2009-10-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

The BNP's recruiters must be doing their own little cha-cha-cha over the Anton du Beke race row. Can you think of anything more likely to stir the righteous indignation of the Mail-reading classes than another "Political Correctness Gone Mad" story? I can see them now, spitting marmalade all over their union jack tablecloths. "I'll call a paki a paki if I want to" they'll shriek, without a golden shred of irony or self-examination.

Never mind the row itself, the red-tops and the narrow-sheets know how to whip up a storm. We get the media we pay for. They'll continue to pander to the knee-jerkers with this story until the next one comes along, because instead of demanding a real debate about race in Britain, it’s much simpler to browse the Mail’s editorial and suck your teeth.

The really sad thing is, each time the papers print this drivel, the sort of people who would shout the word ‘Paki’ at a random person in the street will feel better for doing so. They'll think they're striking a blow for freedom of speech, when all they're really after is freedom of abuse. In the meantime Mr du Beke (A man who I can't really see hurling insults at anyone in the street) will find himself the unwitting poster-boy for a right wing campaign to liberate great British racial jibes.

While the tabloids pander to the knee-jerkers and simplify the arguments to the monosyllabic, what chance do we have of ever having a mature debate about the future of a multi-cultural Britain?

A Disclaimer:

The fact that I don’t want to see Anton Du Beke hung, drawn and quartered does not mean I approve of what he said. It was clearly tasteless and improper. I won't stand by and accept people using racist and/or homophobic remarks around me. I have got into trouble on more occasions than I care to mention by challenging racist language/behaviour in public. I despise racism regardless of who it is directed at or who it's coming from. Racism and xenophobia are the foundation stones of an ugly lurch to the right in British politics which I detest.

Thought for the day: Nick Griffin thinks he should be able to call a spade a spade.

With a jerk of the knee...

2009-09-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

With a jerk of the knee the cycle is complete. Today’s news contains a perfect example of the modern world’s most infuriating malady. The knee-jerk cycle. The story so far: Two police officers agreed to look after each other’s children while they were on shift, thus saving each other £300 pounds a month. Ofsted says they’re breaking the law because it’s more than two hours at a time and the arrangement is for more than 14 days a year. They could now be prosecuted. Read the full story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8277378.stm

The story in itself is not a new one. Charles Dickens was the one who coined the phrase “The law is an Ass” and it stands today. The righteous indignation and calls for the heads of the law makers is all to familiar too. The echoes of “Something must be done” barely have time to fade before the same people cry “Nanny state!”. The Childcare Act which is at the heart of the story was brought in to stop cowboy (or cowgirl) carers abusing children in their care. It was brought in on a wave of public indignation after high profile cases of kids being mistreated by people who’d not been checked. The government, ever seeking to please the illiberal mob, rushed a piece of law to statute and handed it over to non-partisan civil servants to enact. This they have done with gusto. But the mob is fickle. It wanted this law. Now it has it. Now it doesn’t want it.

Consider this hypothetical: An unqualified friend offers to look after a child in exchange for some kindness, walking the dog for instance. The friend takes pictures of your naked child while you’re at work and flogs them to an internet paedophile. When the story hits the papers there are cries of “Something must be done”. But of course something has been done. It’s called the childcare act. If Ofsted had failed to act on the breach it would be condemned for not doing its job.

Now, if anyone can tell me how the law could have been differently drafted to allow the two police officers to continue but stop our hypothetical predator I’d be pleased to hear it. In the meantime I’d appreciate it if you could all try and keep your knee relaxed and your right foot firmly on the floor.

To the far horizon.

2009-09-21T22:53:00.000-07:00

So here it is, a Mallin blog. It's perhaps a symptom of my muddled ideas on blogging that I feel the need to provide a prologue, just like a traditional written format. No one will ever read it perhaps but I feel such a thing deserves a beginning, a proper launch. So permit me a flight of fancy, dear reader. Allow me a little pretence. If an analogy is worth whipping it's worth flogging.
Here she is on the slipway then. Imagine, if you will, a woman with a flowery hat and a name with a hyphen, poised with a bottle of champaign on a rope to christen the bows. In the crowd the general feeling is of anticipation but the riveters know there's a few seams that will only hold with the grace of god, the shipwright himself feels he could have done more to make her seaworthy, and the boilers aren't even connected yet. The majority of the fitting-out won't be done until the keel's wet and after that it'll be too late to bring her back on shore to fix the bits that weren't thought through. She's a little broad in the beam and likely to roll some in heavy seas. She'll make a few people queasy once she's out of the harbour. There's a sense of occasion nonetheless, even though there are plenty of better ships out there already. She's not even got a mission yet. Carrying coals is more likely than a voyage of discovery, for what's left to discover? The sea level will rise a fraction of a fraction when she's afloat, but that's just displacement folks.
The woman in the hat says "God bless her and all who sail in her" (as so many have said before) and another good bottle of bubbly is sacrificed to superstition. As it bursts someone adds "To the far horizon!" but there are mutters from the old hands that Grimsby is a more likely destination.
Off she goes down the ramp nevertheless, with a patter of applause from the crowd, a shriek of blocks and the sound of a lot of gravity arguing with a lot of inertia.

Thought for the day: The story of the Titanic proved the most important man on a ship is not the captain but the lookout.