Night Bus

So. I'm on the night bus back from london. The trip down was a horribly uncomfortable experience, hopefully this time it will be different. but it doesn't look that way. The american guy in front of me with his expensice surf flip flops and expertly crafted shaggy hair absolutely reeks. He must be backpacking or something cos there is no way he has seen a shower of late. Bizarely this is not hampering his flirtation with the cute kiwi girls in front who seem to be warming to his screechy voiced advances. I am reminded of a recent stand up set I saw on utube by dylan moran. In reference to the pitch, tone and gross over confidence of our american cousins he says 'when was the last time you had to say to an american, 'sorry? What was that? I didn't quite hear you'.

Having said that the scottish guy next me is belching and farting in a fashion that would make his kinsmen proud. But with his head drunkenly tilted to one side it appears to the casual observer that these horrific bowl antics can only be attributed to me. In these cramped quarters the combined efforts of the american and the scot are producing a near lethal aroma. There is a reason the night coach is the cheapest method of travel.

I'm listening to the arcade fire's new album. Truly exceptional. I had very high expectations and was almost certain I would be disappointed. But to my delight the boys from canada have retained their magic. Thanks to scoggs for posting it my way. Apparently they are also one of the best live acts around at the moment. I haven't been lucky enough to find out first hand. Not yet.

So, a bit of catch up about my general situation: I have ditched the german. With sarkozy as bait and the promise of an easy resource in Cat I have taken up french. If I ever try to use it in france i will probably only be met with raised eyebrows and perfect english replies, or if I try in Quebec then ill probably be spat on, but hey ho. It is still the most pretentious of languages going. So accordingly I have signed up to evening classes.
I have a part time job now, three days a week working in a turkish foods store. It is not a kebab shop, but the owner does have one of those too. My friend Cemil recently became manager of a number of turkish shops in the city and has kindly offered me a job. So that gives me the income to pay rent with a bit left over. This should extend my edinburgh life for many more months, but its not a permanent solution. It gives me the breathing space to apply for really groovy jobs. The RNR is begining to take shape as seven others have joined me in my new entry class. Things are finally beginning to move and I have a tough fitness test at the weekend at faslane. My preperations have been hampered by a pulled calf muscle.

I have also joined the scottish green party and in a satisfying reflection on my 'neo-green' world view I have been receiving email invitations to attend the nuclear naval base at faslane from two sources. The greens who want me to protest outside and the RNR who want to offer me training inside. Neither party know about the other although from what I have seen it is the greens who would be most intolerant. Since when do you have to be a commie to care about the environment? Once again I find myself backing horses that are only very roughly going in the direction I wish to travel.

I was in london this weekend to see Kristina who I first met in arkansas. She is an exceptional person haunted by her own high standards. She is from Bulgaria and about to begin a masters course at UCL. Eastern european talent enriching a dynamic london. I couldn't have scripted a better scenario. My high hopes for our collective future rest on people like her. Not to add to her burdens or anything.

The american seems to have given up and the kiwi girls have lost any of the 'cute' they may have once held by descending into an endless chatter about past boyfriends. Why do so many girls do that? Why define yourself by your time spent with the other sex? Surely such talk only reinforces the biologically backed inbalance.

Ha! I'm such an ass. As an american might say.

Blogging on the go

Many of my blog entries are written on scraps of paper or on the backs of napkins as I aimlessly wonder around my world and am suddenly overcome with rage at someone or something I see. Then, once home I reread what I wrote and like some highly strung artist I rip it all up, cursing myself for being so foolish.

Last week however something happened that will forever change things. On a whim I dropped in at a 02 store and asked how long I had left on my contract before I was due for an update. It turned out that was actually overdue for a new phone and that I could pick one out of the store there and then. The world of handheld communications suddenly became my oyster. And I just couldn't help myself. Sitting at the end of the display case sat a Blackbury 8300. I had to have it.

And so here I sit. In a coffee shop on Princes Street. Blogging from my armchair.

Napkins the world over are sighing a breath of relief. The english language is trembling in anticipation of unspell checked choas.

Here's hoping I don't make to big an idiot of myself.

When I was a kid...

When I was a kid capitalism was bad. I’d sit in my free periods at sixth form leafing through the Marxist manifesto, rereading the archaic passages until they resembled a shape I could digest. I used to browse socialist websites, fantasize about 19th century workers movements and I even bunked off school to attend a rally.

I believe I was a typical and healthy middle class child. Only real tyrants (or Americans) fail to begin life as communists. Of course, it made perfect sense. Everyone is equal, right? Hence it is surely only logical that everyone be given the same opportunities – and for that everyone needs access to the same education and the same material benefits, right?

Haha. Wrong.

Boy, it’s funny what a university education does to you. “Red Essex” turned me bluer than blue. A framed painting of Lady Thatcher now hangs above my bed, rows of Tory biographies line my bookshelf and the cheeky features of Mr Cameron greet me most mornings via the magic of rss.

Yet while I outwardly portray a seething contempt for everyone and everything I am at heart still a nice, cuddly and warm-hearted kind of guy. I am a reformed communist. Which is really all a capitalist is. A capitalist is a communist who has realised that greed is the only real motivating force, and that greed is not really a vice at all, because of course greed is really another way of saying ambition. And ambition is what drives all great ventures.

And so it is that these days when I daydream what actually pops into my head is not the factory workers of Tajik-e-waka-stan unionising and toppling their government, but rather their government sending ministers to the World Bank. Their corrupt government has a bright spark who buys them all new suits and coaches them in what to say on their arrival in Washington. Their well put together policy proposals that introduce market liberalisation and protect human rights convinces the Bank to give them a loan which allows Tajik-e-waka-stan to double its standards of living every year for the next twenty. And capitalism marches on over the blazing cornfields singing “M.I.C – K.E.Y – M.O.U.S.E” and leaves hundreds of millions of people better off in its wake.

Cont…

Sarkozy rolls up his sleeves

My man Sarkozy recently announced a series of much needed reforms. 22,000 public sector workers are not to be replaced. 500,000 train drivers and electricity workers are to have their special benefits revoked. A pledge “to not waste a single euro in public funds” and to reform the 35 hour working week which does nothing but penalise the aspiring poor. And to top it all off his foreign minister has said the world should be preparing for war with Iran.

The unions are angry, last time someone tried to meddle with the public sector pensions France came to a halt for three weeks. They vote on strike action next month. In a sickening display during 2005 French students marched in order to protect the sheltered public sector jobs they all crave –only weeks after the suburbs of Paris had exploded in violence because primarily of restrictive employment laws that had left hundreds of thousands outside the system.

Reactionary France is about to clash with Progressive France - the fate of Europe hangs in the balance.

With my hero Blair removed from the political scene, and with the Conservative Party breaking rank, I am seriously considering jumping across the Channel for a few months just to ride the next wave of European reform.

Invite the friends round, order in the pizza and beer – this is going to be one heck of a show.

Sar – Koz – Eee! Sar – Koz – Eee! Sar – Koz – Eee!

July 18th, 1969

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by the nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

State of the Union

Well, this is new. Unemployment. In fairness I only finished my dissertation two weeks ago, and in that time I have found a new flat and moved in. It’s a nice flat with nice flatmates. Two Scots, a Kiwi and an Irish girl. I’m the youngest again. The others are 31, 45, 23 and 28 respectively. All employed and with their own commitments so they don’t tend to be around much. A completely different feel to a student flat, it is still friendly, but just a little more focussed, and a heck of a lot cleaner.

Cat is back and beginning her new course in outdoor education, which involves skydiving into waterfalls – or something. I think the idea is that trouble kids can’t actually sit still for more than 3 seconds so they learn maths much better by being given adventure holidays – or something equally liberal. Makes me bitter. I am still angry about all the high school days lost by teachers instructing us to throw crap out of windows because all the retards spawned by single parents couldn’t comprehend the simple statement “gravity pulls shit down”. Or something equally illiberal.

I’m almost all moved in, just a few items left to ferry over. I went to Ikea the other day to get a few items; did you know they do a full English breakfast for 95p? Magnificent. I now have a coffee table next to my mini sofa chair. From there I can read my books, sip green tea and enjoy my bedrooms view of the Pentlands. Hopefully this will ensure a future full of sheltered and clueless worldviews.

All this is fortunate because reading is about all I am doing right now. With no job and an attack of anxiety whenever I think about what I could the future it is comforting to pretend that I can spare a few weeks to attack my mountain of unread books. But the truth is that with a high rent and my monetary reserves all but gone I need to find an income asap. God knows what I could do. I remember a few years ago I used to pride myself in being totally fearless when it came to the unknown. Why fear what you cannot know? For example roller coasters never scared me on the first go, only on the second, when I knew how horrible the experience was did I get nervous.

Cont…

I’m Feeling Lucky

I read this book a while back called ‘Longitude’ by Dava Sobel. Her book was all about clocks, and it was the best book about clocks I have ever read. You see apparently for hundreds of years it had been difficult and dangerous to conduct long sea voyages because no accurate method of calculating your correct longitude existed. This had led to many disasters and amusing misdirections throughout the years. One group of people however who did not think it was very funny was the British Navy who had seen many a fleet go astray. With ambitions of empire this simply wouldn’t do and so the King established a prize fund for the first person to invent a clock that would remain accurate regardless of its location. While we all carry such devices on our wrists these days, back then (the 18th Century) it was not so simple. You see if you held such a device then through some mathematical trick involving time zones and star charts you could accurately (and quickly) calculate your longitude and hence location. The story progresses from there with the hero being a simple and comparatively uneducated mechanic called John Harrison who went up against all the leading scientific figures and establishments to finally claim the prize and revolutionise seafaring.

It used to be a common thing for the King to set up challenges such as these to stimulate competition and innovation. Regrettably that tradition has been lost and I can only dream of how fantastic it would be if it was reinvented today, but hey ho. Instead what we have today is the X-Prize Foundation.

In 2004 the first X-Prize, called the ‘Ansari X-Prize’ was won by Burt Rutan for piloting his privately funded air/spacecraft into orbit twice in two weeks. Rutan was funded by Paul Allen of Microsoft fame and the technology is now being used by Richard Branson to start ‘Virgin Galactic’. Many groups competed for this prize and while there was only one winner the technologies developed by the other groups are still in use and still being developed to compete in the new space tourist industry which the Ansari prize almost single handily created.

Other prizes have been established since with the newest being quite possibly the most exciting. The ‘Google Lunar X-Prize’ was announced two days ago and will offer $20,000,0000 to the first group to safely land a rover on the moon and have it travel at least 500 meters and transmit high definition video. There are further cash incentives for other features, such as a further $5,000,000 if it can capture images of other man-made objects on the moon. Perhaps they will find the filming studio that Neil Armstrong used.

Anyway, I love all this stuff. I think offering cash incentives for innovation is a top-notch idea. As the Soviets found out to their detriment, humans are only ever motivated by riches, and we should always look for ways to tap the potential of human greed. It is after all our most progressive quality. I think it should be taught at school. Greed coaching. Would make for a far better world – it’s true!

To hell with the commies.

Innovative Ipswich IV

In order to continue my search for reasons to be hopeful about my hometown I have dug into the archives of the Economist for an article I remembered recently. It was about Ipswich doing something rather exciting with its new housing estates. You see Britain, like most of the world throughout the past decade, has been subject to a massive period of growth. Accordingly the green plains of the English countryside have been gobbled up by countless new estates.

Ipswich has been no exception and the population of its ‘greater metropolitan area’ has surely multiplied many times over in the last few years. What is perhaps exciting about the new homes in Ipswich is that some of them have been pioneering a new type of architecture and street planning. The Ravenswood estate is the one mentioned in the article but I know for a fact that Grange Farm has also been involved. Both estates have looked to the American ‘New Urbanist’ movement that enjoyed a limited period of success in the 1980’s for inspiration. The defining features of this movement being “traditional architecture, densely packed houses, geometric street plans and the attempt to create communities” as opposed to soulless tracts of homes. And as the Economist goes on to say, “The results are occasionally weird. In Ipswich, brick houses abut wooden-sided cottages that could have been lifted from a New England fishing village. In the next street, the dominant style is vaguely Scandinavian. That opens into a Parisian-style boulevard; turn left, and you are in a Victorian main street.”

The idea of all this is that by brining people into closer proximity with one another you help create more open and connected neighbourhoods. People can no longer hide behind hedgerows and driveways. By housing a higher ratio of people to land it also means less precious countryside gets paved over.

All this makes me quite excited and as an enthusiast of architecture in general the idea of designing more sociable spaces seems appealing. Britain’s cities are littered with the ugly, needle strewn remains of 60’s and 70’s building projects that were similarly designed to usher in a new age of social harmony and personal wealth. But I still have faith in the notion that you can effectively change behaviour through design. Perhaps David Cameron should give a few lines in his new manifesto on the importance of community design in combating anti-social behaviour. Or perhaps this would make his crusade more bizarre than it already is. Either way, I quite like the new designs and I though it warranted a new pro-Ipswich post.

Of course the true motivation lies in the fact that I have a very nasty Ipswich bashing post in the pipeline. And can anyone think of a suitably negative word beginning with ‘I’ that can go before ‘Ipswich’ as a basis for my anti-Ipswich posts?

Potter Puppet Pals

The Cameron Calamity

Why? Why Cameron? What are you doing!? Don’t say that! Please don’t say that. You didn’t mean it. Take it back. It’s all a joke. Please go back to hugging hoodies and planting trees. Go on… No, don’t listen to the right of your party, you don’t need them and you don’t want them! Be brave Mr Cameron. Brave like I hoped you would be. Let the senile folk vote for UKIP if they want, the clever ones will still begrudgingly vote for you anyway. Stick with the reforms Mr Cameron.

It’s ok, have a conservative social policy, that’s alright by me, the liberal agenda has done wonders for the UK but it also meant we just sat tight and watched the white underclass grow and grow. Opportunity is key, but so is responsibilty.

Come on Cam’s. Stop this now, you’re far to pretty to being saying such dirty things, and no… don’t… you did… oh my god. You just said it…. Citizen Service!? National Bloody Service!!! What is this, The 50’s?

Cameron you buffoon!! What the hell are you thinking!? Did you actually give up smoking weed in Eton or was that all just a ruse?? National - !? What the hell!!

Cameron. You break my heart.


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Further Reading:
http://www.webcameron.org.uk/532 --> Check out the first comment :D