Tapwatergate

Isn't it satisfying, that warm glow of satisfaction one gets when a large corporation makes a huge mess of something. It's a chance to get the thesaurus out and start playing with words like hubris and schadenfreude.

Corporate cock-ups take many forms but I think they can be put into two (possibly three) basic categories.

Firstly, there is the cock-up that involves delivering a product to the market place that people simply look at bemusedly, and despite the inevitable marketing and advertising onslaught, say to themselves "Why the hell would I want one of those?"

The second is the update to an existing product. This is where the company already has a succesful product but decides that, after years of success and money-making of the hand-over-fist variety, that they can improve it. A risky strategy.

The third and slightly ancillary category is the useless but invaribly expensive enhancement or add-on that the punter generally sees for what it is. A manipulative ploy to cash in on something that really should've been part of the product in the first place and now we're expected to pay for it as an accessory.

However, it's not just commercial organisations that do this. Rather disappointly, governments that we elect and pay for do this sort of thing equally well and often on an even grander scale that any mere multi-national could manage.

So, in the spirit of schadenfreude and hubris, here's my list of the top ten corporate/government/political cock-ups:-

1. Coca Cola and the Dasani tapwatergate scandal
2. The Ford Edsel
3. Collectively, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and numerous other UK TV broadcasters and the scandal of the dodgy phone-ins
4. Coca Cola (again) and Classic/New Coke
5. The Post Office and Consignia
6. IBM OS/2 - I guess you had to be in IT in the 80s to know about this one
7. The Millennium Dome
8. Neil Kinnock - alllright, yeeeaaaahhh, alllllright.
9. Reality show winners. The music business is a notoriously hype-driven industry that is utterly dependent on scamming people as quickly as possible before they realise the transparent dreadfulness of the product they're being expected to buy. Almost all reality show winners really only belong on a cruise ship knocking out show tunes to grannies and, in a just world, both they and the record companies that promote them to make a quick buck would realise this, and not build up these poor deluded individuals only to sack them after their first album takes a dive.
10. And finally, my tip for the future - climate change. I predict this will be forgotten within a generation and thoroughly upstaged by a religiously provoked armageddon between US Christian fundamentalists and their equally loopy Islamic opposite numbers. A bit of a long-range bet I admit, but watch this space. Check back here in twenty years time and I think you'll find I was right. If I'm not, then you can start using words like hubris and schadenfreude yourself.

I've just googled tapwatergate as I thought of it myself and I can happily say that there are only five hits and none are in the context large companies trying to flog us bottled tap water which makes me rather pleased that I thought of it myself.

I'm sure there are other bigger ones I've forgotten. Contributions please....

Mr. Slater's Parrot

I don't get it (nothing unusual there). Yet again, the hoary old subject of whether the Tories should try to get elected on a policy of promising tax cuts is being discussed.

Every day we see examples of the current government wasting money, or boasting about how much more money they can spend (which by extension means they have to raise taxes to get that money), but suggest that if you get elected you might actually try to spend less money is seen as utterly unpalatable.

We now appear to have a system where the government has the biggest take from people's wages in history. They take this money, launder it through an increasingly complex, labour-intensive, and bureaucratically terrifying system only to parcel it back out, mostly to where it came from in the first place (with administrative costs removed of course.)

We're constantly told that the only way to deal with a problem is to buy our way out of it. This was how to fix the NHS. What we've ended up with after all the money was sunk into the NHS is better paid staff (good thing) but the same staff have never apparently been more pissed off with the system in which they work. One bad set of stats. that are almost inevitable after periods of major upheaval and the government feels obliged to jump in and spend more money redesigning a system that barely had a chance to bed in and prove if it made any sense or not.

I guess my argument is simplistic but I just no longer see the connection between more money being spent equalling an improvement in the services provided. Politicians seem locked into a mad scramble where to get elected you have to boast about how much more money you can sink into a problem. There's rarely any sense of the money being spent wisely. Invariably they will just spend years building another multi-billion pound database that won't work and can't talk to any other systems. I'd have thought if you want to keep a record of all the paedophiles in the country, a half competent secretary could knock something up on a spreadsheet in a morning and that would do the same job - it would certainly do 90% of the job almost immediately and give you a system to start with whereas usually we seem to go five years down the line and some outsourcing company has blown billions on the project before everyone agrees the idea appeared to have been fundamentally flawed at the outset.

So, there's been no apparent improvement in healthcare in the last 10 years. Education is visibly worse. Crime? Well it's difficult to tell because the way statistics regarding crimes committed against crimes detected is such a statistical hellhole of smoke and mirrors that anything could be happening out there and the government no more knows the answer than you or I. Pick any other state provided service and it's the same story.

I don't think the Tories neccesarily have have the answer and I'm pretty sure they won't get my vote because they're just as obsessed with touting bullshit as the current government. The Lib Dems are non-starters as well, they're so obsessed with not offending anyone that they'd never get anything done. Shirley Williams crackpot logic, recently touted on Question Time, regarding Salman Rushdie's knighthood proves she, and you must therefore assume, the party she represents, appear to have lost all touch with reality as they would appear to want to delegate the responsibility of deciding who gets a UK knighthood to a random collection of flag burners in Islamabad.

I guess government logic is that money cycled through the State is better than money flowing around outside it. Of all the people the government hires and has to pay, they know they're going to get 50% of that money straight back into the system through PAYE, VAT, car fuel taxes, speeding fines, Lotto etc. etc. The problem is you need a bloody big system if you want to control all that money and keeping it all balanced and justifying taking it in the first place requires an ever expanding bureacracy to control it all. If our system of taxation was more transparent it would scare the bejeesus out of the government because we might finally see how much less was needed to pay for the services people need and how little was needed to run the machinery of state.

Super Casinos (part deux)

It appears Gordon read my blog and has taken my advice regarding the folly of Supercasinos.

London Calling

Driving home this evening on the North Circular, I passed beneath the railway bridge at Stonebridge Park. At the same time a Cotswold Rail Class 47 diesel loco. (yes, as a much younger man, some say boy, I was a train spotter) was passing overhead. It had a name. I checked when I got home - I wasn’t imagining things – it really WAS called Joe Strummer. Upon further investigation here, I find not only have they named one of their locos after the late Clash frontman, but they have also named trains after John Peel and Captain Sensible.

Strummer yes, Peel absolutely, but how Captain Sensible got on the list before a host of others I do not know…..although I admit am rather fond of the Captain’s tune Glad It’s All Over.

The Good Life Awaits

Senor Sanchez Rodriguez, Foreign Service Manager at the Santalucia Service Company has just written to me today and has rather wonderfully informed me I have won 615,810 euros in the Loteria Primitiva - the Spanish lottery. What good fortune. I simply have to provide copies of several forms of ID, all my bank details, and send them to his Yahoo email address and, and after he has secured some funds from my account (for important and essential administrative purposes no doubt) he will send me my winnings. Assuming the bounty has been deposited by Friday, I shall be in Crouch End this weekend buying champagne (no, make that cava actually, it's the Spanish lottery I've won) for anyone who fancies a tipple. Failing that, what would you prefer, mineral or tap?

If Only I Had One....

Your Love Life is Like Annie Hall

"A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies." You believe that love (if you even believe in love!) is a very complicated thing. Maybe love is pain. Or maybe it's all a big therapy session. You're still figuring it out. Your love style: Brainy and a bit neurotic Your Hollywood Ending Will Be: Realistic and reflective

What Movie Is Your Love Life Like?

Grrrrr

Thanks to an idea from The Great She Elephant, ten things about Budgens in Crouch End that make me irrationally angry....

1. The Tesco Metro next door has failed to put them out of business

2. I hate Tesco but I sometimes go in there in the hope of contributing towards achieving #1

3. Pavement logjam

4. Having to hesitate and break stride when approaching the automatic door because it doesn't open quickly enough

5. Miserable instore promotions featuring tastings of the most unappetising looking and unhygenically presented foods you could possibly imagine

6. Why is the fruit and veg. section so fucking gloomy?

7. Putting a picture of some ruddy-faced farmer on meat products in the hope that might be interpreted as giving it some organic credentials

8. Running out of staple foods by 3pm EVERY Sunday

9. Miserable staff - although I would be if I had to work there

10. It smells funny

A mighty WAH! to Ling Valentine

If anyone saw Dragon's Den a few weeks ago I'm sure you won't have forgotten Ling Valentine pitching to the The Dragons and then unreservedly turning down their miserly offer. They were gobsmacked but she knows the value of her business and she also knows the value of good publicity. Like many people, I immediately tried to log on to her site but it had obviously been overwhelmed due to her terrific performance on the show - watch it here.

Reading her website today I discovered Ling won an award last year - The North East Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award. As Ling was unable to attend she sent a colleague, Lina Liang, to accept on her behalf. But, in a stroke of genius, Lina spent the evening working underdcover as a waitress at the awards ceremony until Ling's victory was announced. At this point Lina ascended the stage to receive the award. This was meant to illustrate that not all Chinese people should automatically be assumed to be waitresses, cockle pickers or working in a take-away. Good point well made. Mischevious, humourous, perceptive, and not remotely offensive to the people who were running the award.

However, it seems the people running the award took a slighly different perspective and chose to airbrush Lina out of the award photos and remove links to Ling's website from their own webpage. This bizarre action was later corrected and the unedited photo was rightfully published. What could they possibly expect to achieve by doing that? Perhaps they'd only nominated Ling as some sort of misguided tokenism and didn't expect her to win, and when she did they were embarassed by the way in which the award was accepted. Hell, Ling winning WAS the best thing about their awards. To airbrush out the only ethnic winner of the award was a spectacular and depressing own goal by the organisers.

Ling is, without doubt, an exceptional person. Arriving in UK eight years ago, she's now running a successful business in the North East of England. I'm from there originally and know how difficult it is to start up a business and make money there. She has an uttely original approach to the business of selling cars. She's undercutting the opposition because of her shoestring operation which is run with a strong emphasis on customer service, humour and forthright honesty. She even suggests how you might avoid catching bird flu from imported Asian cars - "A damn car cannot sneeze on you. Unless you are pervert who performs sex act on exhaust pipe, or snogging aircon vents, I cannot figure out how customer would infect from the car. Of course, how do I know what my customer does in dark garage? Some customers really strange. But that would probably break terms of contract hire agreement anyway. Maybe I should introduce Police Check on my proposal form?"

I wish to send out a mighty WAH! to Ling and hope she turns the UK motor industry on its head with her hilairious and original website and eccentric ways of publicising it. My old Audi A4 just clocked up 200,000 miles last week and I'm going to have to replace it soon. Ling will be the first place I go. With any luck I might get an introduction to the beautiful Lina as well.

Vocabulary

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

Super Casinos

I don't what sort of a hellhole area you must have to live in to think that it will be improved by having a "super-casino" built there but this is the fate of Manchester.

If that wasn't bad enough, then finding out that the current government has still yet to decide what legislation they can come up with to make it even less enjoyable must be a worry. Culture Secretary ("culture" and "casino" hardly sit comfortably together except in the oddest of sentences) Tessa Jowell has said "Las Vegas is not coming to Great Britain... British casinos will be subject to new controls, which will be the strictest in the world."

So, whilst New Labour will expect to cash in on whatever revenue this place generates you can be sure that it will be a soulless place lest people contemplate a return visit at which point they will surely turn into some sort of deranged gambling addict which of course is what we must avoid.....or so the government rhetoric will have us believe.

Remember the Dome. Flush with 750 million quid they managed to try and canvass every do-gooders opinion about the what it should contain, and what was supposed to be celebration of the millenium and to highlight everything positive about Britain (and also, shock-horror, an enjoyable experience) ended up being a mish-mash of compromises, political correctness and pseudo-educational displays which the British public was smart enough to see for the hopeless scam that it was.

Quite how The (now even more hopelessly redundant) Dome didn't get the contract to house the "Super Casino" is surely a story that has yet to be told. The current custodians of The Dome must have lined every pocket in Whitehall and Westminster to get to the front of the queue to host it so will be mightily pissed off that they haven't. Expect another scandal similar to the current cash-for-peerages fiasco when they take their revenge on New Labour for failing to deliver the contract to them.

So don't expect to enjoy yourself - Gordon will see to that. It'll deliver a ton of minimum-wage jobs which will help no-one in what will be a pale shadow of anything you see in Las Vegas. Emasculated beyond comprehension by foolish legislation in order to placate local objections, people will walk in, stick a pound coin in a slot-machine, not win, get a lecture from the legion of obligatory, onsite counsellors expressing concern lest the hapless numpty who has stumbled in has his fiscal prudence addled by bright lights, he'll toddle off into the night, and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Having made his exit, the unimpressed punter will realise there was never any point in going there in the first place......which is why next year, he'll have two weeks in Vegas and get treated like an adult, human being, with free sandwiches and a bit of sunshine.

A few years on, the government will realise what a rickets they've made of it all and revoke the tranche of silly legislation they brought in, that was never enforced but they love to think up believing the majority of the population is somehow wilfully stupid with its money.

Jade Goody et al.

Racists. End of.

Up Er Mei

Happy New Year everybody.

I'm trying to quit smoking today. This wasn't a conscious decision, I just noticed I was going to run out of snout sometime around the New Year so I thought this might be a prescient moment. I had my last cigarette at 11.00 am today. It's now 8.30 pm and I have the pain behind the eyes, pins and needles all over my body, a skittish nature, I'm grinding my teeth, I keep trying to eat my tongue, I'm biting the back of my hand, and numerous other intensely irritating symptoms.....I probably won't be able to last but it's the first step. I CAN quit, I've done it before, for a while, and I know the physical side of quitting is actually the easiest bit. It's the mental side and right now, I am mentally challenged. Right now I would kill......but as long as I stay home I can't do anything about it. If I go out......now that's another thing......have another drink, that'll take my mind off things.

Rockaliser Baby

I enjoy cooking. I've always seen good food as one of life's pleasures. Eat what you like, what floats your boat, and in moderation, using good quality ingredients, you will live as long and as healthily (but probably much more happily) as anyone else. Food should be a pleasure, not a regimen. It's a physical experience and you should concentrate on getting the most out of it.

People assume single men survive on takeaways, TV dinners and toast. Now I'll admit toast plays a part in my diet but I can't remember the last time I bought a takeaway and the idea of eating something brewed up in an industrial vat somewhere, cook-chilled, given a poncy title and some fancy packaging and stuck on the shelf of Waitrose or M & S at £4.99 has never appealed. More and more I'm cooking food from rawer and rawer ingredients. I made ice-cream the other day (without an ice-cream maker) and it was pretty good. Good enough to try it on vistors I reckon.

Cooking for yourself is not only satisfying, it's cost effective as well. £4.50 of that £4.99 will be eaten up by packaging, preparation, distribution and other overheads but mostly it's good, juicy, shareholder-pleasing profit (not much left there for the actual ingredients). In the case of the slightly more democratic Waitrose who operate on a different financial basis to most other retailers it's a little different, but they are still not averse to making a buck on the back of some pretentious advertising and overblown prose on the back of box about how special their food is.

Most of the time I can knock something up without recourse to a recipe. Stews, casseroles, stir-fries don't really need recipes anyway. All you need to know are the basic rules and you can tinker around with the ingredients. Roasts are a doddle. Try to learn how different cuts or joints of meat react to different cooking styles and use this knowledge. If you do need to follow a recipe, understand the rules and the terminology and you generally won't go far wrong. Recipes on packaging are usually pretty reliable as well. The manufacturers want you to see their product in the best possible circumstances so they're unlikley to give you a duff recipe on the packet.

In the last few years I've started bothering about puddings and other sweet things. I'd never really thought much about them. When out for a meal with friends I've always gone straight for the coffee when friends have been cooing over the dessert menu. Most restaurants seem to lose interest when it comes to dessert and resort to stuff like banoffee pie, sticky toffee pudding or death by chocolate or some other nutcase name to disguise some sickly concoction.

Round about this time of year, I start looking out for an interesting pudding for the family for Christmas. You've got to admit, Christmas pudding is pretty hopeless. Your poor mum willl buy, or prepare something the size of a football and most people will go through the motions of eating a tiny sliver, declaring it delicious and then avoiding it until they leave. My uncle Tam used to fry Christmas pudding and eat it for breakfast and I've got to say, that was about the tastiest way I've ever seen it presented.

So, the other day I saw this recipe for Cardamom Chocolate Truffles. Looks like an interesting treat to go with the after-dinner coffees I thought. It's a bit exotic but simple to prepare. I could go to Thorntons and buy their stuff but making your own would be much more satisfying and fun. I made a test batch this week. It took much longer than suggested and the results are disappointing. Three tablespoons of cardamom pods is way too much. Cream to chocolate proportions are wrong, and "thick and fluffy" is not a consistency I recognise. There should be 300ml of cream to 300g of chocolate. One tbsp. of cardamom pods is plenty. Have you ever bitten into a cardomom pod when somebody's left one in the rice? You can't taste anything else for the rest of the meal. In this case, you're only using them to infuse the cream but the taste from thre tablespoons is still overpowering.

I get pissed off with bad recipes. Especially when you spend nearly eight quid on ingredients. I had to buy extra cream to get the mix to a consistency that was beatable. The cardamom flavour is, as you might expect, overpowering, although it has done my sinuses no end of good. Still they look OK I suppose. What do you think?

In Remembrance

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae, May 1915

My Pink Half of the Drainpipe

There's been a lot written recently about green taxes so I don't see why I shouldn't say my piece as well.

The government and the two main opposition parties in have both been posturing and pontificating about how they plan to deal with the issue that is variously called Climate Change or Global Warming or The Greenhouse Effect. They seem to be mostly in agreement that the way to tackle this thorny problem is to levy taxes.

I don't think anyone really disagrees that the effect we're having on the world is generally a negative one. If you have finite resources of a commodity and you continue to use that resource faster than it can renew itself, then pretty soon it's going to run out. When that resource is part of the very fibre of the planet you're living on then the effect is that much worse. How long those resources might last is a whole different question but the fact thay they are finite is not in dispute. The world we live in is completely self-contained. The only fuel we draw in is sunlight. The rest of the world is a combination of gases, elements and minerals (pardon my chemistry or geology, there may be more to it than that but I'm sure you get my meaning) and we appear to be drawing more resources out of the ground and pumping it into the atmosphere faster than the ground can re-absorb it.

So, any initiative to try to deal with that can only be A Good Thing. But, and this is my whinge, why the fuck is the most imaginative way to deal with this problem to tax people? Your average British voter is pretty pissed off with the current government and their role as custodians of public money. Every week they come up with another idea to see how they can get more money out of us. Usually this involves telling us it's our own bloody fault and they have to do this for our own good. We're told we're all too fat so they're going to tax fatty foods. We're all binge-drinking alcoholics so they're going to increase the tax on booze. We're all stupid so more money is needed for education. We're all sick so more money is needed for health provision. We're all defrauding the welfare so we're going to have to have ID cards (and pay to have them).

The problem here is that people like to see a return on their money and the reality is that we never fucking do. If the government wants to take more of our money then we want to see the results of that investment. If booze is going to cost more to act as a disincentive to buy and drink it, then we want to see fewer drunks in the street on a Saturday night - fat chance!

And this is why Green Taxes are so appealing to the government, regardless of the party in power. There is no way of measuring the results. There will be no instant payoff. Richmond Council trebling the price of parking permits is not going to stop a hurricane hitting Bermuda or the icecaps melting. Whatever we do and whatever we pay in tax will have absolutely no effect at all on the planet. On the radio this morning, a presenter on a proper BBC news station seriously suggested that the taxes raised would "halt global warming" as if this was something that would be fixed next month. No, no, no. Green taxes, whilst on the one hand being unpopular will be seen by the politicians as a silver bullet to levy taxes at will, to shore up whatever other bit of financial mismanagement is going on elsewhere in the incumbent goverment. And because there will be no tangible result in the state of affairs, they can just keep on taking the money and telling us we're "doing our bit" to save the world. They'll just blame the Chinese or Indians or some other country's pollution when all those countries are really trying to do is improve their cut of global cash that is swilling around and to lead as profligate existence as we have done in the past. Well fuck right off, it's a scam and you know it Mr Blair.

If you really want people to buy into this idea then offer to ringfence the money raised by Green Taxes. Go on. Put some transparency in your taxation for once. Don't tell us you're charging us to fix one problem and then use the money to bankroll wars that you think will put you in the history books. Promise to spend the money raised on windfarms. Bugger those people who think they're ugly. There's a million places to put them on this island, the most windswept fucking place in the whole EU. Use it to subsidise putting wind turbines on houses and factories. Put it into a public transport system that for once in my 43 year lifetime (44 next week) might actually fucking work and be slightly better than just about bearable to use. State clearly and unambiguously how much money is raised and then put it back into the system in a real and visible manner. It still won't make a fucking jot of difference to the planet but people might actually accept that you're serious about this and not just flailing around as usual trying to find politically and/or morally acceptable ways to get money out of people to continue to shore up your financial mismanagement of the state.

We Were Wrong

McVities have removed the plain chocolate Hobnob from their product lineup. The PCH is a unique product occupying a niche in the biscuit market that is not filled by any other teatime treat. At a push I suspect PCH fans will resort to the plain uncoated Hobnob but I suspect few, if any, would consider the hazelnut, caramel or orange alternatives which are nouveau arrivistes lacking the low-end punch the PCH connoisseur craves.

I think McVities have acquired a somewhat scattergun approach of late to their products. They seem to want to stick any old topping, coating or filling on a biscuit and see if it’ll fly in the marketplace. These new products may briefly grasp the attention of the public but few I doubt have the integrity and qualities of the PCH that will ensure their long-term survival in the hurly-burly world of biscuits. They are tinkering dangerously with their range. Their marketing budget to get these new products recognised must be horrific and to what end? Most of them will have died away in a few years time to be replaced with some other flash-in-the-pan, gimcrack biscuit with equally transient credentials.

McVities! Sort your act out!

NB If you're an American, I'm talking about cookies, not biscuits.

NBB If, on the off-chance you read the Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down website (highly recommended), then I wrote the original email to Nicey and have not plagiarised this piece.

girl with a one-track mind

Newspapers rely on a number of things to survive. Sales, over the counter and through advertising, is an obvious one. Then you have the standard of journalism which relies on quality of writing, content and exclusivity. A lot of what journalists write will have been researched and they may quote anonymous sources. Anonymous contributors, the journalist hopes, will give their writing a whiff of authenticity, will make the reader think that the person they're reading has access to information not available to others. Your average hack will fiercely protect his or her sources claiming their anonymity is essential. Anonymity also means that although their writing might imply their informer is someone fairly senior, they could just as easily be a doorman with a grudge.

So, when a newspaper chooses to out someone and expose their identity (or more often than not not, their tits on some faraway beach), they're treading a delicate path. They're about to attack an area which they would, in their own profession, consider untouchable. You have to ask if they're doing it in the public interest or whether they're doing it to increase sales or perhaps it's out of spite or to undermine a competitor. Whatever their reasons, and public interest is rarely the top priority, before you revel in the salaciousness of the moment, you should question why they're doing it.

The identity of the writer of the blog and subsequent book, girl with a one-track mind was recently revealed in a national (British) newspaper. The newspaper had serialised the book a few weeks earlier. The writer was very keen to remain anonymous, Her writing is brutally and refreshingly honest, involving fairly intimate details about her sex life. A lot of people read the blog with a sense of relief, finding they were not alone in the way they thought or behaved. Some people may have flinched at the detail, but few I suspect, doubted its honesty.

So what possible benefit tracking down and outing the writer has been lost on me. It could only be an attempt to puff up the insecurity or flagging reputation of the journalist in question. It might have got them a few extra sales but hardly the kind of investigative journalism that will win prizes. This is low-level stuff, it ain't Woodward and Bernstein. The target of the piece has initially not fared so well. She has had to question whether she can continue writing, whether commercially or just for pleasure. She has had to face her family and friends who now know her most intimate thoughts and what goes through her mind on day-to-day basis - we all have opinions and thoughts but sometimes we like to keep some of them to ourselves. Her day job and career has been effectively ruined by the innuendo laden style in which the outing article was written.

Newspapers love to tell us what an important job they're doing but sometimes one suspects they're sometimes more interested in making the news rather than just reporting it. Having a large multi-national corporation behind you means makes it easy to go after the little man, who rarely has the time or money to engage in a fight over journalistic integrity. The target of the piece will just have to pick herself up, dust herself down, hope the story dies down pretty quickly and try and get on with her life.

In the case of girl with a one-track mind, I think she's got the chutzpah to come through this. Her writing is engaging, funny and she comes across as someone you'd like to meet. Her book is selling well. She has had plenty of support through her website. She may not be able to write anonymously again, but I'm sure she has plenty to offer using her true identity. I wish her well. I'd like to see whose career has progressed further in 10 years time - the journalist or the girl - my money's on the girl.

Cool Britannia

Single mother. It's an emotive phrase isn't it. It tends to conjure up an image of a woman, probably young, who has either by accident or design, got herself knocked up and is now working the state for whatever benefits she can get. Her kids will be out of control, bereft of the essential guidance we're told can only be attained through a two-parent home life. She will never have worked, will have had limited education and her only prospects involve having more kids by more transient fathers who will disappear as quickly as they arrive. It's a depressing image but one the government seems keen to have us believe is the norm.

And what happens when this single mother finds herself in this position. Not only is she villified by the media, across the whole political spectrum, but she's told her kids will be unhinged tearaways likely to descend into crime, drugs and a hapless future. Grim isn't it, and easy to agree with.

Single mothers are poorly represented and pretty much ignored. However hard they try to bring up their kids properly they're still likely to be stigmatised by the image I describe. And the kids know this. Once they're of an age to understand their circumstances they are able to understand the rhetoric touted by the media and they're pretty much doomed. As soon as the kid realises the country sees them as a lost cause they will just as likely give up trying and accept that nobody has much hope or expectation for them. The descent begins. Up until then they were probably perfectly happy. Kids often don't know the apparent desperation of their situation until somebody who thinks they know better tells them how hopeless their life is.

What confuses me is what this villification of this section of society achieves. It doesn't encourage the mothers and it sure as hell doesn't energise the kids to rise above it. It beats them down and then proceeds to give a good kicking when they're down. No wonder they fail. Kids that get into trouble will be reported as coming from a single parent family, and automatically, by implication and the power of the phrase 'single parent' we've decided what kind of kid we're dealing with here - yet often there is little knowledge of the exact circumstances of that single parent. Simply being from that environment is enough to explain how hopeless you've become. As a kid you believe it yourself even though you didn't know anything was wrong until they mentioned it. You were just trying to get on with your life like all the other kids.

There are a lot of good single mothers out there who don't see living off benefits as a career choice. They work. They raise good balanced kids who go on to be productive members of society. But this is not because of any help they receive. It is in spite of it. People find themselves as single parents even though that was never their intention when they had their kids. Their relationship has broken down and now they have to deal with things as best they can. And invariably many of them do, even though the state and media are after them. A lot of kids benefit from one parent actually having the nerve to detach themselves from a corrosive, violent or otherwise upleasant two-parent environment which really was doing them harm.

And the worst thing is, we believe the crap we're told yet we all probably know a single mother, but of course the one we know is the exception. The one we know brings her kids up properly. They're smartly turned out. They're polite and work hard at school, but you know what. That single parent you know is, for statistical reasons, as far as the media and state are concerned exactly the same as the person I described in the first paragraph.

I guess categorising people as losers sells newspapers and produces nice government statistics yet it doesn't really help anyone.

Humanoid Boogie

The other evening I was on the Heathrow Express travelling back from a week long business trip to Romania. Work has kept me busy these last few weeks and although that's not the only reason I've not been updating the blog it is certainly a contributory factor. Anyway, there I was, quietly reading Uncle Vanya in preparation for the book group meeting next weekend. I looked up, to stare pensively into the distance as one does occasionally when trying to absorb Russian literature. My eye caught that of a young lady who had been looking in my direction. She quickly averted her glaze. Almost immediately I found her attractive. Black jeans, pointy boots, nice top, big brown eyes and long, thick, dark, shiny hair. Physically, she was, I guess you'd say, larger than average but it was all in perfect proportion and just so very right. I went back to my play and she went back to her mobile 'phone conversations, obviously catching up with people as it appeared she had also been away for a while. I could not help overhearing her half of the brief conversations which were engaging, considerate and jolly and only confirmed to me that she was as appealing in personality as I found her to be in appearance.

For the next fiften minutes we continued to exchange eye contact. Sometimes I looked up just to see her look away, and other times she caught me doing the same thing. It wasn't some weirdo stalker-type staring thing. I'm sure it was mutual. Somehow, it just felt right.

The train pulled into Paddington and we both got up to leave our section of the carriage. I fould myself helping her to remove her large case from the luggage rack. Smiles were exchanged and then we found ourselves walking almost side-by-side up the platform into the melee of people on the main concourse waiting for their trains. I was heading for the taxi rank and I felt sure, that with such a large case she was going in the same direction.

I never talk to strangers. But now, as I weaved through the crowd I said to myself "I'm going to talk to this girl". All I had to do was think of the right opening gambit that might lead to a conversation. Nothing too witty or that might lead her to think I was in the habit of eyeing and chatting up strangers on a train, but nothing too cheesy either. Soon I would have to tell her I worked in IT and on the scale of cheesiness, that's right up there with the Stinking Bishop. In addition, her body language suggested a certain shyness and I did not want to appear too forward.

I knw my moment would come as I walked down the corridor that leads out to the taxi rank There would be the inevitable twenty minute wait and somehow things would develop. I exited the corridor to find a phalanx of taxis waiting, no queue, and thirty seconds later I was aboard and pulling out of the station.

The moment had been lost. This has been bugging me all weekend. I'm 43, single, but enough of an optimist to still believe that someone is out there for me. In those last twenty minutes I had concluded this was a moment not to be lost. Opportunities like this do not arise very often and if they do, I rarely feel so compelled to want to act on them but here I am idly wondering all weekend what might have been.

I suppose the best I can hope for is that somewhere out there, is a pointy-booted, black-jeaned, dark-haired young lady who also thinks, perhaps on that Friday evening in West London, a moment was also lost. Which is why I guess, we all go on.

Rusty (Champion Thrust)

I got the bike. It had only done 1370 miles and straight after buying it I added 260 miles driving it back from Cornwall (his other home). It's got a radio...not sure why but there you go....and an electric screen which you can use like a modest fairing or, when in the up position, like a complete windbreak/deflector shield. And it handles - for a big bugger it's fantastically chuckable into the twisty stuff. another bonus is I will no longer have to faff around bungying my laptop and gym gear on the back as it's got all that hard luggage.

I also sold my other bike. Sad to see it go and even sadder when the guy 'phoned me one hour later to say it wouldn't start. I drove out to him and found it was only that he hadn't realised you needed to pull the clutch in to start it. More worrying was that he had already decided that it was too big for him and would I consider buying it straight back at a reduced price. This might have been possible if he hadn't dropped it sometime since I'd sold it to him and it now had some nasty scrapes on the previously unmarked bodywork. I'd looked after that bike - I'd had it from new for over six years so to see it in such reduced circumstances was rather saddening. I really hope he sells it on soon and it finds the home and owner it deserves.

This post is somewhat bike-centric, as was the last so another post imminent.