bomon - best read on http://bomon.me/magazine/

2010-06-10T17:12:00.002+01:00

On Speculation and Investing

The intersection of speculation and investment management, together with the relationship between these two often separately-categorised activities, escapes sufficient scrutiny. It is important to look at this relationship and therein attempt to discern investment activities that may or may not be pernicious to any party involved: the investor (or their client), other market participants, the market itself and even expanding right out to the scale of the economic society hosting the market concerned. There are potential moral and economic conundrums that emerge as a result of many investment activities, including speculation. The history of finance is regularly delimited by marker events in which finance’s potential for destruction overtook its huge capacity for (the support of) economic creation. Time is more than nigh for a novel anticipatory and preemptive approach to financial oversight. Given the burgeoning, potentially long-overdue review of financial sector regulation, there is much ado at present contrasting the roles of international finance in efficient capital allocation – true or productive 'investment' – and what some in very high places deem the 'virtual casinos' represented by some markets. There is a popular perception that the financial industry is in competition with the rest of the world, i.e. a trader’s gain = society’s loss. Where untrue this needs to be corrected (financial firms are mostly in competition with each other); where true the harm must be eliminated.

It is now retrospectively incontestable that the dogmatic recent past of the Friedmanian ‘Washington Consensus’ concealed an inevitable loose cannon. The expected self-regulation of economic laissez faire due to a firm’s self-interest does not materialise – reference Greenspan himself. The general admissal of what we always knew (that it was total baloney) is somewhat extraordinary. The shame of those that denied this no-brainer-to-a-five-year-old must be borne equally by those who promoted it and the politicians who acquiesced; when the cat is away the mice will always play. Large, 'cornerstone' financial institutions have been seen to self-destruct, floundering spectacularly with a shocking speed, triggering a domino chain of panic, bankruptcy and rescue pleas. Moreover, the debt raised in recapitalising the crippled international credit-banking system has led to a large scale transfer of privately-generated risk into the public space. It is a possibly sad but incontrovertible fact that free market capitalism in the end sought massive recourse to state control. Herein lies something undeniably perverse.

Consensus is now high that regulation needs reworking. The ideology, never mind the politics nor the economics, that underpins and sometimes window dresses international finance is now something of a vacuum. There are important, and contentious, debates around various Tobin taxes, new central clearing houses and novel oversight mechanisms, but there are no real new ideas, no new paradigms being mooted. As for being under the spotlight and the magnifying glass with a renewed vigour, the likes of Lehman and AIG, for example, cannot protest. The camp that insisted capitalism’s arch defence mechanism against undisciplined firms – the grim reaper of bankruptcy – was left to enact its role had to pipe down and look away; they realised that the firms were so important that letting them fail would literally let the world fail. Others have little argument and governments have little choice as they have had to pay out an unprecedented rescue package in the name (and purses) of their electorates.

Amongst everything else, much talk is again about speculation. Only recently the FT is highlighting, for example, the two hedge funds Winton and AHL’s large short sterling positions. Proclaimed or not, the tone of the article is unmistakably ‘should they be doing that?’, ‘is that trade acceptable?’ etc. – and this is in the FT. As regards the now AAA-fatigue-rated term ‘credit crunch’, I don’t believe most would say that speculation per se is particularly the card that brought the pack down. That, we know, was excessive leverage in a myopically-bubbling US property market, efficiently lubricated by unethically sold, unaffordable loans that were packaged and rebranded as good credit. More on leverage soon. But it must also be examined whether speculation formed more than one of the other weak cards. The property market was not only bubbling due to genuine, real demand; speculation in property was also very active and now must face close inspection.

For some there is a sense, perhaps a seemingly intuitive sense, that speculation in itself is predominantly a non-ethical activity[1]. Simple gambling. But gambling on what exactly? Some may feel that betting (or having your pension fund manager, or your employer's treasurer, bet for you) on the British Pound versus the American Dollar is less morally substantiated than betting on the future of British Aerospace or Google. There’s a logical flaw in this line of thought however; it is a fact that all investment, i.e., purchasing any financial asset (including your house) is gambling. No rational person (and in many but unfortunately far from all cases, no asset manager investing your money) would purchase any asset with the expectation that the value of that asset will fall. The timescale envisaged for this rise may of course vary. Hence they expect the value to rise -> they are betting on a rise -> they are gambling. Is this wrong? Is this ever wrong? Or is this beneficial? Always, or sometimes? The key to more understanding of these issues may be found in analysing either their effects, or in the mechanisms behind the moving prices of the assets concerned, or both.

In a capitalist system, when we are talking about the stock market for example, the accepted wisdom states that the cumulative effect of all the interested parties buying and selling shares in individual companies (= the 'market') is to optimise the capital allocation process to those companies, directing it to those that will use it best. What 'best' means is another, very complicated matter, one that I would love to discuss, but not here. We will have to assume that 'best' means doing the right thing, i.e., being paid for 'making' what people 'want', being innovative, creating employment etc. The point of this kind of market allocation process is that the best decisions are supposedly made if the market is composed of lots of independent agents forming their own opinions of such matters – the wisdom of crowds effect. Not surprisingly, this, again, opens another gigantic can of worms, but again, that is a great subject that is not to be dealt with here. Although cognitive dissonance makes me feel ill, to continue we will have to falsely assume that this process always works well, or at least should, or at least could. So, self-interested individuals gambling in company shares leads, in theory, to money being invested where it should. Very few people, subject to my horrendous assumptions, which elsewhere do need serious attention, would have a problem with this.

Now what about other assets? Currencies, for example, are funny ones. Investing in a currency is different, because you can't buy one without simultaneously selling another. Buying USDJPY means selling Japanese Yen and buying the monetary equivalent in American Dollars at the prevailing rate. So what does investing in this relationship mean? It means that you think the $ will gain in value with respect to the Yen. So is it more 'wrong', or less 'right' to speculate in this manner compared to investing in a company? It could be possible to persuade yourself that this kind of bet has no functional benefit. Lots of people do. But anyone prepared to speculate in this manner obviously has the expectation that the $/Yen will rise in the future, and they may have very good reasons for such a view. They may have more information than others as to why the price will move in that direction. Their action of speculative trading incorporates that information in the price, i.e., in an open, transparent market (as currency markets relatively are), they share their information with everyone else. If you are a large American company that has to buy a lot of Yen tomorrow to settle an outstanding order, then incorporating this information in to the new lower Yen price is definitely to your benefit.

So speculation encourages information-absorption into prices. Speculation leads to arbitrage whereby prices of equivalent ‘things’ are harmonised across markets. And is this 'good'? Yes, clearly, it can be, for everyone. It is undeniably to the common good that the maximum information relevant to any monetarily-valued ‘thing’ is incorporated in to its price as fast as possible. If you think this may not be true then you must accept that there remains at least one potential trader that is privy to some private information about something’s future value and you would prefer that information to remain hidden. Not a very satisfactory conclusion. So is speculating (on currencies) therefore always good? Well, maybe, that depends. There is still possibly a case, and for many most definitely a latent lingering hunch, that 'excessive' speculation is wrong. People I know in the business have a sometimes-expressed view that everything is ok until the speculative capital in any market becomes dominant. But how much is excessive and when is this excessiveness dominant?

One problem impossible to underestimate with speculation, in all markets, in fact in much of human behaviour, is inappropriate herding. Note that financial markets, although appearing as somewhat esoteric constructions, are nothing more than systems of aggregate human decisions. The actions of the original, independent, information-carrying agents, those that trade based both on their direct contributions to supply and demand and on the information they hold, alter prices, pushing them up or down. Of course, others simply follow and continue to fuel the momentum, or trend as it's less glamorously known. And they in turn attract others. Who attract even more – it’s the kind of compounding in finance that we really don’t want at all. Don’t be shocked at the naïve reality of ‘asset allocation’ or investment decisions made by the generality of the investment management industry. They really do just follow each other. I won’t go into detail here, but it is very easy to demonstrate and many have already done so. If currency ‘trend following’ has ‘been doing well’ recently, then they all pile in, like flies on … In currencies, for example, there are many hedge funds, the subcreed known as CTAs, whose raison d'etre is only trend following (or at least it represents about 80% of what they do). They are paid a surprising amount to simply buy what went up yesterday and vice versa. Ok, this is a slight oversimplification, but not an excessive one. Herding is a natural, inevitable (at present), emergent property of the current system. At this juncture then, surely the whole point of the market: that of incorporating all relevant and known information into prices, the price discovery mechanism if you must, just falls apart. It is simple to then assume that ‘real’ information is no longer driving prices, prices diverge from true value, and that the crucial component is uninformed bubble-chasing, bubble-fuelling join-the-trend-ism.

Is this what happens? Should this happen? If such a marked phenomenon develops then, if the price is being supported (or depressed) by an irrational, codependent herd, then surely this ‘incorrect’ price can be corrected? Someone can ‘buck the trend’. Are there not other traders around who deduce that when herding behaviour is dominant they should trade against it, cancelling out the effect? Can the 'greed' of speculation be therefore used to calm the fever? When an irrational trend (a bubble in any other market) is boiling away under its own exuberance in foreign exchange, is there sufficient intellect (and investible capital) out there looking for excessive speculative herding and being paid to cancel it out? Maybe not. There are certainly counter-trending investors out there, but are there enough? Should there be more? One salient fact: it is without doubt more difficult to sell a counter-trending strategy to investors during a prolonged period (dozens of months) of bumper trend-following returns. At this time the pure trend-follower will however be a relative money-magnet. There are significantly different incentives for the money manager choosing to be with or against the trend. Trends seem to be characterised by going on too long, overshooting massively and ending very quickly and unpredictably, much to the unbridled chagrin of many a CTA investor. One thing that the CTA managers seem unable to do after all, is predict when any trend is going to fall apart. And maybe, if such managers exist, the small number that are good at forecasting a blow-up are not going to be feel superincentivised to tell everyone else. We have therefore, at least two systematic mechanisms that are entirely pro-trend: it’s an easier strategy to sell and even if you successfully sell a counter-trend strategy, a profitable counter-trender won’t benefit from sharing their secrets.

Timescales, another weak point in capitalism’s armour against poor economic management, are not without import. During the trend, the investor will tot up a positive compounded return, month on hubris-laden momentous month, until such time they will suffer a couple of negative months when the party’s over. By this time, the fund manager’s performance-based commission is in the bank – I have yet to see a symmetric fee structure whereby the manager charges a negative fee during a negative month. Ok, most managers operate a ‘high water mark’ fee policy and only start charging performance commission again once the previous loss is regained, but funds can go bust or just be closed in the meantime. On the other hand, the putative counter-trend strategy stands a chance of coming out much better in the end, but their investors will need to stomach, apologies in advance, ‘investment horizons’ of many months, if not years. When it comes to irrational prices, as with everything else in humanity, the truth will out, but it can take an awful lot longer. Capitalism’s credit-driven cash flow demands, often a positive economic force via incentivisation, are intrinsically short-termist. They temporarily favour the ‘wrong’ but profitable strategy of today that blows up in a year over the longer term ‘correct’ view that would leave you in the black in 3 years’ time. Money management is a commission business; performance fees are calculated monthly: go figure.

So does this kind of behaviour, in any market, only lead to harm and things like the much maligned 'currency runs' in foreign exchange markets? Surely. Maybe. Not that the collapsing value of one currency against the other is necessarily the bad bit, rather that it rose to an unsustainable value in the first place. An important point to note when it comes to thinking about the possible deleterious effects of excessive speculation: for every buyer there must be a seller. In the, again, FT the other day, someone wrote in amusingly asking for the counterparties to all the current short sterling positions to identify themselves, so he made sure he didn’t invest with them. In currencies, what does this counterparty availability mean? If you keep buying USDGBP one year into a 10% trend, does the existence of a seller at this elevated price mean there is someone who thinks the opposite of you? In currencies, most probably not; international foreign exchange is such a gigantic enterprise, the continuous demand for exchanging of currency makes for a very deep and liquid market; you’ll find a counterparty to your trade at any price. But what about the oil futures price during the highs of mid 2008? Commentary was all on speculation-driving prices back then. Without doubt trend-following commodity traders were buying and supporting that trend. At the time there was little investment potential elsewhere, which left buying primary industry capital much in vogue. Portfolios everywhere ‘diversified’ with an inventory of oil, nickel and gold. And who were they buying the futures contracts off? The producers presumably; they would be more than content to cash in today’s production via a rising futures market. While the trend lasts, for oil today just as for Dutch Tulip bulbs back in the day, it’s a bonanza for the producer and the speculator – but poignantly the opposite for the oil user – and that’s the, err.., entire world economy. When the oil bubble popped, 140 to 40 USD remember, the trend followers had collected lots of performance fee off their investors and the producers had sold oil still in the ground at an interstellar price. Everyone else had lost out.

All the same, while climbing a bubble’s peak, a neurotic cognitive disconnect reigns amongst the mountaineers. There is a general acceptance that something is wrong, that fundamental value’s importance has reduced to a drop in the barrel; but an inconsistent orthogonal view simultaneously holds: that prices will continue to rise – with oil at $140/barrel there was consensus on a $200 forecast. When only speculation is in charge, the capacity for harm is unbounded. Let’s not entirely unreasonably imagine for a second that the ‘real’ price of oil should have been $80 when it hit $140. Accepting this hardly rigorous estimate, effectively we conclude that oil had a $60/barrel irrationality-premium. With ball-park global oil consumption at 80 million barrels/day, the global misspend on this premium comes to circa $5B/day: the gigantic extent of wasted capital near unimaginable.

So, there is a conspicuous argument to be made that, for example, speculative trading can at least sometimes be generally and devastatingly harmful to the structure of world for the benefit of the very few. What to do? Bluntly limiting speculation by misguided regulation will impede the price discovery process, the kind of market self-correction mechanism that is the whole point in the first place. However, encouraging processes like, i.e., counter-bubble corrective speculation must be increased, as they are surely lacking. Innovative thinking is also required to remove the inherent conflict of interest in the timescale problem. Is it a good idea to incentivise the antibubble speculator and how could we do that? How about charging performance fees on a retrospective moving average? Could states ever be persuaded to take out a short bubble position? How about the World Bank?

Bubble-chasing is another example of capitalism’s unfortunate race to the bottom side effect. Think ever more underpriced sub-prime mortgage-backed securities: “We know they are selling them cheap, but …” If something that turns out to be sub-optimal (in an objective, public good, sense) develops and is found to be profitable (in an individual, subjective sense) then it is emulated. Despite the inherent negative ‘externality’ (e.g. a currency bubble), if one firm joins the party, then to remain competitive others are similarly obliged. This brings us to the fundamental issue with capitalism: capitalism is based on market economics, but, triple-underlined but, its individual component economies are too simply calculated; they are narrow and frighteningly ignorant. Much has been said to decry central control’s naïve analysis, the kind that leads to Maoesque, Stalinist disaster. Now capitalism’s near wilful ignorance of hidden, delayed cost is tarnishing the sheen of its place on the economic system trophy shelf. Because the buyer is unaware of, or not subjected to, the cost of the externality, the buyer won’t pay to avoid it, hence the firm who wishes to avoid it will be penalised. Look at oil. There’s no need to consider the contemporary subject of earth’s growing carbon storage-heating system, just look back to the child-poisoning leaded petrol of the recent past. Once an externality is known (notwithstanding the argument that they should be actively sought out), the role of the state that chooses to practice capitalism is to impose correct treatment of the externality by the subeconomy of concern. As we have, most justifiably, globally accepted a doctrine of cost-based market forces, accounting for externalities now represents the most fundamental and crucial challenge of the today’s globalised society. For any microeconomy, be it ‘cable’ (USDGBP currency trade), disposable nappies or heating fuel, if the externality is not ‘internalised’, i.e. taken into account, then the economy of that system is simply incorrect. Implication: the sums are wrong; result: the capital and resource allocations it directs are wrong; in the end it is all just wrong.

It’s actually worse than this; it’s complicated by the fact that the ‘true’ value of something is not independent of its trading, market value, which itself may be dominated by the effect of irrational speculation, aggressive shorting, or some other ‘non-fundamentalist’ position. There is a feedback mechanism back from market value to fundamental value; what something is worth is in part dependent on what people think it is worth. It’s not difficult to instinctively expect this to be the case, but it’s more systematic than that. Back to the credit foundations of capitalism: a large part of a bank’s valuation is based on its ability to lend; that of other companies on how much they are able to borrow. Both sides of this ‘credit score’ are judged predominantly as a function of their share price, those doing well in the stock market are judged to be able to lend or borrow more: hence real value and trading value are intimately linked. Once irrational factors assume a dominant stance in share values then the vicious lunacy feedback cycle can commence.

So errors in real value are compounded by the feedback of irrational components in market value. And at times this can become supercharged with leverage. Leverage can pollute the market as a ‘geared’ position amplifies the effect of any irrationality it may be based upon. There’s also a deeper, subtler issue with borrowing money to increase the size of your bet: it messes up the market’s information aggregation mechanism. Leverage introduces what may be non-linearity between information and the capital deployed to incorporate it (i.e., bet upon it). In other words, if you are willing to bet x based on a view/forecast/alfa/information of size X, and you then leverage your bet to 2x, this does not now imply that you ‘feel’ information of importance 2X; you still feel something like X. The extra, leveraged x does not cost you as much as the original one, so you require less ‘information’ to justify it – just look at UK mortgages pre credit crunch. None of this would necessarily present a problem if the playing field of access to leverage (credit) were level across the market. But it’s not. Due to the incentivisation structures and strategy timescale issues previously discussed, the bubble-, inter alia, fuellers have an enhanced, asymmetric access to increased leverage. Market participants who are more likely to contribute to an irrational trend make more money in the short term, giving them the apparent but misguided luxury of having more access to leverage, further increasing the impact of their activity. The far-from-the-madding-crowd strategy cannot access the same gearing and hence is even more relatively undercapitalised.

I acknowledge that, for example, a financial bubble is not as obvious an externality as is pollution. However, as a bubble introduces unexpected large costs to everyone else, I think the analogy is powerful. If the financial industry and society started to view speculative bubbles as another form of externality that requires correction then mindsets could be changed in a beneficial manner. In finance, the ‘externalities’ are often contentious and always complex. No one sector can act as analyst, judge and jury in this arena; it’s too complicated and biased vested interests inhibit rigour. A healthy world demands a collaborative ongoing search for financial market externalities. We need to end the capitalist-regulator war of attrition. Apart from its ineffectiveness, it is also ultimately childish. The tripartite body composed of financial practitioners, regulators and academia need to get their heads together on the same team. States and multi-lateral organisations need to incentivise the community of capitalists to collaborate in the elimination of the externality. The alternative, the one practiced to date, is that the externality-ignorer will always be short-term profitable and one step ahead. The ultimate source of appropriate stewardship has to come from within. This means financial firms need persuading that externality avoidance, being of the common good, is also of their good. We have seen through the feedback mechanisms between real and market value that all financial entities are interconnected. Effects, whether rational or not, spread across the entire system and can be dangerously accelerated with asymmetric leverage. Hedge funds, according to some the devil incarnate (on the whole, but not exclusively, incorrect), certainly should play their role in reshaping and renavigating the regulatory landscape. For sure there was hedge fund involvement in the risk-myopia preceding the credit crunch. And some of them rightly fell. However, there were no cataclysmic hedgie-related explosions in this financial crisis; there was no LTCM II. Two principal reasons: firstly, everyone had already learnt from LTCM (by definition, historical covariance matrices cannot be crystal balls) and secondly, hedge funds primarily trade their own money. A more relevant statement on this entire subject is impossible to compose. Collaborative oversight’s persuasion mechanism should encompass all possible avenues: financial (fiscal?), practical and moral, with a sprinkle of compulsion here and there. An international collective needs to be constructed, well represented by all agencies, whose aim in life is to seek out and protect from the ‘externality’. The practitioners are the ones who will continue embarking on new strategies that may produce an unassumed infectious risk contagion. It is only they who can really help. Yet independent self-regulation is simply impossible, not in least due to the incomprehensible complexity of a modern financial institution’s structure. Simplify those structures = simplify the global tax system. Time-old regulator-trader adversity is entrenched and produces an ineffective stalemate. Left vs right wing party politics are now irrelevant. The only sustainable successful financial market future will build on a paradigm that fills in the trenches and invites everyone to the same table to sort the mess out. Imagine a world in which the citizen is as poignantly aware of the ‘leverage danger’ level as we regrettably are of the far more arbitrary ‘terrorist danger’ alert. Insane levels of leverage based on simple mass cognitive errors certainly require control. But governments can’t do it; only compel it.

Our inherited conservative vs liberal, capitalist vs socialist tribalism is now a trite, irrelevant legacy. The holistic analysis of international financial markets needs to finally get serious and be evidence-based with a cumulative, self-correcting scientific approach. The effort to answer such deep questions as ‘when is speculation harmful?’ or ‘when is liquidity provision saintly?’ has to be ramped up by orders of magnitude, that’s if it even exists at all today. Let’s not even mention short-selling. The uncertainty is large, but the time has long since elapsed when we could assume that nothing is wrong. Definitely warranting further scrutiny are: ‘non-productive’ speculation, short selling, leverage, arbitrary derivatives-based leverage, any non-centrally cleared instrument and any other ‘difficult to value’ (seldom-traded) instrument. Note that I do not imply that I think these practices are necessarily universally harmful. We do need however to find out if and when they are and take appropriate action. When validated, society should be informed of their beneficence where appropriate. Finance too must have its advocacy when and where credit is due. An industry of analysis, meditation and modelling of investment practices, whose aim is to titrate the societal beneficial from the best-avoided needs to get organised, incentive-aligned and respected. The intertwined roles and effects of trading in systemically-important financial instruments demands proper inspection and governance. Throwing stones in financial ponds makes ripples that travel far. Before you throw, you need to feel that. The academic aspect of oversight is certainly underfunded. Compare the budget of the Pentagon to that of the SEC, and then realise that they are mandated to protect from risks of not dissimilar, catastrophic magnitude. Significantly today, the moral case is massively undervalued: much glory may be poured upon the temporary profits of the (un)witting externality seller; little honour bestowed on the one who saw the warning signs. Can we incentivise the ethics? At present they are arbitrary; but what if they (or their effects) are quantified? Moral compasses are misaligned on an incomplete economic ideology; a recalibration is required. The true capitalist cannot be against this; the capital allocation process is governed by competitive advantage based on relative performance. If externalities are considered globally, relative profitability is not changed. All boats rise and sink on the same tide. The water level is invisible. Destruction of hidden externality leads to less future destroyed capital. It’s more expensive to correct future mistakes. Hence more capital tomorrow for better allocation elsewhere. Correct, intelligent regulation must at last be aligned with self-interest, therein lies the challenge.

[1] John Kay, The long and short of it. Comments on the difference between profitable investment and gambling.

Auntie's Duty

2010-03-05T12:28:00.006Z

Dear Auntie, 6 Music, Secretary of State for Culture:

What are you thinking of, talking of axing 6 Music? It’s a now regrettably-lonely example of something the beeb used to do so well: avant garde, trend-setting production and broadcasting. Everyone who listens to 6 Music raves about its quality. Every new young radio producer wants to work there. Does that mean nothing to you?

Despite simply being a damn good station, 6 Music represents an important soundboard for unsigned UK bands; it’s therefore a crucial component of the UK’s cultural fabric. It’s exactly the sort of thing the licence fee should be used for. It represents a valid investment in the nation’s cultural future. Instead of cutting it out, why not consider giving it justice, offer it the position it deserves? Don’t confine it to internet radio and digital TV, broadcast it too (I know it’s on DAB, but …). Get in inside people’s cars. Advertise it. Get it promoted at music events. Treat it as it deserves.

Thinking about where the BBC puts its money, I’ve had a little look at the current portfolio of productions, and it leaves me wondering why cutbacks should be aimed at such an original medium as 6 Music. Inspecting today’s availability on iPlayer for instance, I can’t help wondering why there are 27 items available under ‘antiques’. Is the cultural importance of antique trading so important in the UK to justify this important an investment in such a narrow field? Or why, for example, does the BBC insist on contributing to the incessant drivel of low quality house-moving boregrams with a commitment to a tenth series of ‘To buy or not to buy’? Everybody knows there is only one decent property program in the UK, and that’s Grand Designs, made by Channel 4. Given its unique, unfettered funding, if the BBC makes anything, it should make the best or not bother at all. 6 Music, unlike ‘To buy or not to buy’, is an example of the BBC at its best. Taking it offline is exactly contrary to the whole point of the BBC.

It is not true that there is a general resentment in the UK about paying the license fee. This is a politicised myth peddled by those who have vested interests in curtailing nationally-funded broadcasting. It’s indistinguishable from those that decry the NHS, despite it being one of the world’s most cost effective and efficient health systems. Britons overall support the license fee, as they are proud of the world dominance in quality broadcasting their investment entails. Doing things like axing 6 may well in the end start them wondering. Is that what’s afoot?

Of notable importance, as has been highlighted with talk of paypackets of Jonathan Ross, Jeremy Clarkson et al, is use of the license fee to excessively remunerate those whose justification may be hard to comprehend, not least that of management too. The BBC funds are public money and as such the BBC should publish all personnel costs, then the fee payers themselves can judge how well they think funds are being allocated.

Any argument for cutting BBC 6 on listener figures, is weak. It’s pretty indistinguishable from BBC 3 and besides being digital only it’s not fair to compare it to the likes of Radio 1. Going down this road highlights another important conceptual problem with the current BBC management. The raison d’être of a nationally-funded broadcaster is that it has the editorial liberty to invest in tomorrow’s culture, freed from the short-termist shackles of other advertising-funded producers. In paying for the BBC, we assign it a duty to expand our media sphere of experience. This means behaving in pioneering and different ways, exactly as for 6; cutting 6 is therefore a grave dereliction of this duty.

The BBC should not overconcentrate on ratings. Of course Auntie shouldn’t make anything that hardly anyone wants; but this is far from the truth with 6 Music. The value of the license fee to the BBC, to our entire cultural domestic product, is that it can invest in the ratings distribution of the future and not be imprisoned by that of yesterday. Expanding our media exposure with novel culture, impartial news and the cutting edge of all academia sometimes requires a courageous gamble on unprecedented or even eccentric productions. One thing about 6 Music is exactly that, it is brave.

Culinary Bomon

2010-01-07T16:28:00.002Z

look how fantastic this is

Killing Fairies

2009-11-04T23:23:00.007Z

What is going on with homophobia in London? And plenty of other places, while we are at it. Have things gone mad? Have the hateful ones risen on a murderous tide of intent? Has the priceless, underestimated lifestyle-laissez-faire of the metropolis, that magnet that draws so many inside the M25, expired? Homos in London no longer hide in blacked-out bars, they work in every industry (did you know that JP Morgan is ‘quite gay’?), they marry, some breed. Things have moved on, immeasurably. Mr Wilde may be tempted to get out of that gutter if he was still around. So it’s 2009 and a gay man was just beaten on Trafalgar Square – by teenagers – so badly that 2 weeks later he died. It’s worth reading that again: man, gay, beaten to death; by teenagers, Trafalgar Square. It appears extremely likely that their initial interaction was driven by homophobia. There are other cases that I’m sure you already know.

On Friday evening, Trafalgar Square was full. A pleasant, solemn, emotionally-charged October night. We were there to commemorate this death, the killing of Ian Baynham, here 2 weeks previous. A candle-lit vigil forming the perfect public response to the horror that this murder – and all its peers – merits. Hats off to the organisers. Bravo. The happening was beautiful and the turnout thankfully remarkable. I had a sense though, a not-exactly-nostalgic notion, more a feeling of disbelief at being here again. I live in a world, as do most around me, where my sexual, relational behaviour does not negatively impact on anything else in my life. The important civil rights and political issues have been won over. London homos are free. But there we were again, in Trafalgar Square, protesting this time for that most basic of human right – to not be killed on the street simply because someone doesn’t like you. Words really fail to encapsulate the gravity of this. The last vigil I attended at this spot was equally moving, that following the July 7 tube and bus bombings. There are disturbing similarities between the fundamental drivers of both commemorated events. The despise of difference.

As it should, the media is paying this due attention. Very good. Much talk however is of the significant rising incidence of homophobic crime. Not to detract, not for a single second, the horror of Ian Baynham’s murder, nor to devalue, even by one iota, the wrong that homophobia simply is; I, an adult, male, gay London resident, am not happy about this. This is, typically, misconstrued. It is quite probably unfounded. What is being said is that the number of incidents classified as homophobic in nature has risen by 18% when comparing Sep 07-Sep 08 to Sep 08-Sep 09. The media persist, blindly or unashamedly, or both, to stubbornly destroy the logic of crime reporting statistics. It’s easy to blame the process: “oh it’s just statistics, they are often wrong.” In fact, no, they are not usually ‘wrong’. What you think they say may be wrong; simply because you can’t be bothered to think about it. But with the media, regrettably, I don’t think carelessness or ignorance are at play. Rather, the sober reality of a statistic would often desex a story too much. Remember the massive ‘increase’ in teenage knife crime? It was always that bad.

In this case, the number represents the fact that annual reports of homophobic crime in London, as recorded by the police, have increased by 18%. Certain reporters encourage you to explain this in terms of only one of the several explanatory factors: that the actual prevalence has increased. Fear, being the cheapest currency of an unthinking and irresponsible media, is therefore palpable. But hold on, what else could have changed here? Two very important things: first, the proportion of actual incidences that people bother to (or dare to) report and second; how the report compiler then chooses to classify them. You can see that it is very easy for the number of reported incidents to rise by a fifth without the actual level of incidence changing very much at all.

I urge you to not get upset with me by assuming that I am trying to trivialise anything that is genuinely monstrous here. Actually, quite the opposite. What I’m really implying is that the rate hasn’t necessarily increased at all, i.e., it was quite probably horrendously high before. This is much worse. And if you are wondering (as I hope you are), what ‘high’ means, then for the London Met it means 1192 reported incidents in Sep 08-Sep 09. Another hack’s near-universal statistical sin is the use of quoted % change without providing the reader with slightest notion of the starting point. Imagine a pilot telling you the plane is about to dive 60% of its current altitude and leaving it at that. So many (all?) reporters can’t help themselves (or are led by their incompetence) in portraying an increase in something unthinkably dreadful as a ‘doubling’ or a ‘100% increase’, when really whatever it is has just gone up from 1 to 2. If the article you are reading quotes a %- or fractional-change but neglects the starting point, base level or whatever you want to call it, stop reading and wipe your arse with it immediately, and then email the writer to tell them. The 18% increase here means 18% of 1008 incidents (in Sep 07-Sep 08), i.e. 184 more incidents. That’s a lot of pain. And that includes the murder above and 3 further suspected. Quotations of an ever increasing tsunami of hate crime gets even more confusing when you read that the police’s own GPA (gay police association) reported an annual 74% increase in homophobic incidents in July 06. So we have +74% in July 05-July06 and then +18% in Sep 08-Sep09. I am not convinced.

I abhor this misreporting for 2 crucial reasons:

First, it retrospectively portrays such hideousness as being less widespread in the past. It conveys this message based on absolutely no evidence. And it leaves us, quite intentionally I posit, yet even more fearful that yet another aspect of life is getting worse and even more fearful. For me, this bit is simply unpleasant and irresponsible.

More importantly, this shadow-casting journalistic mode removes the one possible source of joy, the sole shred of glimmering positivity in the whole torrid affair: that people are increasingly standing up for themselves (reporting) and something is actually being done about it (police response). The whole thing is utterly shit, for sure, but let’s not under-represent the one aspect that is good. Progress.

This year, as you may know, I became involved in confronting and combating homophobia. Following another hideous incident in East London in August 2008 that you may know about, in which a 20 year old met 7 times with someone’s knife for being queer, leaving him severely paralysed, the infamous George and Dragon was actually ambushed by more than one carload of angrys this May. Things seemed to be getting a bit too serious.

The reaction has been marked and proactive. Tower Hamlets and Hackney councils, through their hate crime divisions have shown support and solidarity. Some feel that they are lacking conviction however, through fear of igniting the possibly incidental but nevertheless characteristic racial angle of homophobia in E2. One would be next-to-ignorant to oversimplify the problem in this neighbourhood down to asian versus gay, but at the same time we are left with a current situation in which there is an effective homo-exclusion zone of approximately one square kilometre, roughly centred on Arnold Circus. There are more than a couple of angry British Bangladeshi lads in this area, who no doubt feel hemmed-in by all the social delights, much of them pretty ‘mo, on the perimeter of their estate, forbidden, inaccessible or just irrelevant to them. Not liking the way others socialise is a problem faced in all cities, multicultural or not; human societies will always fractionalise and find ways to not like each other. But, to attack it for the sake that it is different is wrong. All the holy books say this loud and clear. The local authorities ignore this at their peril. And don’t forget, there will undoubtedly be more than one white, gay fascist in E2, so let’s not get carried away with the racial generalisation. A proactive, involved and wide dialogue is required in E2. No-one owns the streets, they are to be shared.

The police, very mindful of the connection between the two incidents just mentioned above (it is likely the storming of the George was a vengeful attack following further arrests relating to the earlier stabbing), have responded very actively and are begging for more data. They cannot do anything, cannot increase resources if people continue the precedent of not reporting homophobic attacks. The whole point of this campaign is to encourage people to report and tell them how to do it. The police take all of this very seriously, I even know of a case where families have been visited, to their abject shame, as a result of a homophobic egging by their son. The Met are also self-policing: I know of one report of an improper police response to an incident that was vigorously followed up internally. The Stephen Lawrence inquiry has done much to improve things – capitalise on them.

Why all the hate, the abuse, the kickings, why kill? What is homophobia about anyway? I think it’s motivated by at least 2 factors, and they are not necessarily mutually-exclusive.

The first I call the ‘easy target’ phenomena. It is, to the ultimate shame of those that perpetrate it, the pinnacle of dishonourable cowardice. In our socioeconomic fuck up of a society, it is never condonable but remains otherwise comprehendible that angry defavourised youths lash out at others ‘better off’ in their environs. The misguided ones that unfortunately believe the fight out of their predicament should be a violent one often cherry pick the easiest targets. Let’s face facts. It’s less risky to pick on someone who is obviously gay and maybe not the toughest looking passer-by. How many times have you heard of a 100kg ‘muscle-mary’ being gay bashed? Exactly. The attacker would be crushed by just a homosexual handshake. This strategy can go painfully wrong though: I’m sure you heard about the misidentified cage fighting transsexuals. Amusing though this story maybe, these two kids have most probably contributed more against transphobia than anything else I’ve encountered.

The second root of homophobia is altogether more complex, not automatically independent of the ‘easy target’ affect, more controversial and would no doubt provoke a more indignant reaction. This cause, I feel, is intrinsically paradoxical. The thing is with us humans, we are lazy. Indifference rarely speaks its name. The anger required for homophobia demands an energy. Such an energy must have a source. The homophobia therefore cannot be based on indifference. There must be something self-referential burning inside. If you’ve got no uncomfortable feelings inside regarding same-sex sex, then you don’t have anything to drive strong feelings. But lots of teenage boys do. Society, on all levels, from parent, to school, to church, to mosque, to office needs to deal with this head on.

LoveHate England

2009-08-27T10:57:00.006+01:00

I know lots of you share my despair and hilarity at the tsunami of ridiculousless that abounds us. Here's a classic:

First 'Great' Western. Paddington - Penzance (I'm sure you will agree that we should legislate to prevent them using the term Great in their company name - there is certainly nothing great about this train company). I'm in first class; it wasn't much more expensive, it's a busy weekend and I want to do some work. The trolley has been past but it was a lot less interesting than Julie Walters's. So I head to the buffet and order a mint tea. Said tea is prepared. I ask if it's complementary.

At least I think that's what I ask. However given the poor gentleman's facial reaction I think I must have actually asked if he would care to fellate me in the toilets; and whether such a service was also complementary.

Excessively flustered, he asked to see my ticket. So I trundle back to my seat to retrieve my ticket. The inspector, standing next to me at the buffet, looked at his feet expectantly rather than choosing to tell his colleague he knows I'm in first class. I return with my ticket and notice my hot, freshly prepared mint tea no longer adorns the counter top. I look bemused I suspect - as the ever-so-familiar here we go again feeling rushes over me. The steward can't catch my eye and shuffles slightly.

"Err.. where is my tea?"
"Ermm, yes well Sir, I had to, I had to, err, I had to put everything back in the right place, put things back in order so I can make you the right complementary tea."
"But I want the tea you've just made me."
"It wasn't complementary."
"But you already made it, don't worry, I'll just buy it. Can I have it back please?"
Shuffle.
"Are you telling me you've thrown it away?"
Shuffle, sidestep, shuffle.
"The complementary teas have a different cup size? Is that what you are trying to tell me?"
"And a different brand, Sir."
(No points for guessing which direction on the size and quality scale is taken by the complementary version ....)
"The trolley service is on the way Sir."
I'm struggling with how this relates to my tea.
"But I just want my tea. This is ridiculous."
I feel bad: "I'm sorry, I don't mean you, I'm talking about your company policy."
The staff exchange glances. admissive glances.
I get my smaller, lower quality mint tea and thank them. My original tea irrigates the weeds on the track somewhere just west of Taunton.
England, oh England...

Important absent legislation

2009-06-09T12:34:00.005+01:00

1 Criminalise the tortuous, intentionally confusing grammar in the email marketing opt-out question when registering on websites:

'Please do not tick here unless you want us to not want to tell our service providers to not contact you regarding our products and services.'

2 Equate legislation with the risks: why do you have to MOT your car but not your sexual health? Controversial this one...

a/c is not cool

2009-04-28T12:04:00.004+01:00

I've attended two climate change events (as in lectures and not SuperStorms) recently where the audience had to put their coats back on due to over zealous air conditioning*.

I can no longer handle the irony.

Without a/c, people seem content with an indoor temperature around 25C. With, people feel the need to set the target temperature to 18.

* drying/cooling

For World Malaria Day

2009-04-25T10:12:00.004+01:00

From October 2, 2008

Malarial epidemiology data

(R. Carter and K. Mendis. Evolutionary and historical aspects of the burden of malaria. Clinical Microbiological Reviews, 2002. 15(4): p. 564 – 594)

Mortality (M/year) 1930 1975 2000

Americas 0.1 <0.01>

S Asia + Middle East 2.6 0.1 0.1

China + NE Asia 0.5 0.2 0.0

Africa 0.2 0.3 0.9

3.4 0.6 1.0

This little table.. better shown as a graph (sorry) highlights some fascinating facts about the history of malaria. Pre the WHO-precursor DDT spraying programs starting in the 40s, malaria mortality stood at ~3.4M/year with ¾ of cases occurring in S Asia/ Middle East. From the peak in 1930 to 1975 we saw a drastic reduction in global malaria (something I never knew) down to 1M cases per year, the lion’s share of this reduction comprising the near eradication in S Asia / Middle East. (I wonder what the role of the US military activity in the region plays in this story?) China and environs also saw > 50% reduction over the same period. In per capita terms this decrease is orders of magnitude larger, i.e. this incidence of global malaria has been massively reduced. Unfortunately, just as with many other socioeconomic factors, the trend reversed in Africa during this time, with mortality rising by a factor of 5.

Unfortunately this data, although informative, can be non-instructive in terms of suggesting possible explanations as it is not quoted on a per capita basis – according to the World Bank, sub Saharan African population has doubled since the 60s. It also does not give any information on change in infection rate. An often cited reason for the increase is increased drug/insecticide resistance. However, at this stage I cannot see why this problem would be limited to Africa. Of course many other factors are proposed for Africa including weakening control programs, deteriorating primary health care and humanitarian crises in endemic areas.

So, a dangerously rough estimate of increase in per capita mortality for Africa would be something in the region of a factor ~ 2.5 since 1930 while the rest of the planet has drastically reduced its occurrence. Looking at it like this, it is not surprising that something serious is finally being done to combat this regional problem, although still shamefully late.

Cowcross to Farm

2009-04-07T17:43:00.002+01:00

Ever since the bookshop closed and another "it's not just not a supermarket, it's an M&S not-supermarket" opened, lovely Cowcross St was losing nearly all its charm. There's a reason to go back.

Film 'Genova' courtesy of Micheal Winterbottom and... Ryanair

2009-04-06T17:15:00.003+01:00

Not a bad film, although handling such a ludicrous coincidence as the one you are force-fed at the end could be termed galling. And I'm not sure whether the audience's attention to female teenage sexuality matches that of the director. However, it would have been a perfectly fine movie were it not for the:

embarassing,

vulgar,

inappropriate and

hugely conspicuous

Ryanair product placement. The last thing I want to be reminded of when sitting watching a film is that airline's screeching scratch card adverts. Subtlety a foreign concept in this publicity invasion. It was as if the film had stopped for 2 minutes and the guys from the joke Orange don't-let-mobiles-ruin-movies advert had actually taken over.

Poor show.

Divide and conquer in EC4?

2009-04-02T18:38:00.007+01:00

Click here if you can't see images.

Today a day in the City like none before. I’m not a total stranger to peaceful civil protest – partly due to student days in the "manif "mecca that is Paris – but if you do engage in this form of democratic action, you’re accustomed to march around Westminster or Hyde Park. If you are one of the many that seem to have a default huffish disapproval of any form of demonstration, then put down Grazia for a second and reflect for a moment that you would still only enjoy serfdom if many others had not done it before you. To see civil protest, even civil unrest, in the City of London, the new location chosen for obvious reasons, is something else. After many years in investment management, my associations with the City couldn’t be more different. To see this hyperinstitutional place so transformed and in the minds of some at least – invaded – by democracy, the mob, had something of the surreal about it.

I head first to the Bank, one focus of protest. Relief at the lack of ambient tension my first and welcome reaction. Threadneedle Street felt like it was hosting a carnival. A heavy, alert (but cheerful) police presence dividing the street in sectors, sure, but the drumming, whistling, dancing and cheering of the protesters, the observers (and everyone in between) completely unthreatening. It felt momentarily like someone had opened a wormhole from Cornhill to Rio de Janeiro, albeit , regrettably, minus the Samba Boys. The first placard I read: Resistance is Fertile summed up the serious but smiling nature of the demonstration’s embryonic phase.

Much of the clearly identifiable strictly-observer-only attendees were actually city workers; amused or bemused but with a pronounced lack of the condescending disapproval I may have expected and maybe with just a seasoning of solidarity? Certainly analogous to the atmosphere of a trouble-free football terrace. To witness this lot in mandated casuals was actually quite amusing; just because the Essex money broker lads were in tight Abercrumble & Vadge and gleaming trainers instead of pin stripe (that they actually never wear anyway – that’s the insurance brokers), it didn’t make them any more difficult to identify. It’s not hard to understand why city firms’ management were probably advised and felt obliged to instruct their staff to dress down through reasons of duty of care. Lynch mobs were dreaded. Nevertheless I don’t think you can underestimate the profundity of this sartorial limitation. Bosses actually decreed that staff must spend the whole day in a part of town they inhabit at least 5 days a week in disguise. Prudentially precautious? Or is it just me that senses a hint of shame, a veneer of cowardice?

One female marketing/ops (meaning given on request) -type person was nevertheless only very slightly dressed-down. She obviously finds it impossible to operate minus twin set and heels, think Joseph. At one point she seemed aghast: “Oh no, they can’t arrest Jesus!” (Jesus .. as in stop usury in the Temple Jesus… did appear under pursuit by 3 officers, but they were only using his wake in the crowd created by the crucifix for speed). But then she confidently informed me that no-one protesting would have a job and are living off her taxes. £35 a week? Hmmm. Not thought through that one. She was the most upset by her presumption of their ignorance of what the City does. If only they understood what goes on then she could respect their protest. Interesting point. But I do wonder if she herself had a good grasp of CDS-squared, for example? Did she understand the unquantifiable level of multilayered, opaque, illiquid investment in US sub-prime? Did she see through the fog and capture why these products had the same investment grade as a FTSE 100 Company? Doubt it very much: and there resides a more interesting point. Most in ‘the City’ did not grasp what sections of their institutions were up to. In some cases the management didn't 'know'. I bet no-one (except maybe 5 managers and a quarter of the board) at Lehman for example knew their Temple was about to flounder. The conclusion: the City workers, the (vast majority of the) protesters and the public in general share a much commoner interest than they realise (look what’s been agreed today). Yet they are projected as being on different sides.

Within a nanosecond the atmosphere plummeted: destination Armageddon. Some violence erupted. I cannot comment on the nature of the trigger and don’t fancy the violent thug / incendiary police debate; I did not remotely see enough to make an assessment. I only saw one very bloodied police man and then the very bloodied protester photograph on the cover of the Standard. Not that a tit for tat analysis is appropriate either. The speed of change of atmosphere was exhilarating, yet petrifying. The tone of chorus stepped down to something markedly more adversarial. The police ran in, shields, batons etc; the (non-fighting crowd) ran out the other way, a painful collection of moments of panic. The already relatively narrow Threadneedle Street now feeling like the smallest medieval City alley. Remember Cheapside next time, it’s wider. Just to calm things down someone let off a red flare, nice. Thankfully for my trachea no CS gas ensued. But for the record; the 'RBS building' into which a storming was attempted was already vacant and embellished with its For Let signs. Thanks, as ever, to Sky News for giving us a version of events totally divorced from reality.

It did calm down again. It was, as ever, a tiny, tiny minority of people involved; this was no poll tax riot. Extraordinarily, the potential average per capita loss due to the current crisis dwarfs by orders of magnitude any perceived loss to Maggie’s Poll Tax, but the Poll Tax was much easier to understand. Whoever was behind the violent escalation however, managed to assert a permanent degradation in the event. The police water-tightened cordons, very scary dogs were corralled in, the mounted police arrived in serious number. Determined but joyful(?) civil action had irretrievably descended into conflict. Movement was suppressed. The music died. The sirens and shouting of police instructions urgently incessant. There were sides to be on. Shame. Inevitable?

Being trapped in the central pen, but not being one of the few after a fight, not an enviable outcome, fortunately I was not.

Further back amongst the (still mainly city boy) ‘spectators’, how were people reacting to the paradigm shift? Some disgust, anger and disapproval at both ‘sides’, yes, but maybe a smidgen of delight at ‘a bit of action’? Sure there was. Quite a lot of it. Modern coliseum, Big Brother, small riot: wherever or whatever, quite a lot of English do love to watch a fight.

Tiring of observing the residual tension undulate down the street, I made my way to Bishopsgate to check out Climate Camp. The short transfer was unexpectedly lovely. The roads, lanes and alleys of EC4 were void of diesel fumes, substituted for a while by the milling groups of demo tourists and bathed in a lovely spring sun. Serious media hardware everywhere. It was just gorgeous to see the square mile like this. Turning from London Wall into Bishopsgate, I got all in a tizz at the thought of a second wormhole encounter in one day. Or someone had just teleported Glastonbury to the City. Tents everywhere, students basking in the sun, talks and various demonstrations of non fossil fuel energy. And a compost loo. I don’t know how the rest of the night panned out, but if there ever was a model protest, it was this one.

Tranny Casino

2008-11-22T17:47:00.008Z

Just when you feel – as you may sense in me on here from time to time – that you really have had enough of London and that Whitstable may be the way forward, then she comes back and slaps you polygonally in the face and reminds you of why you came (or stayed) in the first place. It’s that erratic, hotch-potch assembly of differentness that is, on first encounter, so intrinsically striking and I don’t think too common elsewhere. Such was the case the other night when I went out with a load of trannies to the Casino.

Casino? I hear you query. Yes, Casino. There is one. I didn’t know either. But it’s on Leicester Square (don’t start me…), either in or next to the old Empire building. Irrespective of the fact that I’ve point blank refused to enter Leicester Square (I suffer that too-long-in-London self-imposed exclusion zones complex, including this and Oxford Street) ever since I was a fresher, entering this place was bizarre. This strange flavour permeated right on through to the interior. As you might expect, it has a kind of gaudy cheap cruise ship feel about it; do the same designers and fitters do ships and casinos? I know why cross-channel ferry interior design staunchly assumes the easy-wipe style that it is. Bitter experience on vomit-fest crossings clearly demonstrates the utility, but why the same for casinos? And this casino is massive, with an eclectic and surprising range of clientele: Young American visiting-student types, lads-in-suits groups and, naturally, due to Chinatown’s proximity and cultural resonances, plenty BBCs. And then the trannies.

Famous and maybe miscategorised super tranny Mr Jonny Woo, who by fair or is it tragic fortune happens to be a friend of mine, was throwing a party. Well, he’s generally quite good that. But this was his birthday party. We are both Libran. And birthday boy gets what he wants. The deal? To go dressed as Mr Woo. “A night of a thousand Woos”. If you are not acquainted with said Woo’s general image then for starters get your head out of your arse, even the Observer writes about him. And for dessert here’s a rough guide. I first met Mr Woo many moons past at his infamous Gay Bingo, then at the newly opened T-Bar in Shoreditch. It’s bingo like never seen before (except maybe if you’ve seen inter-pensioner full-on bingo violence in Newcastle), with Jonny improvising a generally insane tale incorporating the ever accelerating stream of LED digits. My bingo baptism was provided with the host in full costume; it was Oscar week, so Jonny thought he’d go as an Oscar statue. Head to toe naked but embalmed in high gloss gold paint. With golden stilettos. A tranny CP30 – saying that, there always was a sniff of tranny about CP30 anyway, never mind Princess Leia. However on the day itself, Mr Woo sported more than his birthday suit. A quick invoker would be ‘twisted trucker’: trucker long wig, trucker moustache and beard, baseball cap. red and blue LED-rimmed giant spectacles, skin tight green catsuit –big one at that; Jonny’s not short on height.. And stillies, naturellement.

Juxtaposing East End trendytrannyness with the ever-so-misses-the-target ‘style’ of a West End casino of course only improved matters. Despite the magic mix, I couldn’t help wondering how this ever came to be. Jonny in fact originally wanted to stiletto stamp his ‘special’ bingo mark in the casino. But get this: you are not allowed to operate a game of bingo in a casino! Rather extraordinary I thought. Tranny or no tranny. No bingo. This is a ca-sin-o. But the Hackneyite gender anarchists (I know gender is only used for nouns but ‘sex anarchist’ wouldn’t have the same connotation here) had eyed the potential of the veritably fantastic space that is the Shadow Bar in the bowels of the casino, so a birthday party would be thrown.

Thrown it was, including the pancake mix. This being a tranny party, it wasn’t just drinks and fondant fancies, trannies won’t rest at that. Cross dressers cross dress. Gender reassigners reassign. Trannies perform. Discriminating the planned performances from those improvised sur le coup by some trashed tranny isn’t necessarily possible at this kind of shinding. But this one was planned, scripted and rehearsed and required the performing tranny to toss freshly-cooked pancakes. Now, you know I can’t bear the over-zealous health and safety tyranny that plagues this Land. This morning for instance, while playing removal man for a friend, I was nearly reduced to tears of despair by a box displaying: ‘Warning. When full this carton may present a health and safety risk.’ (Please legislate for the lawful extermination of those behind this demeaning drivel). So back in the casino I was somewhat bemused to see a tranny light a camping stove in the middle of the bar’s unbeatable flashing dancefloor. It was a wormhole moment. Glimpses of a Lake District campsite transmogrified and projected onto a gender bending central London soirée. The unmistakable CampingGaz blue canister sitting there like a talisman linking us to a more … acceptable world. The management freaked. No shit Sherlock. My highlight. Seeing a not completely sober Jonny negotiating with an increasingly tense bar manager about the use of said stove. She, suited and demure but tense. ‘He’, seven foot of skin-tight-sheer tall, slightly staggering but determined. In as much as I hate that H&S shit, I felt for the poor girl having visions of filling out the insurance form. ‘Unauthorised naked flame cooking equipment employed by transvestite on dancefloor.’ Boringness (and common sense) won. The flame was extinguished. But the brave performer performed on. Tossing pancakes still in the liquid phase does not however have the rehearsed effect. My second highlight. The bouncers cleaning pancake mix off every surface, ceiling included, within a 10 metre radius of the smug little stove. All amongst a maelstrom of now very trashed trannies.

It was time to leave. London had done its now you’ve seen it all moment again. Finding a path through the roulette wheels and poker tables, I was intrigued by the inescapable irony of the situation. They, the casino users, looked on at the ‘party’-goers in amusement, ridicule, sometimes disgust. The trannies looked on back condescendingly… don’t they know the house always wins? I spot another very smart bouncer pursue a toilet-bound tranny:

‘Madam, Madam, please cover up your titties, please Madam.’ (verbatim).

‘I haven’t got titties, I’m a man.’

Logic by EasyJet

2008-11-22T15:51:00.007Z

Coming back from somewhere in the orange flying bus, the crew do an announcement that they sell Gatwick Express tickets, overemphasising its cost versus utility compared to London Bridge trains, which they don't even mention. I asked why. Queeny sphincters tighten and lips purse, then emit some preprogrammed shpil:

'Gatwick Express is a dedicated train service to London.'

'Yes I know that thanks but why don't you sell tickets to London Bridge?'

'It's the only non-stop service to London.'

'Again, I know that, but why don't you sell tickets to London Bridge?'

'Well we're an airline, not a train company.'

'But Gatwick Express is a train company.'

'Hmm, yes, but...'

Bamboozled, the queeny lips just tighten further. Of course price per km is maybe double on the Gatwick Express - Victoria route, more room for EJ's commission, but we don't talk about that.

Red flat caps in Fuzhou

2008-08-24T04:48:00.015+01:00

I've had unusual drink experiences on work trips before but tonight was a first. When the taxi driver just giggles when you hopefully utter some English you think, ‘oh shit’. When he can't even read your map you become more concerned. In any case, so far as I can tell, the pinyin (phonetic Chinese-in-latin-letters) street names in my rough guide do not correspond to the ones actually in use – thanks guys, really needed things to be even trickier. But a way will be found: I have the Chinese characters for a hotel adjacent to my desired destination, so with a bit of enforced reading I make it to the bar. Despite the English bits of the menu not featuring any beer – how about that for cross cultural ignorance; there's no easyjet stag nights in Fuzhou (foo djoe) yet – even I can pronounce Tsing Tao comprehensibly so I get my desperately needed lager.

My head is spinning. Difference, strangeness, unfamiliarity. None of them come close. I'm sure any first visit to China is challenging. The ketamine-like jetlag on arrival doesn't help. And I doubt 5 films back to back in Virgin cattle helps (have you seen Cloverfield? It’s amazing). But this is my first time in this giant country and I'm the only non-Chinese person in a city of 5 million people. The place is massive, there are skyscrapers everywhere, traffic and pedestrians interweave in some chaotic but functional bee dance. Lights, noise, so much noise. The heat, the omnipresent, all penetrating, hot sticky heat. 30C and 90% humidity. At midnight. Lost doesn't even scratch the surface. Only now do I understand the true meaning of foreign. You need to experience a full day of absolutely everybody looking at you from the moment you leave your hotel room to genuinely feel this. I want to get a tshirt printed in Chinese saying “Will everyone please stop staring” with “While you’re at it, stop spitting too” on the back.

The stare is rarely unkind (but it’s undeniably disconcerting); it’s just symptomatic of my essential physical difference. Maybe in Beijing and Shanghai things aren’t like this, I’ve not been there yet, but Fuzhou is not a traveller’s city and a European stands out like a large pagoda on a Ming manicured hilltop. The stare is predominantly curious; my dress (which, in effect, is not that different from many young people here), my skin, my hair, my body hair. I’ve realised that my legs must make me look like a monkey in this environment. The young also look, but in an altogether different way. The cool kids, and there are plenty. Here you sense a sharpened, admirative affinity. And many coy smiles. Plenty beauty wanders the streets at night. Much ‘hello’ precedes an explosion giggle. When contact does arise, shyness prevails, but when broken through a seriously impressive level of English ensues wrapped with a welcoming warmth. Bloody shame all the kids don’t work in my hotel then.

One item of dress did get me an extraordinary reaction however. My famous red flat cap on arrival at the airport. I’ve a thing about travelling in that hat, I don’t know why. But did that hat get a reaction…! I don’t know if it was the fact I was wearing a hat at all, or that it was a flat cap or most probably more due to it being red (not simply an important colour here) but any clues would be most appreciated.

Arrival in Shanghai’s immense Pu Dong airport is not nothing (and I’ve not seen Beijing’s airport yet). The gate pier is about 2 kilometres long. Trying to discern the ends when you are near the middle makes you a bit giddy, especially after 12 pressurised hours over Siberia, any longer and you could see the curvature of the Earth. I had to find myself an internal flight for my final destination, which in fact wasn’t very difficult to do. Smiles are subtle but present and brief. Eye contact almost flinching. People are very helpful in their own way. I had to change airports and my second introduction into the enormity that is China is that it takes 90 minutes by taxi to change airports in Shanghai. Had I been going into the city I would have been on the adjacent world’s only commercial Maglev train, which, being the physicist that I really am, is a 400 kmh-1 orgasm. I saw it fly past. Fucking amazing. No moving parts. But I was bound to the motorway and having a presentation of Chinese driving and its ultimate dependence on the horn. The horn is used to warn others you are overtaking, decelerating or accelerating. Or travelling at a constant speed. It also denotes various other unfathomable actions and is very, very important. Yet it is not in the slightest bit aggressive as heard in the West. I also had my introductory lesson in pretending to converse with a taxi driver who apparently cannot care less that you’ve just flown across the planet and you can’t understand a single word. The drive traversed a never ending new China urbanism. Not unattractive tower blocks for 90 minutes. It’s astounding. On arrival at Hongqiao airport I realised two things I’d already been vaguely conscious of at Pu Dong; there are millions of children everywhere. Airports feel like a real family experience. Outside Gatwick South (oh don’t let me think of that now) children are almost forbidden in ‘London’ airports. The other thing was the Olympics-enhanced security. X-ray machines and ion scanners everywhere. If you keep popping out for a ciggie like me (yes, I know I should’ve stopped again by now – the thought crossed my mind on arrival after about 16 nicotine-less hours on the journey but the jetlag overcame the issue), then being (very politely) swabbed for Semtex every time you re-enter the building gets a bit tedious.

I travelled to Fuzhou on business. Consequently I’m being looked after a lot of the time. Such impeccable hospitality! Ok, verging on the suffocating maybe sometimes, but very kind and wonderful. My host, a 25 year old girl, is a sales manager at the company I’m visiting. The company in question is owned by a woman. All very new China also. My non-existent language skills don’t enable me to observe beyond the visually obvious, but I witness sexual (I no longer use the euphemism ‘gender’ in this context, as apparently it refers only to nouns) equality everywhere in fact. As I note is happening a lot in London these days, this is even overshooting in certain situations. It will be sometime before I deduce the hidden rules of priority and etiquette in negotiating the bee dance enacted at crossings, doorways and pavements here, but one thing I have noticed is that the women defiantly play a ‘fairer sex’ card while barging through onto their chosen path. None has yet, fortunately, surpassed the delightful lady who wilfully and painfully elbowed me out of the way in London Bridge tube station last year. Another tipping point too far in how low London will go in terms of abandoning all human decency.

Anyway, back to China and my wonderful host. I am picked up, driven around, fed and watered regularly and my state of being is regularly checked for contentment. One could get accustomed… Maybe in a Chinese way things are a smidgen too regimented – hangover of the Cultural Revolution’s martialism? – but altogether unfaultably hospitable.

In a general sense, Chinese food isn’t as foreign to westerners as my hosts might expect. And my developed chopstick skills were met with much nodding admiration. I felt quite proud (is that ok?) Of course there are surprises and things I’ve not yet dared, but I think should, touch. In a way that actually appeals to me out of principle, much food here is raw; not in an uncooked sense, in a closer to nature sense. It’s less transfigured into something anonymous. A chicken’s foot is unmistakably what it is. Fish often look as if they perished in the very pot they are served in, scales, eyes and all. Sometimes shocking to the uninitiated, yet here you always know exactly what you are eating. Ok, except the dumplings. My only problem with the food was the stupendous quantities proffered upon me and the resulting, diplomatically difficult task of sensitively refusing any more. It’s a trade-off between causing offence refusing food and imparting horror by vomiting in front of your hosts.

Fuzhou isn’t reputed in China for its restaurants (it is, regrettably, reputed in certain circles as the world capital of gastric cancer...); however I did eat some lovely food here. Being a business guest I suppose I was taken to some of the better places (though I actually preferred the more fast food noodle bar style eateries) and saw that these restaurants had a very different setup. Invariably, they are always on the first floor – hence I would’ve had no clue they were there, I’m yet to learn the character for restaurant even, although I do know the second character (out of two) for Fuzhou – and they comprise a long narrow corridor leading to a series of parallel private rooms. Good for intimacy, not so good for people watching. Also not so good when all your companions inexplicably leave you in the small (rather grotty?) room with the embarrassed waitress. It’s not like we could engage in small talk, I couldn’t even say hello, ni hào, at that stage.

I’ve not yet seen anyone spit in an (indoor) restaurant, but apparently it happens. However it is not true that everyone thinks it’s fine to spit, although an awful lot of people engage in it. My host for one thinks it is disgusting. There are teams of street cleaners in Beijing employed to request people clean it up when they are seen spitting, if they refuse they are then shamed by the street cleaner doing it themselves. Can you imagine this working in London for litter? Yeah right… more like, ‘pick it up your fucking self, arsehole.’ The practice really is immensely shocking. Especially when women do it too; I’m sorry, it’s true. It’s not so much the act of propelling the sputum-saliva mix on the floor that bothers, it’s the significant, voluminous, preparatory sound effects. The great, guttural, croaking roar from the depths maximising the potential excreta. I just get scared everyone is going to be sick.

Food and flobbing aside. My week’s work in Fuzhou was a fascinating experience. Given our gaping linguistic and cultural divide, I remain amazed that we actually got anywhere, but we muddled through everything and I learnt about 10 words of Chinese (that I’m trying to practice at any opportunity). Much about Chinese language produces fear and admiration. Of course, the character set itself is petrifyingly immense at over 10 000. But more repellingly intimidating is the system in which tone (and not spelling) encodes meaning. But then I learn that 2500 characters is enough to read a newspaper (and only the very educated know many more). Even more dramatically, I find out that English uses many more tones than Chinese, but does so to denote stress or nuance, and then it all starts to feel a bit more approachable. All the Chinese tones exist in English (but, ok, might be a bit unusual). For example, the ‘first’ tone (in Mandarin Chinese), that which gives Chinese it’s essential sound I would say, is said in English whenever you want to mimic a) a robot or b) someone who is boring you to death. Then I learn that there are no tenses, no verb conjugations and no gender (see) and I feel that maybe Chinese is manageable after all. Yeah right, I’m still struggling to say thank you, xié xie (tschiay tschier) correctly. This latin letter system, pinyin, was planned to totally replace the Chinese characters in the fifties. Ok, maybe there was sense in the project, but thank god it didn’t happen. The characters are simply beautiful. One thing that still escapes me however is how do you map the use of tone for nuance in English (think how you would say, ‘you’re ki-dding’) in Chinese without just saying a different word? It’s all so fascinatingly strange.

New urban China is very serious about shopping. And karaoke. Since opening its doors to the rest of the world, China is absorbing Japanese and Western consumer materialism at an astonishing rate. Everything is available. 99% of it instantly recognisable (it’s all made here, after all). JC Decaux street 'art' occupies all available space, just as you are so familiar with. A fair proportion of magazine covers you would know immediately. Fuzhou’s streets are busy busy busy at night. For one thing, the temperature and humidity have retracted to just a mildly unbearable level. For another, it’s time for serious shopping. Shops start to close (see there’s the intonation again, you can’t do that in Chinese, it would render the meaning sheep needs kettle or something like that) at 10pm. In one of our million cultural information interchanges, my host was aghast when I said shops close at about 7 in the UK, and that’s in London. A glimpse at maybe the paucity (is it fair to say that?) of cultural alternatives here in Fuzhou was her reply asking, ‘but what on earth do people do?’ Many of the urban Chinese are now essentially ‘free’ (by whatever we may mean by that dangerous word) but free to do what exactly? Spend of course. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want it to be any different, but let’s hope that a wider culture grows in to the new found space.

One previously (and still, strictly speaking) outlawed practice I unwittingly stumbled upon in my hotel. I decided to be brave and have a go at negotiating entry and understanding protocol in the hotel spa. It was there after all and should be sampled. And lovely it was, with a super heated giant bath tub, sauna and steam, just as you’d expect. Then I find myself ushered through the complex, only to find a giant 40 bed filled TV room. Everyone was half asleep in front of the Olympics, naturally. So I joined in and laid down. The diving was on. Oh, how I love the diving. Peace wasn’t to persist however. There was an interesting, different arrival for some in the area, and that something was me: I had to fend off six ‘masseuses’, trying it on, one after the other, each one getting incrementally more explicit about what was on offer. There was nothing distasteful. But they wouldn't stop looking at my dick! (I was not naked.) These girls were gorgeous, and sweet. Not a hint of the rough slutishness you’d maybe more expect. But they were so barking up the wrong tree. I tree I wasn’t yet going to try and explain.

I did come across some wonderful culinary culture one night. After a lovely night time wander (a word my host cutely used instead of walk, possibly to get around the horrendous work-walk confusion for non-English speakers) in the park – the parks in Fuzhou are heaving at night – when asked (again) what I wanted to eat, I threw the cat amongst the pigeons by saying I didn’t care but wanted to eat outside (that particular evening was pleasantly less humid, just 82%). Ensued a panic filled taxi trip, frantic conversation and countless u-turns. I felt very guilty, like some over-demanding, integration-phobic American cruise ship tourist. But then someone had a flash of inspiration and took me to a very real bit of Fuzhou. Messy, run-down, chaotic, atmospheric. I loved it. The main street lined with double wok-equipped stalls, garnished with every ingredient imaginable. You simply choose what you want and they stir fry or grill it for you there and then, in a furnace of sweet-smelling flame, spice and oil. I’ve no idea where I was, it was off my map, and of course it wasn’t mentioned in the guide. It was my most magical night in Fuzhou. I think it threw my hosts a bit…

Quiet Expropriation

2008-06-15T18:21:00.006+01:00

I was out shopping the other day. Not in the normal sense. For me, when shopping feels like shopping it instantly becomes a chore – an unpleasant one at that. I tend more to shop as a sideline, some other task or occupation predominating concurrently. If I were active in hunter-gather times, I would've always needed an alternative excuse to be out there – researching wild life for the next cave paint or some other pre-emption. Shopping comfortably occupies the space of jobs best done when not thought about too much category. My excuse this time was photography – I was out taking images. And I came on my bike, as usual. Nothing strikes you as problematic there. I was with a friend too and we had an (expensive) but delicious lunch at Carluccio's. Oh, and the suit I purchased cost the best part of £300. Still nothing obviously awry. Bike, camera, lunch, clothes shopping. Expenditure in the region of £350. All normal activities on a London afternoon.

But we weren't in London, not any more, not as you expect. We were in the new half western half of Spitalfields. And apparently this is a private estate. Ok, fair enough. Yes, fair enough indeed. For them. You are most welcome on the estate to impart some of your wealth to the businesses there; be they sartorial providers or one of the very nice but rather-too-predictable-to-be-exciting restaurant chains (when did you last see an independent catering business open in a new development?) You are very welcome, as the potential client of all these businesses and hence ultimately The Estate itself. But despite the fact they would be bankrupt without you, you'd better obey their rules.

Every single form of post or railing or any vertical appendage of any kind is emblazoned with its Cycles Forbidden, Private Property sign. There are certainly hundreds of these notices installed; how painful. When the plans were drawn up for this contentious development, and somebody was cooking the deal for the private estate, which turkey in the local authority (presumably the City of London) thought it wouldn't be necessary to oblige them to be bike friendly? At least to compel them to install sufficient bike storage on The Estate. There are pitifully insufficient bike racks in the area, check it out.

So here we are. It's not that charming corner of your city that you love to wander aimlessly around in any more. You are now a visitor on someone else's estate. You must come and spend. Then leave. There is something in this titular reality that is undeniably tainted. Renovated in an impressive style on one hand, albeit too monochrome, this cherished, historical, public district has been ruined on the other. Duly infuriated by all this irrational 'for fuck's sake, don't you get it yet?' antibikeism, I eventually found a suitable lamppost adorning a pavement of an estate-bordering street. Safely on public land. Not so simple. When I returned to my bike, The Agents of The Estate had decorated it with a lovely sticker. My bike was about to be clamped! Bike, clamped, yes that's right. Now near apoplectic, I removed said sticker and stormed upstairs to the Estate Management Office (do these people think they are Sandringham or something?) The agent was, to be fair, more friendly than you would expect nowadays and tried to assure me that my bike was on a private part of the street, not the public zone. The what? He even tried to visually demarcate some invisible border. Unaware I couldn't care less if it belonged to Big Liz herself, he was on and on about the private bloody estate ad nauseum, ad infinitum, ad up your arse-eum. What nonsense is this? Who let this happen? Spitalfields is Spitalfields. It's an old market with a new bit added on. It's full of shops, cafés and restaurants, walkways and piazzas. It's criss-crossed with streets, ancient thoroughfares and rights of way. It's a very strange form of private property indeed.

Irritating, sure, but all a bit predictable really. London 2008 is an increasingly great place to cycle but the antis cling on like some desperate, ousted, huffing aristocracy. The security guard of The Estate actually told me they won't allow people to secure bikes to posts and railings because the owner ... doesn't like the look of them. I was sober. There was no chance of an auditory hallucination; he actually said it. So, sod it, we don't let them get to us with our impermeable duck backs etc. Loving photography, I try to shed the all too familiar feeling of harassment in our fair city and wander off to take photographs. 'Excuse me sir,' came the polite Nigerian accent. 'I'm sorry sir but you cannot take photos in this place.' Gulp. Swallow. Sigh. 'This is a private estate.' I immediately have one of those visions of someone committing spontaneous murder with a heavy frying pan that you see in films. That moment when your characteristic cool is suddenly annihilated by pettiness and it all gets far too much. Fortunately I didn't quite lose it so; at least I had no suitable Le Creuset in easy reach. But I wasn't having any of this nonsense either. You just, sometimes, have to fight back. 'I'm sorry, what are you talking about? Of course I can take photographs here,' I calmly, politely reply. 'No sir, sorry you can't. Well, it depends, it depends on the camera. You need to write in for permission.' I'm starting to wonder if I'd taken the wrong turn and unwittingly biked to Narnia. Or Berlin, circa 1940. What the flock? By all accounts, if you have a small camera then it's fine, but if we're talking an SLR then we have a problem. Some mobile phones have cameras not significantly inferior to my SLR these days, but that's not the point. I didn't give in. I stayed polite and full of smiles but carried on taking photos.

The guard left me alone. But the problem lingered – it was hard to not let them ruin the day. In so many tiny but innumerable ways life in London is so controlled. In isolation, every measure is tolerable, often justifiable and easy to comprehend. Cumulatively, it's becoming insufferable. We are increasingly disenfranchised such that trying to enjoy our city is becoming a veritable challenge. Resist. It's your city. Love it as you want to. As it happens, I'm writing this in Barcelona. Chatting to an acquaintance last night who plans to move here without delay, I ask why. The answer simple: 'I'm over London, I can't bear all the rules any more.' Amen.

Grasshopper's Revenge

2008-05-21T18:59:00.025+01:00

It’d been at least five years since I was in the socioeconomic experiment known as the Rainbow Nation; returning a joy. That combination of developed and developing (whatever those narrow worldview terms are meant to describe) undeniably makes for a very different kind of trip. Since I started dating men instead of women, I must also admit there’s been a bit of a theme with this neck of the woods, so ok maybe that’s part of it too (I’ve been single for ages now…). Ms S was so helpful on VS601 from London Hellthrow to Johannesburg. The gentleman who'd enterprisingly improvised an economy flatbed in the middle block of the 747, at possibly a tenth the price of the equivalent in Upper Class, was already determinedly inviting sleep five minutes after take off. Ms S, being a diligent and efficient cabin service team member (air stewardess, thanks) advised he attach a seat belt before sleeping, lest she had to disturb him later. But Ms S is a serious girl and goes the extra mile; in she climbs to free that belt and buckle him down good and tight. What service! Quite a lot of fuss. Being the nosey bugger I am, I can't prevent myself observing a slight rouge-ing on Ms S’s fair cheeks. Oh, now was that a cheeky wink as she bids her passenger a good night? Said passenger being a gorgeous South African Hunk of course. You were in row 38 if you are reading this. Cheeky Ms S, good on you girl, although I do wonder if some greasy corpulent one would be quite so well seen to. I don’t bother trying it on in the vain hope of winging some service treats – Ms S is a seasoned cabin crew professional and can spot a gayer far quicker than me. 10 hours and I wonder how much carbon later, some circumstantial realities are immediately apparent on arrival. The airport functions well, but there lingers a hint of chaos somewhere, maybe infused in the walls. But South Africans are clean people, verging on the maniac; hence people are wiping and scrubbing all available surfaces. Labour supply is high and therefore cost is low, resulting in 2-women teams everywhere, one mopping, the other drying alongside, wafting whatever comes to hand. I couldn’t help noticing that everything was already spotless though. And the smiling – South Africans (on the whole) are incredibly smiley people and by gum does that make you feel good after a decent dose of ubiquitous London arse-slapped faceness. Londoners are now only able to smile at strangers on internet dating photographs. It’s official. All fundamental interactions are radically different here – impromptu conversation is usually accompanied with rather prolonged eye contact. Again, a soothing antidote for a Mancunian like me. Jo’burg’s airport has been renamed, again. Previously Jan Smut’s became Johannesburg International. Minority government references safely substituted with a pure location-function designation. Arguably better. Now it’s going back the other way, kind of. I don’t like it when people name airports after individuals. I’ve nothing against tributes. Tributes can be beautiful. A four hundred year old tree, ok, but not an airport. However this time it’s only gone half way and we’ve two names combined: Johannesburg OR Tambo. It took me over two weeks to overcome my ignorance and realise OR signifies someone’s initials and not ‘alternatively’. In the meantime, with OR meaning or and not O.R., every road sign bemused me with their apparent need to continually emphasise the alternative name. Why are you capitalising OR? If it’s that important, just rename it; ban the old name if you must, on pain of Robben Island. 5 hours later, across the expanses of the Free State under that gigantic sky, we were rollicking with lion cubs. Giant kittens. Difficult to find something more South African. Never mind the boerwors, we were playing with lions. It’s an amazing but simultaneously confusing experience. At 3 months they are impressively strong and their precocious claws demand strategic care, but otherwise they are identical to kittens; the equivalence with the family moggy unsettlingly acute. The knowledge, hard to acknowledge, that these ever playful but slightly dangerous fluffballs develop to occupy the top of the food chain real estate imparts a precious sense of wonder. We were actually on a lion farm – those words not appearing to sit well together in the same sentence. Lion breeding centre sounds better, at the risk of being euphemistic. Unsurprisingly, the industry (there are now 90 lion farms in the Free State alone) is not without controversy, in some cases deservedly I expect. Breeding lions in captivity so a tourist can shoot them raises plenty issues. If the odds were more equitable (notwithstanding the artifice of firearms), I’d find it harder to object; although not necessarily impossible. But a Disneyesque pursuit of a not-quite-wild lion in a not exactly savanna-scale enclosure (“canned lion”) I find simply pathetic and somewhat sickening. But happily we weren’t visiting such an enterprise. We were at a White Lion breeding centre where the animals were destined for game parks or zoos. The opportunity to be in their presence feeling like a simple honour. Continuing the theme of animal rights, some days later, following the kind of spectacular sunset that makes you wonder how anyone ever thought the world was flat, I transgressed at the other end of the food chain. I ate my first grasshopper. Alive and all. A pathetic victim to peer pressure, I submitted and crunched the arthropod dead and then swallowed. Not a disgusting flavour at all; a hint of bitterness a bit like chicory, a flavour whose popularity I've never understood (but I’ve never had to do without coffee in a world war). Locals are known to cook and eat grasshopper in this part of the world, so the interest to try is real. Just like a non-frenchy’s first frog's leg. But, while later trying to get to sleep, revenge was sweet as another one or maybe ten kept jumping on my head. Either that or another example of the spectacular panoply of jojos you find out here on the edge of the Kalahari in north west South Africa. The lodge, reassuringly basic but outstandingly beautiful, perches on one of the part-vegetated deep orange sand dunes that radiate across the tree-peppered veld in this land. This is exactly the kind of place you need to experience this environment. You’ve got what you need, including what could be the best ever view from the shower, but no more, nothing to pollute the essential. I have always found this landscape unexpectedly alluring. Intrinsically, it’s monotonous: slightly undulating, dichromatic, with a random but predictable distribution of bos. But it relaxes the eye and calms the soul. Here the day retracts to the underworld after bidding a deep orange farewell. The eyes then only gently excited by the campfire and the comfortingly intimidating wallpaper of the Milky Way. Sleep isn’t far, notwithstanding the grasshopper’s revenge. Agriculture out here is unrecognisable to me, having grown up amongst the dairy farms on the valance of the Peak District. Farms meant lots of lovely black and white Friesian moo-moos atop a bright green (often wet) field – there are none left now, I think all the milk must come from Poland. These black and white mowers comprise such a lovely evocation that Hackney council now paints its big street bins Friesian colours. It wasn’t all innocent-smoothie-esque teletubs farmy-warmy though; there was getting drenched in intrauterine slop during calving and the omnipresent, omni-odoriferous cowshit. Nevertheless, a newborn calf sucking on your fingers is not something easily forgotten. Unsimilarly, farming in the semi-desert Kalahari is defined by its rareness – rare as in the antonym of dense. The Europeanised name, Kalahari, derives from Kgalgadi, place of dryness in Tswana. Farms here are almost indistinguishable from the surrounding bush. At times you may be lucky to spot a cow – it requires fifteen hectares to rear a single one here – but the farms’ real imprint on the giant fingerprint of these dunes is the wind-powered water pumps. Standing tall under the impertinent sun, ever patient for the wind, they both demarcate distance and reassure the existence of water. One morning, we had to go and fix one. Not that I’ve ever done that either but it felt like prospecting for oil (although it’s for the underground metal deposits that the region is mined). Six men, a backie, an improvised crane + pulley exploiting a telegraph pole, lots of sweat and grease and an hour later the coaxial Archimedes screw had surfaced from a depth of more than fifty metres; the offending puncture, all of five millimetres wide, sneeringly grinning at our effort. We replaced the broken pipe and winched the bore back in its unfittingly wet conduit. The men reengaged the motor (this one was electric) and we waited, trying not to only hope it had worked. The water gushed out to our (or definitely my) unquantifiable relief. To this bore’s hinterland at least, the subterranean aquatic lifeline had been restored and the land was viable again. Such is the crucial dependence of insolated, sandy surface on isolated, humid depth here on the edge of the desert. Matters and hearts lightened, we backie-surfed back to the farmhouse. Sheila the sheepdog always mans the back of the backie, nose out to the bush, her higher senses always alert, a canine version of the Lancaster bomber’s watchman. Living with dogs for a week (there are 6 on the farm, of all shapes and sizes) almost perfected this Kalahari experience. The ostrich, the missing essential characteristic in this locality, had all ‘left’ since my last visit, again choosing not to fly but wander off elsewhere. However the farmers now insist on their reintroduction – it’s simply not a Kalahari farm without them (we did see a neighbour’s brood though). So the dogs, from mini Jack Russell to giant Mastif, 8 to 80 kg, accompanied us at all times, their different personalities and aptitudes projecting onto different functions through the week. The big girls, Frumples and Rumples (roll the r), specialise in noise and stature (as massive, very scary guard dogs) and slow, strong, insistent affection, their signature piece an extremely destabilising lean. Sharing a single bed with such a massive creature is quite a challenge, but one that became harder to avoid as the week progressed and the dogless days approached. I’m usually not a huge Jack Russell fan, the utility of this small extremity of dogworld was not previously apparent. But the dog was surely champion when its size, speed and agility enabled it to instantaneously bisect a very dangerous zebra snake that had taken refuge outside the kitchen door one evening. Talk, and awareness, of deadly snakes is necessary culture in much of Africa. But encounters remain thankfully unusual; a disarmed lethally-venomous reptile perfectly chopped in half by the family dog even rarer. If, like me, you grew up with dogs and haven’t yet engineered a way to incorporate them into your predominantly urban life, then a week like this is effective therapy. But then you have to leave them. They should run a kind of package tour for people like me. You go somewhere gorgeous and walk dogs day and night. Should be available on the NHS, like social services taking asbo-trophy kids from Croydon to Chile, that favourite anathema of the Daily Hate. From Gemsbok (Oryx), Springbok and Cattle, thru Dog, Ostrich and Snake; on to Horse. I’ve never officially been taught to horse ride. I was given a crash course on this very farm about 5 years previously. It’s definitely the way to do it. Yes of course trotting hurts the arse a bit, even with harmonious timing; rising horse - falling arse antiphase-resonance is to be avoided at all cost if you want to preserve your pelvis. But galloping here across these sandy dunes provides a reassuring introduction. Possibly hopelessly naïve, but the thought of an equine ejection, I said ejection, is not so scary with the sandy soft-standing underfoot. Full pelt across the veld. Exquisite. We could combine this with the dog walking. I feel an eco-tour coming on. Heartbreakingly leaving this unexpectedly hospitable land, later on I was driving up the NI to Johannesburg in heavy Sunday night traffic. Like the airport name, the N1 says a much about South Africa today. As a highway, it has been significantly improved; the wide, smooth black tarmac forms a major artery connecting Jo’burg to its surrounds. A fast, safely constructed, modern road. About 60km south of the city however, the road traverses a danger zone. The nature of the risk not conspicuously apparent, but denoted by a regular series of large warning signs – obstructions in road! – and an 80 km/h speed limit. What’s going on? Improvised road blocks. This part of south Gauteng (itself not paradoxically an anagram of get a gun), suffers much violent crime. One such activity involves blocking the NI with rocks and then committing all manner of horribleness to the car, its contents and its occupants. Nothing ensues of course as I drive through – the statistical probability of anything actually happening to a visitor in South Africa remains low – but such signs are a reminder of a grimmer reality in this state of eleven official languages, but also a marker that it is not being totally ignored. On to Cape Town. Obviously, by virtue of its geographical-geological situation more than anything else, an apparently small town that happens to be a world city. I got there courtesy of one of SA’s low-cost, Kumala. If there is one reason I was happy with this airline, it’s for the simple reason that when it comes to irrationally ridiculous safety announcements regulation, they clearly took the piss: “In the clearly impossible event of a landing on water, …”. “If an oxygen mask drops from above your head, stop screaming and put it over your mouth.” Yes they really did say all that, and more, and my how it was refreshing. The Economist would be proud. It’s far too big a subject to get into right now but there’s a cavalier, more maverick approach to life in SA. I’m not unconditionally supporting – look at the road death stats for example (look at the driving!) – but when you’ve had enough of the H&S / constant vigilance / politics of fear of current urban Britain and similar then it’s like taking a cool shower after mending a water pump under the African sun. Ok I’m sure it often goes too far, but the more relaxed and less regimented attitude to life is so invigorating. And I’m British, not German. Britain has changed. Cape Town in the new SA. The same, shockingly beautiful situation, clinging to the side of a very odd mountain just before it plunges into the icy sea (shame, that last point). Now it’s mixed, very. Much more than I remember before. It’s African. Even the plane down here was maybe 60% non-white. Such things still feel quite new and yes, regrettably, some whites were looking on in what can only be described as bewilderment. In Cape Town, you hear Xhosa everywhere, something I love. In rural SA, it’s not obvious much has changed. The poor blacks have, if anything, according to some, a rougher deal than before. But then there is, for example, the enormous house building, employment rights and electricity distribution programs, whose increased demand is undeniably connected to the now regular California-style blackouts. But apparently health care for the lowest socioeconomic class has gone to the dogs. In the Kalahari we learnt of a young boy who’d died, presumably of internal bleeding, after being kicked in the groin during football. He’d twice been ferried 150km to the nearest hospital only for the doctor to turn him away as it was Sunday. Speechless. In a place like Cape Town there are still countless poor non-whites of course, most still concealed in the expansive Cape Flats, but there is now a clearly visible black middle class – and more. It’s inevitable, expected and indeed an economic aim, as it should be. But I hope the innumerable chronically poor don’t get forgotten in this complicated new land. But as the government’s past attitude to the HIV that is ravaging the country can really only be explained as a turn-blind-eye, slow, incidental genocide then care and regard for the poor don’t strike you as an administrative priority. For those that think I’m being hysterical then how else would they explain the Minister of Health advocating Rooibos tea (or whatever it was) as an antiviral, clearly knowing it is an evil, malicious, murderous lie. It’s as bad as reports of catholic missionaries in Africa preaching that condoms contain holes and are therefore useless. Further on the endemic HIV, until Africa in general de-taboos and discusses its active clandestine homosexual activity (which surely has undoubtedly contributed to such a widespread transmission of the virus, and let’s not even start on dry sex) and embraces safer sex of any kind, then the whole damn thing is near hopeless and millions will die. Ah, but then that’s maybe not a problem to the government of such a budget-stretched overpopulated country? But Cape Town, that magical city (for the whites, strangely, English speaking out to a radius of only 5 km before returning to Afrikaans), carries on. The table still presides and the beautiful beaches still beckon. Ok, around Kloof St some of the whites are so irritatingly pretentious that they can compete with Miami, and the crack dealing on Long Street isn’t so lovely, but Cape Town remains intoxicatingly amazing. It’s still the world’s best big-town-city. During this visit adjacent Zimbabwe attempted its last election. In fact, as we know, the election was entirely successful. However, while I’m writing this, as you know, the debacle isn’t over and the despot clings on – of course what else would he do? And the international community, predominantly featuring Zimbabwe’s neighbours, remains apathetic. I did see one shining protest however, tucked away in the Cape Town National Art Gallery. This photo, taken by an SA artist, is of a stuffed baboon that locals in a border town on the Limpopo have made up as Mugabe. Living right next door, they see enough of the economic side effects of his Machiavellian reign. Some may be shocked and presume the installation is playing a racist card, black equals monkey bollocks. That’s not what this is about at all. The image visually paraphrases the very ridiculousness and viciousness of Mugabe’s presidency. And this image is in South Africa’s national gallery. Baboons can be clever and very nasty when they are in need. And such creatures should never be presidents. The expulsion and retribution of Zimbabwe’s incumbent is critical for all of Southern Africa’s future. As I leave South Africa, I beg that they get the fucker out.

Deep Snow and Inappropriate Behaviour

2008-03-17T12:55:00.007Z

Really you knew it wouldn’t be a problem-free journey day – the Met Office had been issuing severe storm warnings for the previous 24 hours. But that predeparture online check of the airport status together with the Stansted Express service report uncovered no delays, so I left home thinking we’d got away with it. Naturally, my internet-enabled reassurance intrinsically lacked forecasting ability; by the time I’d got Grandad to Liverpool Street, they were announcing delays. Grandad is my ski bag, not a relative, so-named as dragging it around the world reminds me of towing a coffin on wheels. A bit sick maybe. Grandad, a friend and I waited for news. All have felt it, especially when attempting to reach London Stansted: that irrepressible realisation that it’s problematic at a far higher frequency than chance. It’s not just you, getting to Stansted is never easy. I think it has something to do with the silly train company name – One – that shares Liverpool Street with the Stansted Express. The train Gods are so ruffled by someone using mobile phone marketing naffness in naming a train operating company that they have cursed the whole station. It’s not the Express’s fault; it’s a bad karma externality spilling over from the world’s silliest train company name.

Although getting there is often a pain, I like Stansted – possibly my favourite London airport. It’s the high roof and unusual lack of BAA’s speciality: carpet in a bloody airport. Who in their right mind would ever recommend such as a useful floorcovering? But about Stansted, not all agree. Some prefer the megaMalls you find elsewhere. I once overheard a well-heeled young woman complaining to her (posh hen party?) co-travellers that she just… doesn’t like Stansted… it’s boring. More chronic Londonesque vacuity me thinks. Oh dear. Give me a boring airport any day.

Ah hah! The nice people at Liverpool Street give us 2 minutes notice that the service is restored and the train is leaving. Running down the escalator (outside McD’s having a fag you see) and on to the train with Grandad not an easy exercise, but we manage. The train, packed with anxious voyagers, is relieved to pull out of the station and escape the company of its One peers. Wagons roll, everyone checks their scheduled take off times just that 31st extra time. Relaxation creeps in. And then excretes out like norovirus: there’s a tree on the overhead lines ahead. We are herded off the train at some station ill-equipped to cope with such an invasion of passengers and luggage, never mind Grandad. A beautiful soul picks up the other end and helps me navigate the stairs to get the replacement bus. Only joking, the train is running again. Just wait until everyone is off the train flowing en masse over the stairs like a thwarted lava flow and then tell them to change direction; the ensuing chaotic mix of stress, exasperation and tangled luggage akin to a giant version of Jenga. Some get apoplectic; others resigned to yet more nonsense try and pretend it isn’t happening. It’s still not 8am. We somehow all get back on board and arrive at Stansted. Nearly 2 hours later. The tree? No, a One train has broken down ahead. If it could talk, we know what it would say.

Oh-how-we-love-your-colour-scheme Ryanair couldn’t help. Check in had closed although the plane was still on the ground for another 40 minutes. The get what you pay for lesson hits hard when you are exposed to budget airlines under conditions of duress. One poor woman was left stranded as her check in had closed despite the fact that her flight on an unspecified airline was delayed and would not leave for another 2 hours. Simply shameless and disingenuous - putting it unnecessarily politely. Others may prefer the label: dirty, cheating, lowlife, scummy bastards - up to you. How can they do that? Why do they do that? Deny boarding to someone who is (in the real world and not airline lalaland) actually 2 hours early?

When you step back and examine the evolved solution to the problem of getting people and bags on and off planes – what we know as airports – it comes clear that they are excellent at impeding those very processes. In some ways they are a perfect anti-solution. Check-ins have to close early to give you time to get through security and reach the gate. That security, which, according to insiders, is no more than theatre and regularly fails any significant test. But you still have to negotiate the terminal building and get to the gate. Next time you visit just look how much obstruction and obstacle is carefully placed in your way by retail infrastructure. It is not unusual for people exiting security to be directly and involuntarily diverted into the narrow aisles of duty free. In such circumstances, it is your duty to humanity to crash through that shop with your bags causing as much destruction as possible. Then if some Tango Man make-up lookielikie from Clinique accosts you for a multistage facial regeneration I advise you feign a panic attack and discharge on the floor. If the orange face is so shocking you can spontaneously vomit. You want to be in the airport the minimum time possible. The airport wants exactly the inverse – your unnecessary expenditure being directly proportional to the time available.

Ryanair offered us a flight the next day, for a healthy supplement. There were other, possibly orange, airlines offering flights to our desired location (well, ‘near’ anyway) the same day but of course, no, nothing could be done. Any claims would have to be taken up with the train company. We wash our hands of you. Thanks for flying we don’t care airlines. We appreciate you have an apparent choice of other similarly low cost / you’ll pay far more in the end airlines and we appreciate your custom. Goodbye.

Laptop out and we rebooked on the orange flying bus. Twice the price of the missed flight. Not Grenoble unfortunately but Genève. Same letter and same mountain range at least. Then I got onto Avis to change the car hire booking. Oh dear oh deary me: different drop-off location as we’ve changed the arrival leg airport. Equals big supplement. My, how the costs were growing. Faster than China’s GDP at this rate. Budget airline. Low cost airline. Oxymoronic Airways if you please.

But we got to Genève eventually. Even made it to the chalet just in time for a late dinner. The mountains surround, their ancient, stony majesty imparts their dominance and our earlier concerns fade with the day. It starts to snow. The growing blanket outdoors ironically exudes warmth as we drift off to sleep. Just a flicker of irritation resides: Eurostar goes to Bourg St Maurice: an 8 hour journey from London and then 10 min drive from here. We’d left Liverpool Street 12 hours before knocking on the door of wonderful Chalet No. 1. Ho hum.

As you may know, snow and I are not exactly strangers. So the fact that I still get that childlike thrill when rising to see a new, thick white blanket through the window is priceless. The others had arrived – admittedly with problem-free aviation compared to us. We shared a lovely breakfast in the charming grange, seasoned with the excited anticipation of a snowsport trip’s first morning. Day one and still one down from the full nascent team, we stayed close and drove up to Sainte Foy Tarentaise. Sainte Foy’s a lovely little place to ski. Only 4 (chair)lifts and admittedly 3 of those are so slow I can develop a temper, but the area is superb, the runs fun and the offpiste fantastic. It’s a gorgeous place to ski for a day or two. If you are tired of the big boys of the Tarentaise, St Foy is the perfect antidote enneigée.

Next night and the team is complete - completion being more hazardous than I’d conceived. Living in London I effect a good 99% of my journeys by bicycle, so I allowed myself a carbon splurge with a big fat 4x4, for once appropriate as we were staying up a steep, narrow mountain road (yes, we know Hampstead is hilly, but really). Besides, it was diesel. And only 2 litre. But carbon footprints weren’t all I should’ve worried about with such a vehicle. Rearward visibility was a more pressing issue. Setting off to pick up team mate number four, I reversed over a small car. Worse, at the sound I thought it was just a cardboard box. Ok, I exaggerate slightly as the result was just 2 shot bumpers. But I permit myself some indulgence as I had to interrogate the entire restaurant to identify the driver whose vehicle I had just violated.

Over the next three days we completed something of a Tarentaise Marathon, sliding and carving, sometimes tumbling, down the mountainsides of Val d’Isère, La Rosière and Tignes. It’s not the most faffless way to ski; you don’t just walk to the closest lift and you have to buy a day pass tous les matins. And clever us hired equipment in 2 different resorts, so returning everything on the last evening engendered logistics reminiscent of Challenge Anneka. Time and resource scarcity can also lead to inappropriate but unavoidable urination in underground carparks (sorry). But this flavour of winter holiday is undeniably fun, interestingly varied and it’s a cool way to check out places to ski again.

Our day in Val d’Isère was embellished with hurricane force gusts at the top of Bellevarde. But our team, not to be disheartened, braved it all and we got our lesson in. Having feasted at the unbeatable Dairy (La Fruiterie), we had more than a fair allocation of calories to burn. Burnt they were, all in beautiful piste-bound powder, although admittedly most of the time we couldn’t see the ground. Visibility’s for lightweights apparently. But weight did become an issue later in the day. Desperately trying to get the last run in, as you do if like us you feel a sense of achievement if you board the first lift before 11, we exited the too-good-for-words Funival mountain tube train up in the storm. Peering out through the station exit tunnel’s aperture had an ethereal cinematic quality. The storm had strengthened significantly and the opening resembled a windtunnel observation porthole. Thinking (hoping) it was a gust, albeit a worrying one, we pierced the wall of wind. Defiantly trying to gain some anchor and attach whatever equipment, we grew more concerned by the sub 5 metre visibility. Witnessing a light member of our party being lifted off the ground like a sweet wrapper and transported a metre or two decided our immediate future: back down in the lift. Relieved and full of giggles. Thank god.

Another day, another weather. Fresh powder everywhere, blinding sunshine radiating from a brilliant sky. A toothpaste stripe day: deep blue ciel hugging a clean white montagne – the cherished prize rewarded after a few days of mountain storm. Up in La Rosière, la domaine straddling the Franco-Italian border, nothing but La Poudreuse. I love the way that cross-border ski areas (I much prefer that adjectival use, rather than the more personally-familiar cross-border finance) make a mockery of national boundaries. It’s one of those precious frontier turn-a-blind-eye grey areas escaping any notion of control: fingerprinting, iris scans or other superfluous agents of oppression. One just skis across, literally free as a bird. No security and definitely no duty free. My very-keen intermediate group of ski buddies being ever prêt pour tout, we agreed it was time for a deep snow baptism. La Rosière, on the right day, is near perfect for such an initiation. Medium gradient, relatively obstruction-free slopes abound between the pistes, on that morning all supporting a nice new half metre of deep-snow. The transition from the edging, carving feel of on piste to the floating lift of deep snow takes a while. The inevitable stalls, face-plants and near-total burials mark necessary milestones along the way. But the group did me proud and after a while looked like they’d been at it for years. Surfing in freshly-fallen snow; arguably superior to sex. Such a wonderful sight to behold. I’m not sure the buggers should’ve got it for free.

La Fin

PS:

Since my time as a ski gumbie, I’ve been a huge fan of Tignes, Val D’Isère’s partner in the Espace Killy. One important point though: avoid Le Palet mountain restaurant, at the top of the Tichot chairlift. They tempt you in with an inviting terrace. But then get you with a near indigestible mockery of an elsewhere delicious Tartiflette for near €20. Better light lunch and then feast yourself down the valley at the Savoyard gastrodome of Chez Marie, Le Miroir, St Foy Tarentaise.

For a multi-resort ski trip I can’t recommend Chalet No. 1 more highly. Lovely owners, wonderful staff and less than 30 min drive from Val D’Isère/Tignes, St Foy, La Rosière, Les Arcs, La Plagne, …, … And remember Eurostar may be quicker than the flying bus.

Someone has read my mind: One Railways has just become National Express East Anglia

Up in the Downs

2008-02-11T12:21:00.000Z

Humanity displays richness. Richness evokes a scale, a range. Ranges have positive and negative extremes, as does humanity. An example of this can be extracted from a most marvellous mountain biking trip on the South Downs yesterday.

Following a popular route in the environs of Steyning, West Sussex, a friend and I climbed on to the escarpment above the river Adur in the glorious sunshine reminiscent of May, not early Feb. Unwittingly taking a wrong turn at one point (maybe my cartophilia does not always match up to my map reading skills), we ended up on a track classified as 'footpath' and not 'bridleway'. For those not familiar with the over-significant ramifictions of this difference for mountain bikers, well... Simply put, by default you can bike on a bridleway but not on footpaths. In mapland this makes long dashed lines good, short dashes/dots naughty. Of course in fact you can ride on some footpaths and rarely does the classification have any bearing on the suitability of mountain bikers and walkers sharing the same route anyway.

But, on a footpath we were. Naughty bikers. Slap slap. We passed a local walker. He didn't scold us, as I thought he might, but he did warn us of the booby traps. 'The booby traps?' We inquired. 'Yes', he retorted, 'there are those that set branches to knock you guys off.' We thanked him for the warning and made on. Then it dawned on me how horrendous this actually was. Some would cause an accident in order to anonymously express their dislike of mountain bikers. Any accident could theoretically have fatal consequences. But simply by introducing a little temporal separation and the innocent agent of a branch, there are those who are certainly prepared to do this. At first inconsequential, on reflection it becomes plainly horrifying. Evil really. In the true, non-religious sense. Mountain bikers have humanity too though. So they can also be bad. Maybe the secret bike trapper had once been forced to jump for their life by an irresponsible cyclist thundering down with similar disregard for other's safety. But, even, if so offended, would trapping be your solution? People can go very far when no-one is looking.

Back up on the South Downs' ridge, that magnificent undulating backbone seemingly guarding inland Sussex from the sea, we regained legal status by rejoining the bridleway. Phew. At least there had been no surveillance drones buzzing overhead to record our misdemeanours. Not yet, in any case. Don't laugh, they are already in use. In your world. Your same world that now sanctions the abominable practice of indiscriminate sonic repellent apparatus to remove 'hoodies' from your environment. Free of surveillance and trespassing guilt, we headed up to Chanctonbury Ring, an unbeatable piece of Iron Age real estate. What a place to sit and contemplate the sea. England, oh England.

After a 'it's not just a picnic, it's an M&S picnic' picnic (all very nice indeed but £3.69 for some sliced mango, oh please, I'd rather shitter adverts and lower prices), it was time for some bone shaking downhill, the delicious reward for a lung- and leg-lambasting ascent. The wet ground, the vertiginous descent ahead. The risk, the danger; the thrill. Ah, the walkers heading uphill. Conflict, disapproval, Xhosa-esque tut-tutting à la Sussex? I slowed to pass. The elderly couple retreated to the shelter of the path's edge. 'Don't worry, you go for it love,' she screamed. Faith in humanity restored, we thundered down.

Bleating marvellous

2008-02-08T11:19:00.001Z

Well, last night was different; I took two goats out in central London. Yes, goats. 2 beautiful, happy pygmy goats: Goats' first night out. As accoutrements for a night out in London Town they were certainly original.

How the hell did this happen then? As often, pretty randomly. Friend of friend has just launched Buzzmygoat. Friend owns said goats (more like dogs with hooves really), who both have an enviable - and quiet - life in Bucks. Friend of friend launches website yesterday and celebrates in London Bridge's Shunt Vaults. Hence Buzzmygoat launch party, with real goats.

If there's any London venue better for such a cloven escapade, I'd love you take me there. When it comes to off the wall (under the floor), you can't beat Shunt. I've wanted to go for ages but kept missing the opportunity. Sprawling across a labyrinth of vaults burrowing under London Bridge station, the place is literally fantastic. It's a bar, art installation, performance space cum 'grown-up ghost-train minus the tack' all in one. Quite simply the most fascinating social space I have ever seen. Achingly-trendy artista caps off to all who are behind it.

The billys being as precious as they are, they bleatingly insisted on a subtle stage door entrance. In true Z-list celeb style they discretely slipped out of the van into one of those godforsaken tunnel streets under the station. My only regret was not being accosted by the police seeking an explanation of why we were unloading goats from a white van underneath a major London interchange. I would've loved to see the paperwork. A personal highlight, on arrival, was the security guy's radio soundbite: "ok, Jim, the goat people are here."

Bipedal sans-hooves otherwise enter Shunt via London Bridge tube station, which, interestingly, actually contains a street - Joiner St. From here, equipped with one of those lovely mini maglites, you nervously navigate through the dark smoky (alas, not tobacco) tunnels passing many quirky, interesting hidden surprises along the way. I'm not going to over describe, it'll spoil the fun. Just go.

But one bovid surprise the vaulters didn't expect to see last night was Gavin and Henry, nonchalantly hanging out in the lounge, visibly unphased and enjoying all the attention (precious, remember) but nevertheless wondering where the grass was.

It's a night I'll remember for ever, I wonder if they will.

Data collections

2008-01-31T12:17:00.000Z

I'm not likely to start trumping the Conservative party's current claim to being the better crime reduction team. For starters we already have a prison system crisis and the Conservative's likely stated policy of being 'tougher' on crime (increasing sentencing?) would appear nothing more than an unfeasible thought experiment.

But David Cameron does have one particularly good point about the police: the paperwork. The police, often justifiably, have to fill in and provide a copy of quite a form when they interact with a member of the public. There's a 'stop and search' form, which under circumstances where your person has been inspected by an officer then fair enough both parties have a record of the encounter. However, there is also a 'stop' form, whose lack of utility and time wasting potential is far more paramount.

I have quite an example. In the photo above you can see 'My Stop Form', so how did I end up with this? Taking photos. Of a Public Building (photo below). Shock horror, etc. To be fair, the police did have some albeit tenuous grounds of 'suspicion'. I was in my hometown of Manchester out for the day taking photographs, because that is what I do sometimes. One of the buildings I thought of adding to the ever growing gigabytes of jpegs (that god only knows how I will keep on top of) is in the other photo below. Now, despite me being (quite a proud, we do that) Mancunian I didn't have the faintest idea that this building was in fact the Court House, another Mancunian-at-home characteristic I expect. As I approached from the side, I also had even less idea that there was an important Father's 4 Justice case going on that day. In retrospect, there were quite a lot of police around the area, but that isn't necessarily anything unusual these days, hence I didn't attach any significance. However the police did and called out to me.

Now we could fast forward a full 15 minutes in time and lose nothing significant in the process. Myself and the officer bid each other farewell and went on our business. The police were reassured that I was a local (it says Accent: 'Northern' on the form) photographer doing what it says on the tin. I was just ever so slightly disgruntled for being disturbed but not distraught at my treatment by the Bill. So why the quarter hour? The bloody form of course. What a joke! The officer had accurately ascertained the insignificance of my presence in the first 5 microseconds of our meeting. We talked, I showed him some pics on my camera (the benefit - or the disadvantage? - of digital photography) and that should have been that. But no, some bureaucrat, likely inexperienced in any such grass roots activity as being on The Beat, has prescribed the 'stop' form. In this case, how silly. What a typical waste of time. Mine and theirs.

The police have nothing to gain by having a record of this 'stop'. If some poor temp has to enter it into a database then there is no value in the information stored. Of course unless someone, cough, 'loses' the data and has all that marketing information to sell, but that's another story. If I really wanted a written record of the conversation then I should be able to request it. But in such an inconsequential situation why is the officer obliged to complete the form? It's just more not-thought-through-properly nonsense.

I wonder how many 15 minute slots are wasted in the UK every day by this palava? Equating how many man-hours of police time? You never know, if the police only used the form when either party requested, the cost saved could make up the shortfall in the police pay negotiation. Interesting thought. No wonder the police are wanting to strike. Strike? Police? Yes and absolutely without precedent. Anywhere I believe. But here in the UK the police are considering seeking the right to strike for the first time. [Not totally without precedent: I stand corrected.] And for once I don't blame them.

I'll leave you with one last thought: Whose idea do you think it was to send computer-written Victim Support letters and Support Packs to Victims Of Mobile Phone Theft? I doubt it was the Police.

Heartfelt request

2007-12-20T17:01:00.050Z

Some of the content below contains adult material that you could find offensive.
Be warned.

From the hidden society of online dating, an updatable selection of interesting statements of intent...

Some are fantastic, some just hilarious. If you indeed wrote anything featuring below, then someone else must've by coincidence and this is just for fun:

If youre havin girl problems I feel bad for ya son.

Work in Oldham - Live in Ancoats. Living the dream.

The ' Radio 4 ' of Gaydar ! Sex Factor for the over 55+ to 80 with Scottish Windows !

Looking for a healthy relationship which is 2 (!) people, one very busy bedroom, respect and faithful manners.

Not Brad Pitt but not Mr Bean either.

Gym Fanatic and PowerFucker

Im horney little bustard looking for sum fun times with str8 or married men. just like the feeling of not aloud to do this but fucking love it!

Here I am, yet again [he is 18]

There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats.

If you want to meet please have at least 3 of the list below.
1. Handsome face
2. Fit body
3. Hairy chest and back
4. Bubble butt
5. Red hair
6. Black skin
7. Thick cock

please don't bother me if you don't have clear face picture, shyness is infantile here.

Online: Gone to psychiatrist. Dinner in washer.

If all you’re going to do is talk about suicide or how much you hate the world and how everyone should just "fuck off and leave you alone", just keep going because I’m not interested in being friends. My sympathy towards strangers has run dry.

Unwilling to change my opinions or appearance just to get laid.

Quite sexual and passionate but not looking for McShag.

Friendly and well hearted. Bit of Greek attitude on me.

Just needs a fuck.... Seeing as my boyfriend is too busy in his own little world looks like someone else is gonna have to do it.

I am not looking for crazy ones because I was already crazy one time and it was not good.

I do think I have a sense of humor.

Sorted, sane, mature and lier

There's more to life than being fucked up the ass

I WANT A BRITISH HUSBAND and to settle in the UK -- Living stateside past 2 years. Can Travel at moment's notice...

I'm described by my friends as a typical blond and a geniune nice guy.

stubble is pure laziness.

With MRSA infections now an issue with gay health I am even more careful.

do u have any v I could buy off you? I'll give u a tenner for 4 ....... or £3 for 1

HUNG TOP - private roof terrace in the sun

About: zero. Looking for: everything

like a man, only shorter. there is very little scene wise in Wimbledon.

Casting for fuck buddies

On the road, London, Mancs, Dublin and everywhere

Ugly Fukker I know but cant all be handsome

I wonder how many lifetimes would equate to the number of hours all the members on this site have devoted to their muscles, all that energy expended.

owner a firm

I have a really bad phobia on sticky out belly buttons, Sorry If you have got one, no offence but they really scare me.

if u prefer people and not cooks or bottoms... i'm here

Lately I seem to be attracted by Arabs, Blacks and Brazilian

Regarding a LTR, I'm looking for monogamy, mental health.

twatedagain

NOW BACK WITH B/F AFTER 2MONTH BREAK BEEN 2GETHER

I don't exchange votes on SexFactor

To top it all, I seem to be giving out a vibe which works its magic particularly well on non-creepy goodlooking gay men, telling: DO NOT COME NEAR…

not into catalogue sex.

I'm looking for a straight active TOP guy

"PROFFESIONAL"

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i can not say much of myself, as i think i dont really
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Be original .... The number of times a week you attend gym is of as much interest to me as the number of times you visit the supermarket

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(Hove is in Brighton not London). Must have facial photograph.
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Truth be told - In Cardiff next week for Xmas

Underground wealth

2007-12-12T11:41:00.000Z

Having been on the Intelligence Squared mailing list for donkey's years, it was about time I actually attended one of their debates. If my first experience in London's Central Methodist Hall on December 11 is a fair barometer, then I have been missing out. As I've been generally anti-war as regards the debacle that was and is Iraq, I've read a lot and watched many a debate on the intellectual spaghetti junction that this western foreign policy project comprises. What I didn't expect, then, was such an invigorating discussion about quite possibly one of the most heavily debated international affairs in all time.

My own anti-invasion stance was not born of ignorant, intransigent, I'll-die-for-the-party nonsense. I'm a very strong believer in that your opinions must constantly be updated (and therefore occasionally reversed) when you recieve new and validated information; the alternative being synonymous with religious dogma (Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a lot to say about this in his popular Fooled By Randomness).

Back in the run-up to Gulf War II let's say I was not exactly convinced by the PR case for invasion, sold as the now historically infamous weapons of mass distraction super-lie. Oderint dum metuant. At the time it wasn't a lonely position. Then something happened that quick-dry cemented my position and taught me a saddening but valuable lesson about the flavour of democracy that we are actually living in. I went along to the early 2003 Stop the War megamarch in central London. Despite the fair-ish evaluation of the event by that linked article, it was with a heart-chilling horror that I watched the coverage on the BBC TV news of that evening. I can't find it on the internet unfortunately, but let's say 'gloss-over', 'play-down', and 'trivialise' don't even get close to how that report boiled me in outrage. Irrespective of the fact that the UK was witnessing possibly one of it's largest and most significant demonstrations ever, at the time the Beeb was only able to portray it with the significance of a W.I. Tea Party. It dawned on lil' ole naïve me that the PR machine behind this one was a leviathan and that the free BBC was just a dream.

Fast-forwarding to the IQ^2 debate (now somewhere between one hundred thousand and one million deaths later, depending on who you read, e.g.), the event was structured around 3 (artificially) competing positions on what the coallition should do now:
- stay until 'we win',
- leave after a negotiated settlement,
- leave immediately.

The organisers had done a faultless job of selecting the characters to represent these motions, including the excellent and well-placed ex regional interim Iraq Governer Rory Stewart. Another representative, Tony Benn, naturally represented the anti-war-leave-now party. Whether you like him or not, he often speaks a lot of sense when it comes to Iraq and UK foreign policy in general. However he got himself in quite a pickle at one point when, equating terrorist and military action via a moral relativity argument, he outraged the 'don't condemn our boys in the army' set. But, when people sit back and really think about it, it is generally true; there is not necessarily a moral difference between a soldier and a suicide bomber. The identification of the moral higher ground is not independent of perspective. This will be one of the previously unthinkable yet universally accepted moral truths of the future.

Anyway, my one problem with that evening's event is equivalent to the problem that is now the impasse of Iraq. The 3 postions contructed to engage a lively debate are far from mutually exclusive policies. To 'win' surely implies reaching a 'negotiated' settlement so I was left unconviced about the opposing polarity of these 2 motions. Then the middle ground settlement-first camp conceded that if no agreement could be reached then a quick exit would be inevitable, so kind of like the 'get out now' team really. Confused? I was. It is.

The reports, comments and analysis of the panel and the contributing audience served well to illustrate the horrible complexity that is the reality of Iraq today. So much time was spent arguing, for instance, on whether the recent thankful reduction in sectarian violence is explained by the recent troop 'surge' or other important factors such as the truce with Muqtada al Sadr. Most probably both, obviously, and measuring the effectiveness of either in isolation would be an unthinkable experiment so stop bickering. Nevertheless, amongst the myriad factors important in the equation that is Iraq, one important one was and is neglected in this debate; the black stuff, oil, of course.

There was some discussion on whether Iraq was about oil, inevitably, but it was seriously underweighted. Personally, I don't think Iraq is entirely explicable in terms of oil; America's political and popular need for aggression post September 11, notwithstanding Afganistan, is an equally considerable factor, at least as a significant trigger. But look it is this way: remove the variable and do you get the same result? Would we now be 5 years and $1.2 trillion and £5 billion into this operation if Iraq did not sit on top of one of world's largest and most accessible reservoirs of oil? Over 100 billion barrels apparently. In other words approximately $10 trillion at today's prices.

Of course the arguments can be extended here. The baathists would possibly not have succeeded in their ignoble tyranny without oil revenue either (being a minority who inhabited oil-starved regions then tyranny was surely the only option), so possibly fighting the baath and securing oil is actually the same thing.

The one crucial relationship markedly lacking from the whole debate was the one between oil, settlement and 'winning'. Whether the perceived need to secure the oil supply to the 'West' or just secure the lion's share of its revenue explains the invasion or not, there is no way the US government will now leave without having a very favorable arrangement in place regarding its access and exploitation of that resource. The devil is in the detail. The detail of the contracts. Just as in all contracts, the small print.

The coalition's attempts to set up a valid, representative government in Iraq have so far been deemed disasterous. Are the demands for oil revenue too high to enable a successful settlement for a self-governing Iraq? The ever-stalling negotiations are often attributed to interregional arguments withing Iraq, but is this really the true picture? There is an extremely expensive military operation to pay for after all.

The sectarian violence control argument, as terrible as the sectarian violence actually can be, is a distraction when used in relation to the coalition's exit strategy policy. We (the US?) will not leave until a deal is reached on the control and revenue of Iraq's existing and to be discovered oilfields. This is the debate that now needs to take place in the public consciousness and it is sadly lacking.

Economic arguments help explain all conflict, because economics is nothing more than the study of people and their motives. Yet there is always a reluctance to acknowledge this in popular debate and the media combined. It's like when no-one mentions access to water when discussing the Israeli-Palestinian problem. On one hand, distraction, smokescreens and decoys are often encouraged. On the other, emotion, tribalism and violence - all acting as a proxies for the economic struggle to secure resources - sells a lot more newspapers. Talking economics dirties a war. But wars are economic in origin. And wars are always dirty.

It's made to be dull for a reason

2007-12-10T11:19:00.000Z

Yet again there are things going on in finance of much import to the (wo)man on the street. The consideration it might deserve is however is not exactly guaranteed. One problem (or advantage, depends on your perspective) being it competes poorly with certain reincarnated canoeists or X-factor nonsense, especially in the Advent social calendar. The other being of course that anything to do with finance feels a) inextricably dull and b) a bit tricky to understand.

Duller than all, but maybe more important for most: pensions. Oh god, even the word sounds so dull. But again, depending on your interests, maybe it's supposed to. But over the weekend and continuing today is some UK government scolding (particularly aimed at Brown and Darling) for not guaranteeing pension rights to 125 000 workers who lost their entitlement due to financial failure of their employers. Not to tar the whole administration with the same brush; apparently the cabinet is deeply divided on the issue and internal critism is extraordinarily strong. One is left wondering why Brown and Darling are blocking the support and what their motives are. It doesn't look like the hallmark of a liberal-left government in any case.

If this is reminiscent to you of a potential bailout then that would not be incorrect. And then of course the Northern Rock bell might well ring again in your head. But for the common characteristic of potential financial life raft, it is the contrasts in the two cases that are far more illuminating. Northern Rock's rescue involves a sum so large that it would feature prominantly in the UK PLC's annual accounts (if such a dream of transparency were ever to materialise), the last time I checked it was not far behind the UK's annual 'defence' budget and approaching circa £30 billion. Naturally, the treasury expects (aka hopes) to get a sizeable proportion of this back. The other noteworthy difference in the two cases is the speed of response. The mortgage lender's failure was met, to the government's short-term credit (to be discussed further), with national emergency response times. As soon as uncomfortably long queues of savers developed in the City of London, swift action was required to calm ensuing panic and a stave off a self perpetuating, disasterous bank run. This is London 2007 and not late 90s Buenos Aires and we will not have the national savings stashed under beds thank you very much.

Back to the pensioners. The scheme to fund the payments of the short-changed 125 000 is undeniably paltry in comparison. And to be fair they should recieve up to 80% of their disappeared annuity. Note this is far from a new story and many have not yet recieved this. Why the delay? Why the neglect? Why the political risk to confidence in pensions?

Pensions are considered, in some qualified circles, something of a misnomer. The word originates from pendere (to pay, weigh) and describes a notion of payment for service rendered. Not sure how the 125k aforementioned bankruptcy victims would swallow that one. To some, including me, any confidence at all in the entire pension system is something of a total mystery. A complete conundrum. The deal is thus: you allocate a proportion of your wealth to an agent, that agent will invest that wealth on your behalf and then you can capitalise on it when you are in your 60s. The bonus: you can invest this money before tax and so benefit from that otherwise-taxed proportion contributing to compounding interest. In principle, this makes an enormous difference and is quite possibly one of the most important and least appreciated characteristics of (personal) finance. The catch: the money is locked away for a long time and during that time you have absolutely no control (beyond your limited democratic influence) on future government legislation dictating the fate or availability of your money. Put like that, the whole prospect starts to look a lot less attractive. But that invest-and-accrue-your-tax carrot is a big one. The purpose: a massive proportion of national wealth is locked in long term to either government funds or capital markets. For supporting economic stability in this way you should be, in theory, rewarded in your retirement.

And so on to the agents. This is either the government (i.e. state pensions) or private fund managers. It looks to me like UK state pensions are all but disappeared so what of the private sector? As far as I know (and I would love to be corrected here) no pension (or US mutual -) fund manager has ever consistently beaten the market over the mid - long term. This means, effectively, that the future pensioner is paying an agent a non-insignificant fee to invest in a market but that investment actually yields less that the market made itself over the same interval. The stockpickers are maybe not so hot at picking stocks or their fees are too high, maybe both.

In any case, despite the huge tax incentive, this all makes pensions rather unattractive to me. And I'm not alone. So I wonder why, in a story like the one above, the UK government may risk a system's already debatable credibilty.

**********************************************************************************

So, from pensions to another dreary, but more immediately-experienced matter of finance: inflation. And the oft-regurgiated (in the press, by the government) case of restricting wage rise to control inflation. It would be fair enough, if the implied relationship were known to be true. Any public sector pay dispute is invariably accompanied with a technocratically-sounding anti-inflation justification to limit increases below any decent level. The argument goes, as often sold by the paymaster or the analysis-starved subservient sector of the press and TV, that to overly support 'excessive' pay rises is to drive up inflation and so in the end batter the economy and increase unemployment. But the factors driving inflation are diverse and complex and to allude to this simple non-existent wage rise = inflation = unemployment relationship is nonsense. What of the evidence that wage growth fuels consumer demand and so is of economic benefit? What a surprise!

So the relationship between earnings, inflation and employment is not exactly thoroughly understood. For people to argue against a deserved, modest pay rise on the basis of inflation, as in the case of the current UK civil service pay dispute, is utterly disingenuous as they have no evidence that the legend is true. If the government cannot afford, for example, to pay the civil service more, then say so, with real justification, but please stop blaming the ghost of inflation in the cupboard. And will the media sector that joins in stop churning out the same groundless nonsense and maybe engage a more involved debate?

Strong inflation erodes the value of money, akin to accelerating your own death; making you less and less effective every day in the future. It is a vicious poison that has to be abated - and central banks have not been doing a terrible job of it recently. But to use a bogus threat of inflation on those who are owed a correct price for the services they provide to the state is simply wrong.

How often have you heard the same government or the same media accuse city bonus recipients of being such inflation supporting scourges? And it's not unlikely that when it comes to price rises in certain markets, those concerned are not at all uninvolved. In economically favorable times, firms are naturally keen to increase their prices as much as is possible to build profit. I wonder what this does to inflation? And, oh yes, energy prices. Which would you be more scared of: the price of oil or the Job Centre staff getting 2.5%?

Seasonal Adaptation

2007-12-01T18:20:00.000Z

It's somehow weird and especially amazing how we adapt to change; just two weeks ago I was complaining how I wasn't ready for winter this year - the effect heightened by the oyxmoron that was 'Summer 2007' [except for that amazing month of April]. So it was with much trepidation that I returned to Austria 2 weeks ago, for some undeniably wintry affairs.

I’d recently decided to have a bash at furthering my ski instructor training, having entered this different – and much misunderstood – world the previous year. As I am applying my newly-coined phrase of “temporary retirement” to my own life at present then it was easy to find the time. Given the level of training you get on these things, they are also definitely worth their reasonable cost. So, the twinned obstacles of time and money that so often get in the way were for once felled, and off I went. Back to Austria, the 'land of the bergs' as per the national anthem [credit to Alban]. At least that’s accurate; is the Queen of England and … where is she Queen of exactly? I forget. She’s more popular in Canada than Scotland. Good job I don’t have to do that Citizenship Exam. But in terms of anthemic accuracy, is she gracious? Sorry, going off the point there again...

So, I returned to the more correctly-themed Austria for more ski training. I’d done the first part of the Austrian system, known as the Anwärter (candidate) in non-winter 06/07 (spot the theme) and worked as an instructor in the beloved Arlberg, in St Anton. Was a bit of a dream come true thing really and at age 34 it was fucking scary. But that’s another story. This time I was going to have a go at the next level, Landeslehrer I, with the Viennese Ski Instructor Association, aka Snowsport Academy. Logical progression, fair enough. However, the system is distinctly non-linear – almost logarithmic really – the jumps between subsequent levels becoming ever larger and more daunting. Hence, yet again I was shit scared about what I was letting myself in for.

Many friends were delighted I was going back. Please try and not misread that, they just knew how much I got out of it and so were happy I was returning for more. Others also said things like, "ooo how lovely, enjoy the holiday". Enjoy the fucking holiday?! You have no idea. We are talking pseudoarmy here. Ok, without the shouting. And yes, with more fun. But it’s a difficult thing to describe; everyone has experience of training and examination of an academic nature, but the same process applied to physical capabilities is a stranger one, at least for me anyway. I suppose at least when you write an exam, no-one is watching what you write at the time.

Sunday lunchtime, cold and a bit dreary. Zell am See Bahnhof, Salzburger Land. It was November 18. Snowy. Already. Quite a lot. Compared to the previous season this was already fantastic. And I stood there, rucksack fusing with my back, coffin-weight dual ski bag (aka ‘Granddad’) nesting itself in the fresh snow. What the fuck? How did this happen? Only a few days ago I was still whinging I wasn’t ready for winter yet. But winter doesn’t wait. And even though I’d last skied on April twentysomething of this year (after a solid 4 months bar 2 days), the very thought of skiing felt so foreign to me. How odd is that?

Then, despite me remaining a relapsed smoker, something overcame me with a twinkle of a reminder of why I love this environment so much. I breathed. And noticed. Oh, the air, the clean, crisp, delicious mountain air. After months in a hyperpolluted environment such as central London, the first breath of this air is the respiratory equivalent of a long cold drink after a desert hike. You can feel the breathing, and it is simply amazing; a pulmonary orgasm. And then you, yet again, resolve to try and smoke less. Invigorated and feeling more positive, I dragged the kit on the bus and headed up to Kaprun.

What was to follow comprised ten exhausting, thrilling, sometimes almost gruelling days of fun - and all with an austrian german soundtrack; my basic german is good, but basic is the word. 6:30 starts, intensive ski training until late afternoon with a quickish lunch and then theory lessons all evening straggling dinner. Bed about 10, rinse and repeat. It's quite a shock to the system, especially as this was the beginning of the season. The leg pain (especially post moguls), best illustrated by trying to climb the stairs, only slightly assuaged by the observation that it was a universal problem.

But within a day or two, something imperceptible had happened; I was a skier again - maybe an instructor - again. I was loving winter, loving the white stuff, which so early in the season was floating out of the ski in reassuringly large, cristalline quantities. One day absorbed or embroiled in urban dealings and goings on, then so soon after automatically strapping on the avalanche beeper while still half asleep. It's like something latent lies dormant through the summer and then comes to life at the sight of snow. A kind of reverse hibernation. Amazing really.

As tough as the course was, it was in equal quantity incredible fun. The training was brilliant, pushing everyone to their limit but using new school positive encouragement technique rather than other more dubious protocols I've experienced in various forms of training in my life. I learnt a lot about how to get the best out of people while working as a ski instructor. An instructor's principle role most of the time is some form of practical psychologist, encouraging people to overcome their innate fear with a toolbox of technical tricks and movements. The more I think of it, the more I believe ski teacher training should be compulsory for all managers in every kind of enterprise. Face it, you're not going to get someone to overcome their fear on a mountain and perform their best by shouting, bullying or some other common, undeclared management technique.

The gem in this course though (and definitely my key to passing) was the people. The organisers and trainers were enthusiastic, inspirational people and generally nice guys. And my group colleagues were simply brilliant. Diverse characters, ages, nationalities but a great group dynamic. Everyone under pressure to perform, sometimes satisfied, often despondent and exhausted but all just bursting with team spirit and encouragement...maybe a bit of love? I cannot tell you how refreshing that is and how grateful I was to be in that environment. I've often had the delight of witnessing alternative group dynamics we all know too well in other formative or possibly competitive situations, so it's just a joy to see how it can be.

A shame it's not more often like that. So, who fancies a ski?

A final note about Ryanair's (actually excellent despite the banana yellow seats) flight to Salzburg. What is the deal with those scratch cards and "childrens charities"? Why is Ryanair’s new PA voice American? Offered for onward travel from Stansted: “We also sell bus tickets with television”. I didn't inquire about price. But before I mock the stewardess's substandard english, I remind myself she'd just done a 12 hour day. Ouch.

Banishing the hungry

2007-11-13T13:46:00.000Z

From: Simon Jones [mailto:drsrjones@hotmail.com]
Sent: 13 November 2007 13:30
To: oliver.hatch@londoncouncils.gov.uk
Subject: London Local Authorities Bill - Nov 2007 - Free Refreshment Distribution

Dear Mr Hatch:

I am writing to comment on the proposal to criminalise the distribution of food and drink on council-designated land in London, as defined in your consultation document, with a expressed focus of preventing homeless ‘soup-runs’.

When one first reads this, it is with some sense of disbelief. The potential heartlessness of such a move has led some to comment on the internet that this must in fact be a joke, albeit a bizarre one.

However, unfortunately this is not a joke but rather a serious proposal being put forward by a genuine proposer. It would, naturally, be interesting to know who or what community or commercial interest is in fact behind this. Given this affects the use of public land (note my use of term rather than council-designated) then I would expect a transparent declaration of all interests to be appropriate here.

In any case, given the very limited information provided by the above-referenced document, it would appear that the problem being raised is nuisance to properties adjacent to soup-runs, whether residential or commercial.

Now, the first thing I think is important here is the use of the word nuisance; it’s a dangerous term. Nuisance, used euphemistically, can simply be an expression of nimbyism - “we don’t want that sort around here” - kind of thing. However, nuisance can also be very serious, including anything from noise and litter to harassment and even violence. Abolishing the right to give food in a public place to those in need (something that may actually be enshrined in law) is an extremely serious proposal. It is a right any citizen possesses today. Given the potential seriousness of this matter, I would say then that it is the responsibility of London Councils to be much more explanatory and descriptive when outlining such a position and not rely on imprecise terms such as nuisance, without any accompanying evidence.

The second important thing I note from this proposal comes from its different possible interpretations. It’s very easy to have an instinctive reaction of horror when reading this – a revulsion at the fact that in 2007’s London the rich will gladly banish the destitute from their doorsteps, harking back to Dickens’s days. But hold on, this ‘nuisance’ thing again... Is it simply people not wanting to have the hungry fed in their vicinity? If so, then the horror is indeed genuine, and indeed society is regressing backwards so quickly then I don’t even want to see the future. If this is simple heartlessness then London Councils must screw a million copies of this proposal up and throw them all in the middle of Lincoln’s Inn Fields or some other common soup-run location. Then that really will be nuisance. London Councils also represent the homeless, although by definition not having a fixed address they are a lot less vocal.

But, and this is a big but, what if this nuisance is real nuisance? A source well acquainted with soup-runs comments that they can be accompanied by “scuffles and bullying” and gang activity can be present. Now things start to look rather different. However, if such problems are occurring, then banning soup-runs is hardly the solution. Those people need to be fed (and receive all the other ancillary services at such locations: advice, fact-finding, support etc). So if this a matter of riverains having to deal with genuine trouble caused by some / a small number / a tiny minority of soup runs and raising a genuine issue with the London Boroughs then it surely cannot be local government’s response to simply say, ‘oh, ok, we’ll ban them then’.

Might the councils otherwise feel some obligation to provide indoor facilities for food distribution? Or possibly policing the system in some way? I’m always seeing Southwark’s ‘Community Wardens’ doing nothing much at all around Shad Thames and More London, maybe they could help? Nevertheless, this unintelligent knee-jerk response is exactly the most terrible solution to this potential but not-yet-quantified problem. Let’s hope some rationality prevails and that the authorities deign to actually engage with the organisations concerned to improve this situation. Else someone go wake up Dickens.

When engaging the public on this matter London Councils need to better summarise the real extent of any problem. One expert in this area, Jon May at Queen Mary, does not seem to think there are any of the problems I discuss above.

On a final note, there is something in this proposal that leaves a very bad taste in the mouth (pun excusing notwithstanding); the proposal contains a proposed exemption: free sample distribution for marketing purposes outside retail premises. The irony, now I feel really sick.

Please don’t do this.

Best regards,

Dr Simon Jones

Wilkommen in Squaddieland

2007-11-08T10:21:00.000Z

It's a strange world to witness.. British squaddieland in Germany. I'm British, have spent 95% of my 34 years living in Britain, and I've never seen so many British military personnel. And let's not mention the rather large, rounded ones. No, I have to ... expand... a bit on that. It's like the British Police these days. I'm just surprised to see rotund soldiers that's all; it's not what you expect. The weird vibe that exists around here on the outskirts of Paderborn, 150 km NE of Cologne in Nordrhein-Westfalen, has promted Johannes and I to call it Tatooine. I don't whether it's just down to the German angle or the bored soldiers or both but even the little villages around here have sex shops. I can't put my finger on why but I just can't get used to popping into the local not-delightful Penny Markt for some Happy End toilettenpapier and mingling with all this camoflage gear. Not wanting to winge all Middle-England-like, and I love Deutschland, but on the subject of Penny Markt, Lidl and Aldi: why does Germany only seem to do bargain supermarkets so well? Why, for once, doesn't globalisation achieve something actually desired and install Waitrose all over die Lände? What does strike me though is discovering this annexe of the UK state. I'd never considered it before but there are 7 British bases still in Germany, with c25K personnel and a further c25K associated people. That's a lot of infrastructure. Can u imagine if Germany asked them to leave? Where the hell would the UK put them? Bet we'd lose Dartmoor. Or Hampstead Heath. Apparently that's not likely though as according to the beeb in 94 , all this contributes €1.5/year to the local economy. Plus Germans have got loads of room.

UK property polemics

2007-11-06T17:08:00.000Z

The UK media seemed to be out for another party again very recently. They were revelling yet again at the prospect of an impending UK property market crash - or at least a serious slowdown; e.g. Times article. Even the BBC joined in BBC article. Now of course I think they did some serious analysis and lots of research before they came up with this important forecast, didn't they? And so what appeared to be the basis of their wise predictions? UK new mortgage issuances were down... This could be important of course, notwithstanding some journalists' unhealthy habit of basing some drastic outlook on the large sample of one single data point. But did anyone when relaying this result to their readership stop once to consider the very relevant recent happenings in the global credit markets and it's possible secondary ripples? Do the writers in question realise mortages means lending money, credit means lending money and hence mortgages and credit may be related? I wonder.

2 big things that may be at play, but which, as far as I know, were conspicuously absent from the articles concerned. The US sub-prime mortage crisis was fundamentally caused by selling too much bad debt - offering mortgages to those that could never really afford them. The trick being to sell loads of these but then package them up and manage (unbelievably) to conceal the default risk associated with these loans (i.e. how dodgy they were) and sell the loans on to some one else. That'll do very nicely thank you sir. So, effect one: lots of naughty lenders are being inspected or feeling that they are about to be hauled over the coals. It's highly likely therefore that mortage lenders worldwide will be feeling at least a little less liberal at lending than they normally are. Hey, they might even read some applications and checking some credentials. And maybe, just maybe, this might be putting the brakes on new mortage figures. The other ignored effect was nicely highlighted in the FT yesterday. Northern Rock - another possible credit crunch effect I wonder - is in so much trouble that it's reducing its lending activity significantly. And no way this is the only lender that this is happening to. So many players caught up in this market scam (a much better label than 'crisis' or 'crunch' in this case) are looking at their balance sheets in an increasingly worried fashion. And guess what? Maybe they've started to work a little harder to check who they lend to. And maybe they've become just a little bit more careful overall. And just maybe this is slowing down the mortgage issuance figures.

Now I didn't see any thinking along these lines when the UK esp. tabloid media went into the cataclysm zone recently. I also didn't see the slightest mention about whether housing demand or supply (such esoteric economic considerations!) appear to be altering significantly. Funny that.

Maybe if the reporting concerned had been a bit more comprehensive then I wouldn't have received the scores of reassuring letters and postcards off local estate agents saying there was nothing really wrong. Straight in the bin where they belong. Along with the articles in the first place.

To the journalists and editors concerned: if you don't really know what is going on, then please quieten down for all our sakes.