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Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11319918
I hope that in this latest round of flogging that public sector workers receive at the hands of the media, people remember that the vast majority of those in the sector earn far less than their private sector counterparts. Furthermore, I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with GPs earning in excess of £100,000 a year, and I don't think most other people do either. I DO have a problem with management consultants in the NHS being paid six figure salaries while there are nurses who have to work second jobs to get by. Personally I think that publishing a list like this is intentionally inflammatory and i wonder about the motivations of those behind it; harping on about 'gold plated pensions' and flogging the public sector whipping boy completely detracts from the real problem which is that across the board those at the top of the pyramid are being paid gluttonous amounts that are not only many times the wages of those at the bottom, but also those in the middle. (with the drip-drip stealth transformation of public sector agencies such as the CSA into 'third sector' operations, it's not like pension funds and employee rights will be safe for much longer anyway) And to focus on this inequality in the public sector, which is frankly a pittance in comparison to obscene private sector salaries, is frankly ridiculous. But then, one of the downsides of trying to sustain the public sector in a world in which corporations are becoming ever more powerful is that problems like this will always arise. So long as we have this weird sort of hybrid system, the BBC are trying to compete with commercial interests and Private hospitals can offer Drs far more ample wages and the state school system will not improve because many of those with the power to make it better don't REALLY care all that much because they can put their own kids through private school. The problem with trying to run these two sectors alongside one another is that the profit driven private sector will eventually leech all of the money out of the public sector until it's drained dry. Capitalism is based on competition; I agree that the public sector can't compete with the private in terms of wages and in fact it shouldn't be trying to. If we don't want our ailing public services to reach a point where the only option is to dismantle it and privatise it piece by piece then I suggest we need to sit down and have a good hard think about what we want from them, because the current model obviously isn't working. But for gods sake lay the blame where it belongs.
And on that note, I'm not entirely sure why the above article divulges that "Some people earn more than the Prime Minister", as though I should be expected to turn purple and fall off my chair in shock, sputtering, until I have been calmed down with suitably soothing words and a cup of hot, sweet, tea. It doesn't surprise or bother me because a) If Cameron decides it's not too crass, he can always follow in Blair's footsteps and make his money on the lecture circuit. b) It's not like he needs it. c) Why should politicians be paid obscenely high wages anyway? It's not a 'career', or at least it shouldn't be. It's a stressful and important job of course, but Cameron's six figure salary seems plenty ample. Some guy on the radio the other day made the comment that we shouldn't pay our politicians crazy amounts of money because it attracts the wrong sort of person, and I rather feel he may be right.
And finally; reading the reaction to Cable's 'marxist' utterances the other day (what is that all about anyway, are we in 50s America? "Sacrilege, he has dared speak ill of the money god! What a commie, go back to Russia!") I was struck by something which has hit me on occasion before; like a ton of bricks, it floors me. Some guy, who I will name and quote directly when I'm at a pc and not writing this on my phone, who I think was the director of CBS, made some sarky remark along the lines of "Well, if he thinks Capitalism isn't working so well then I'd like to see him suggest something that works better", and I remembered, once again, that the minds of the public have been colonised to such a degree that they actually believe this rubbish about there being no other alternative - "We have to accept the flaws of this system and all of its injustices because there is no other option", "Capitalism is the law of the jungle", "This state of affairs is a natural product of human nature." Orwell hit the nail on the head; repeat a lie enough times and people will think it true. The form of late capitalism we operate under now is just as engineered as the towers it built, as the urban landscapes that spiral out, fractal like, across the ground you see getting smaller and smaller as you fly into oblivion in the plane, glass and metal forged by men, by machines forged by men, always one step further away from blood and sweat and tears. We disregarded the idea of a creator God around the time we took to stroking the sky with our cold steel fingers, grew the lillies of the silicon valley, imagined new spaces of freedom and tried to conquer those as well. We made this world with our own hands. Take some fucking responsibility.
That's pretty bilious, sorry. Politics frustrate me.
I hope that in this latest round of flogging that public sector workers receive at the hands of the media, people remember that the vast majority of those in the sector earn far less than their private sector counterparts. Furthermore, I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with GPs earning in excess of £100,000 a year, and I don't think most other people do either. I DO have a problem with management consultants in the NHS being paid six figure salaries while there are nurses who have to work second jobs to get by. Personally I think that publishing a list like this is intentionally inflammatory and i wonder about the motivations of those behind it; harping on about 'gold plated pensions' and flogging the public sector whipping boy completely detracts from the real problem which is that across the board those at the top of the pyramid are being paid gluttonous amounts that are not only many times the wages of those at the bottom, but also those in the middle. (with the drip-drip stealth transformation of public sector agencies such as the CSA into 'third sector' operations, it's not like pension funds and employee rights will be safe for much longer anyway) And to focus on this inequality in the public sector, which is frankly a pittance in comparison to obscene private sector salaries, is frankly ridiculous. But then, one of the downsides of trying to sustain the public sector in a world in which corporations are becoming ever more powerful is that problems like this will always arise. So long as we have this weird sort of hybrid system, the BBC are trying to compete with commercial interests and Private hospitals can offer Drs far more ample wages and the state school system will not improve because many of those with the power to make it better don't REALLY care all that much because they can put their own kids through private school. The problem with trying to run these two sectors alongside one another is that the profit driven private sector will eventually leech all of the money out of the public sector until it's drained dry. Capitalism is based on competition; I agree that the public sector can't compete with the private in terms of wages and in fact it shouldn't be trying to. If we don't want our ailing public services to reach a point where the only option is to dismantle it and privatise it piece by piece then I suggest we need to sit down and have a good hard think about what we want from them, because the current model obviously isn't working. But for gods sake lay the blame where it belongs.
And on that note, I'm not entirely sure why the above article divulges that "Some people earn more than the Prime Minister", as though I should be expected to turn purple and fall off my chair in shock, sputtering, until I have been calmed down with suitably soothing words and a cup of hot, sweet, tea. It doesn't surprise or bother me because a) If Cameron decides it's not too crass, he can always follow in Blair's footsteps and make his money on the lecture circuit. b) It's not like he needs it. c) Why should politicians be paid obscenely high wages anyway? It's not a 'career', or at least it shouldn't be. It's a stressful and important job of course, but Cameron's six figure salary seems plenty ample. Some guy on the radio the other day made the comment that we shouldn't pay our politicians crazy amounts of money because it attracts the wrong sort of person, and I rather feel he may be right.
And finally; reading the reaction to Cable's 'marxist' utterances the other day (what is that all about anyway, are we in 50s America? "Sacrilege, he has dared speak ill of the money god! What a commie, go back to Russia!") I was struck by something which has hit me on occasion before; like a ton of bricks, it floors me. Some guy, who I will name and quote directly when I'm at a pc and not writing this on my phone, who I think was the director of CBS, made some sarky remark along the lines of "Well, if he thinks Capitalism isn't working so well then I'd like to see him suggest something that works better", and I remembered, once again, that the minds of the public have been colonised to such a degree that they actually believe this rubbish about there being no other alternative - "We have to accept the flaws of this system and all of its injustices because there is no other option", "Capitalism is the law of the jungle", "This state of affairs is a natural product of human nature." Orwell hit the nail on the head; repeat a lie enough times and people will think it true. The form of late capitalism we operate under now is just as engineered as the towers it built, as the urban landscapes that spiral out, fractal like, across the ground you see getting smaller and smaller as you fly into oblivion in the plane, glass and metal forged by men, by machines forged by men, always one step further away from blood and sweat and tears. We disregarded the idea of a creator God around the time we took to stroking the sky with our cold steel fingers, grew the lillies of the silicon valley, imagined new spaces of freedom and tried to conquer those as well. We made this world with our own hands. Take some fucking responsibility.
That's pretty bilious, sorry. Politics frustrate me.
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Saturday, September 18, 2010
I just had the eerie experience of driving past a Lidl shop in the proximity of a motorway entrance near Wallasey which looked almost identical to one I visited once in Germany. Isn't it so strange, that the way we live now means that some places can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time?
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Monday, September 13, 2010
Last night a friend and I went to a screening of The End of the Affair (1955) in St Lukes church in Liverpool. The choice of film, with it's portrait of Catholic guilt against a backdrop of war torn London, was echoed by the setting - St Lukes is also known as 'The Bombed Out Church', a casualty of 1941. At times Deborah Kerr's onscreen urban world of strange new London streets, hewn from rubble and shadows, seemed to segue into our own; I half expected her to wander out from behind an overgrown pillar, to prostrate herself in front of the overgrown altar, unused for decades. When humans make rain fall from the heavens, we do not nourish or bring life - it doesn't nurture, it kills. But then, even though the church is no longer used for religious ceremony, I would like to think that some of the things that happen there now could be perceived as a new kind of worship - people coming together to make music and to celebrate life, rather than a preoccupation with ritual, an infatuation with death. The sunflowers that stood around the old walls were like cheerful sentries. It made a beautiful frame for the black&white world of the film, which was all clipped English accents (why does nobody talk like that any more! 'oh darlink - i think - i must punctuate - every three words - with a pause - and remain curiously atonal - even when declaring love.') and burning eyes and understated emotion. And the clothes....
The Bombed out Church is one of my favourite places in Liverpool. For many years it was a half-shell of a place; sometimes, as kids, we would run around the outside and jump up on tiptoes to try to peer through the gaps where there used to be windows. In 2007, a group known as the Urban Strawberry Lunch collective became artists in residence and since then the half-building has been given a new life, with all sorts of things going on - urban gardening, lots of film showings, and musical events happen on a regular basis. If you're local, I suggest checking them out.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
I would like to make it known that although I find David to be the undeniably more attractive of the two Milliband brothers, I nevertheless find myself far more amenable to the policies of his rather earnest brother, Ed. Despite his burning eyes and strong jawline, I find David a little too 'New Labour', whereas Ed's stances on the unions, living wages and gender equality generally don't make me a little bit sick in the back of my mouth. And when it comes to politicians that's a very good thing.
Saturday, September 04, 2010
So I am currently sat on a terrace waiting for one of my childhood friends to get married (which is obviously blogworthy in and of itself, but not really something I feel I can do justice to on a tiny phone keyboard). I got here with a few hours to spare, entirely thanks to a total stranger who saw me walking by the side of the road, blissfully unaware that I would soon be walking down a busy a road with no pavement. This utterly unprovoked act of general niceness got me thinking about the usual thoughts these sorts of ocurrances provoke, such as if-only-we-were-all-a-bit-more-trusting and also there-are-still-some-nice-people-after-all. Then I found myself thinking about other similar occasions when galvanised either by youth or stupidity (providing you don't consider the two terms to be synonymous anyhow) I dared to throw off the bounds of social convention and trust a total stranger.
The two events which spring to mind illustrate the breadth of the spectrum; the first being an occasion when a friend and I flew to Germany with the intention of spending the night in Frankfurt Hahn airport (note to reader: don't ever intend to do this, it is a bad idea) and got chatting to the guy who had sat behind us on the plane. We ended up crashing at his lovely flat (sorry mum) and avoiding a scrotty three hour coach journey in favour of a ride down dark fast German roads in his lovely, air conditioned car. Nice bloke, and we're still in touch with him now, sort of (as much as facebook friendship counts as being in touch these days). So that was one situation in which a fairly stupid risk actually turned out to be a good idea.
The other occasion that I thought of was less of a laudatory anecdote on the inheret goodwill in all man; when I was 14, I was in New York visiting family and some guy thought I was a teenage runaway and tried to recruit me into his prostitute ring, or whatever the technical terms. I scuppered his nefarious plans by completely failing to understand what he was asking, and then spotting my mum and running back to her after a cheerful "It was nice to meet you!" and a wave.
So either way, basically the score is 2 - random acts of kindness make for a beautiful world, 1 - white slave trade recruiters in dodgy NY parks. Those odds will do for now I suppose
The two events which spring to mind illustrate the breadth of the spectrum; the first being an occasion when a friend and I flew to Germany with the intention of spending the night in Frankfurt Hahn airport (note to reader: don't ever intend to do this, it is a bad idea) and got chatting to the guy who had sat behind us on the plane. We ended up crashing at his lovely flat (sorry mum) and avoiding a scrotty three hour coach journey in favour of a ride down dark fast German roads in his lovely, air conditioned car. Nice bloke, and we're still in touch with him now, sort of (as much as facebook friendship counts as being in touch these days). So that was one situation in which a fairly stupid risk actually turned out to be a good idea.
The other occasion that I thought of was less of a laudatory anecdote on the inheret goodwill in all man; when I was 14, I was in New York visiting family and some guy thought I was a teenage runaway and tried to recruit me into his prostitute ring, or whatever the technical terms. I scuppered his nefarious plans by completely failing to understand what he was asking, and then spotting my mum and running back to her after a cheerful "It was nice to meet you!" and a wave.
So either way, basically the score is 2 - random acts of kindness make for a beautiful world, 1 - white slave trade recruiters in dodgy NY parks. Those odds will do for now I suppose
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Friday, September 03, 2010
#hintikka "This possibility of using language as its own metalanguage explains how speakers can recycle signifieds for their personal needs without loss of communication, provided the new meaning and universe of discourse are properly defined."
So when I say tomato and you say tomato, we're really describing two different but similar objects, because fortunately we're part of an English-speaker-wide agreement to use the word as an umbrella term for all things which conform to a certain group of characteristics. Does this mean language is always a compromise - we are always trying (necessarily, unsuccessfully) to convey a sense of our own internal experience to another being who will only ever be able to experience a passable at best simulation of it?
So when I say tomato and you say tomato, we're really describing two different but similar objects, because fortunately we're part of an English-speaker-wide agreement to use the word as an umbrella term for all things which conform to a certain group of characteristics. Does this mean language is always a compromise - we are always trying (necessarily, unsuccessfully) to convey a sense of our own internal experience to another being who will only ever be able to experience a passable at best simulation of it?
Monday, August 30, 2010
Pitchfork Reviews Reviews Review
ok so I was surfing the internet before as I so often do and I stumbled upon this website (http://www.pitchforkreviewsreviews.com/) which confused me briefly as I was familiar with pitchfork.com but also not really familiar enough to grasp the subtleties of the situation, but then I read some more and so now basically the subtleties of the situation are: there is a guy called David, and there is a website called Pitchfork, which has been reviewing records since I don't know when but probably early to mid nineties, and everyday Pitchfork reviews 5 new musical albums and then David reads their reviews, and then reviews these reviews and posts these review reviews on his website which is called Pitchforkreviewreviews.com (this is a link to an nytimes.com article with more background if you're interested)
anyway I couldn't resist the opportunity to write a review of a review review so that is what I am trying to do, and i'm not using many capital letters or punctuation marks and typing in neat little blocks of semi-stream of consciousness style monologues, which is basically what he does so far as I can tell, although I think I'm relying on commas too much whereas his preferred technique seems to be to sneak in a question mark to break up the rambling run-on sentences and engage the reader like this, you know? i guess this is probably because he apparently writes his reviews on his blackberry jotting down thoughts as he has them, which gives the actually quite nice feeling that we're somehow privvy to someone's internal monologue
he's got that Chuck Palahniuk first person narrative thing going on, which is making me think as I'm reading it that it's really funny how writing in a non-conventional style can manipulate the way your readers see you as being, like, the way this guy writes at first makes him come across as a little bit dim but in a way that makes it quite obvious he's really pretty smart, you know? kind of a bit ditzy and naive, which is probably how he gets away with actually being quite mean on occasions, but whatever it works because he basically comes across as a razor sharp wit masquerading as a bit of a clueless dolt but in such a way as serves only to accentuate the fact that he clearly isn't a clueless dolt, which is a pretty good trick if you think about it
anyway the whole stream of consciousness/bitesize paragraphs of thought thing is cute and it means that he can spice up his blog posts by talking about other things that his train of thought carries him on to, while still under the vague umbrella heading of whatever he's talking about, which is stylistically nice, don't you think? and also adds to what i think is the most appealing thing about his blog, namely the fact that even though he's clearly addressing the vast and varied audience pool that the internet comprises of he somehow gives a sense of intimacy that is, well, kinda refreshing and closes the gap between the person on the keyboard and the person hiding somewhere on the other side of the screen so kudos to him for that
i'm sitting here staring at the screen trying to write something about this guy in the same way this guy would write it and i feel like it should be making me dizzy, like when you stand in between two mirrors in a lift and you can only see yourself stretching out and out forever but i guess this is actually the total opposite of that anyway, because there isn't an infinite chain of anybody, just a lot of reflections of nothing there in the first place, and i get the feeling that this guy is aware of the ironies of his own situation and yeah probably also of a lot of things which are going on online, fun quote:
anyway I guess I should probably actually get round to reviewing one of the pitchfork review reviews so here goes:
my review of the pitchfork review review (click here for the original review review)
1. so the review starts out talking about the pitchfork reviewer who wrote the original review which shows an impressive knowledge of his source material which is frankly lost on me as i am a casual (at best) reader of pitchfork, but luckily this isn't a problem as he quickly finds a tangent to explore. this tangent is about how sometimes when you're reading something you find yourself writing or thinking in the same style, which is funny because i was just thinking about this before whilst writing this post because while reading his blog i felt like David had probably read a lot of Palahniuk or Coupland or maybe deLillo or somebody like that, you know? except for all the 'you know' stuff which seems to be channelling the ghost of perezhilton's credibility, altho it does make for nice flavouring particles so on the whole I'm going to give this first part of his review review a 7.8/10.
this is because i like the fact that he not only uses his starting off point to start talking about some other stuff and write about some interesting thoughts that don't really have anything to do with what he was meant to be talking about, but he also crucially brings it all back together with a few well crafted and concise sentences which shine out like a beacon amongst his scatty, frayed paragraphs, and serve to show that none of his prose is irrelevant unless he chooses it to be. that's an impressive level of craftmanship
2. this is a review of a review about fairly uncomplicated dance music so far as i can gather, however rather than killing it this actually provides fuel for David to highlight the fact that a capable reviewer can, i guess, engage with the subject matter via different avenues when the most obvious ones seem to be blind alleys
he points out that
3. sometimes when you read an online blog, even just a few sentences of it, you feel like you have a sense of what the guy who sat their at the keyboard and hammered it out is like. generally this is something that i try and refrain from thinking because it's hard enough to get to know most people in real life even when they're trying to show you, and on the internet you aren't even getting the clues from a real face, but just how that person wants to show their face, you know what i mean? it's like me asking you to describe me when you've only ever seen me at a halloween party (and i don't mean one of those sexy halloween parties where nobody wears much of anything i mean when i was wearing a proper mask, maybe freddy krueger or one of the teenage mutant ninja turtles) so even though i can safely say i know absolutely nothing about this guy, having read a few of his reviews and spent an hour or so trying to write the way he writes i can honestly say that i think i like his mask. 8/10.
anyway I couldn't resist the opportunity to write a review of a review review so that is what I am trying to do, and i'm not using many capital letters or punctuation marks and typing in neat little blocks of semi-stream of consciousness style monologues, which is basically what he does so far as I can tell, although I think I'm relying on commas too much whereas his preferred technique seems to be to sneak in a question mark to break up the rambling run-on sentences and engage the reader like this, you know? i guess this is probably because he apparently writes his reviews on his blackberry jotting down thoughts as he has them, which gives the actually quite nice feeling that we're somehow privvy to someone's internal monologue
he's got that Chuck Palahniuk first person narrative thing going on, which is making me think as I'm reading it that it's really funny how writing in a non-conventional style can manipulate the way your readers see you as being, like, the way this guy writes at first makes him come across as a little bit dim but in a way that makes it quite obvious he's really pretty smart, you know? kind of a bit ditzy and naive, which is probably how he gets away with actually being quite mean on occasions, but whatever it works because he basically comes across as a razor sharp wit masquerading as a bit of a clueless dolt but in such a way as serves only to accentuate the fact that he clearly isn't a clueless dolt, which is a pretty good trick if you think about it
anyway the whole stream of consciousness/bitesize paragraphs of thought thing is cute and it means that he can spice up his blog posts by talking about other things that his train of thought carries him on to, while still under the vague umbrella heading of whatever he's talking about, which is stylistically nice, don't you think? and also adds to what i think is the most appealing thing about his blog, namely the fact that even though he's clearly addressing the vast and varied audience pool that the internet comprises of he somehow gives a sense of intimacy that is, well, kinda refreshing and closes the gap between the person on the keyboard and the person hiding somewhere on the other side of the screen so kudos to him for that
i'm sitting here staring at the screen trying to write something about this guy in the same way this guy would write it and i feel like it should be making me dizzy, like when you stand in between two mirrors in a lift and you can only see yourself stretching out and out forever but i guess this is actually the total opposite of that anyway, because there isn't an infinite chain of anybody, just a lot of reflections of nothing there in the first place, and i get the feeling that this guy is aware of the ironies of his own situation and yeah probably also of a lot of things which are going on online, fun quote:
"tonight i am DJing a party to celebrate the opening of this new communal workspace for internet startups in Williamsburg, and also to celebrate a new internet social media recommendation and interaction mechanism that is somehow connected with twitter, i am not sure i fully understand it. i wonder how many hours it would take to explain it to my grandma. maybe that could be like the new metric for measuring how conceptual/meta/post-modern whatever you’re doing is, for example like “yeah i’m writing this cloud-based internet application that is actually both a monetarily incentivized game and a social media tool and it also has a wiki-style user-updated database. as it stands i’m at 3 grandma-hours but if i integrate it with foursquare that’s gonna be another grandma-hour”" (quoted frm here)
anyway I guess I should probably actually get round to reviewing one of the pitchfork review reviews so here goes:
my review of the pitchfork review review (click here for the original review review)
1. so the review starts out talking about the pitchfork reviewer who wrote the original review which shows an impressive knowledge of his source material which is frankly lost on me as i am a casual (at best) reader of pitchfork, but luckily this isn't a problem as he quickly finds a tangent to explore. this tangent is about how sometimes when you're reading something you find yourself writing or thinking in the same style, which is funny because i was just thinking about this before whilst writing this post because while reading his blog i felt like David had probably read a lot of Palahniuk or Coupland or maybe deLillo or somebody like that, you know? except for all the 'you know' stuff which seems to be channelling the ghost of perezhilton's credibility, altho it does make for nice flavouring particles so on the whole I'm going to give this first part of his review review a 7.8/10.
this is because i like the fact that he not only uses his starting off point to start talking about some other stuff and write about some interesting thoughts that don't really have anything to do with what he was meant to be talking about, but he also crucially brings it all back together with a few well crafted and concise sentences which shine out like a beacon amongst his scatty, frayed paragraphs, and serve to show that none of his prose is irrelevant unless he chooses it to be. that's an impressive level of craftmanship
2. this is a review of a review about fairly uncomplicated dance music so far as i can gather, however rather than killing it this actually provides fuel for David to highlight the fact that a capable reviewer can, i guess, engage with the subject matter via different avenues when the most obvious ones seem to be blind alleys
he points out that
a lot of electronic music, especially music that Tom characterizes as “fun music, and it doesn’t have any big aim beyond that” is harder to write about than music with pointed lyrics and a clear mission, i guess, because it’s harder to extract concrete ideas to agree or disagree, beyond the idea that there are no bigger ideas, you know what i mean?and i think that's actually a really penetrating observation, and i like that he illustrates his own point pretty well and i like that ideas can grow up around even shadows of thoughts, and i guess i would even be tempted to say that i'm glad i live in a time when we have the chance to see our minds spilled onscreen before us because when we're sitting there, looking at our thoughts in digital code onscreen we can play with them. so maybe it doesn't matter if there are no bigger ideas out there because we can make our own. 7.5/10
3. sometimes when you read an online blog, even just a few sentences of it, you feel like you have a sense of what the guy who sat their at the keyboard and hammered it out is like. generally this is something that i try and refrain from thinking because it's hard enough to get to know most people in real life even when they're trying to show you, and on the internet you aren't even getting the clues from a real face, but just how that person wants to show their face, you know what i mean? it's like me asking you to describe me when you've only ever seen me at a halloween party (and i don't mean one of those sexy halloween parties where nobody wears much of anything i mean when i was wearing a proper mask, maybe freddy krueger or one of the teenage mutant ninja turtles) so even though i can safely say i know absolutely nothing about this guy, having read a few of his reviews and spent an hour or so trying to write the way he writes i can honestly say that i think i like his mask. 8/10.
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