acoupleofpunters

This blog has now moved...

2006-12-08T17:37:00.000Z

This blog has now moved, holus bolus, to www.acoupleofpunters.com.

All the posts from here are there, as well as a whole collection of new ones, so please come over and comment at our new URL: www.acoupleofpunters.com.

Cochlear implants and deafness

2006-12-08T14:22:00.000Z

The Cheerful One mentioned in a post that she got herself embroiled in Cochlear implant debate at a recent Christmas party.

I started posting a comment on her post, but my anger ran away with me, so I moved it here instead of turning her comments box into a debating zone.

I respect the views of the anti-implant debate, and I sympathise with their fears that "curing" deafness - which implants don't do by any means - will destroy their culture. But personally I think the deaf culture is far stronger than that. But their tactics make me furious. The worst story I have heard is of non-implanted children slapping implanted children in the side of the head in the playground in an attempt to destroy their implant. (Don't - you will dent the child before the implant.)

The victims of these assaults are children who are not wearing their speech processors - the devices that send the sounds to the implant - implant because they're at deaf school, trying to participate in deaf culture. Can you imagine anything more likely to turn a child against the deaf culture than bullying it out of a school for the deaf - can you imagine anything more likely to attach negative connotations to signing?

One of my colleagues was deaf (without an implant) and, naturally, attended events with lots of other deaf people. He refused to put a company parking sticker on his car because he was afraid of the car being vandalised when he attended events with lots of other deaf people who didn't know him.

Children need to learn to hear and understand speech as separate from background noise and their ability to learn this skill is direct correlation to how soon they can be implanted. The main anti-implant argument is that children should be able to make an informed decision about whether they want to be part of the hearing culture, or the deaf one (as if it's an all or nothing choice) and thus should wait until they are around 12 years of age before being offered an implant.

But at that age their ability to learn to hear speech, and speak themselves, is severely compromised. However, if the child is implanted in its first year of life, and grows up signing, hearing and speaking, they are able to make an informed decision by either wearing or not wearing their implant. Not implanting them until later in life is taking away their right to learn to hear and understand speech.

And honestly, if they had met some of the amazing implantees that I have met, the anti-implant lobby would not be so anti.

One bubbly, vibrant explosion of a woman who went deaf overnight in a nightclub, in her fifties, describes her implant as a lifesaving device. She lives to talk and interact with other people - she is 100% extrovert. She became suicidal after a week of the loneliness of not hearing, and spent a month in deep depression before her implant restored some semblance of hearing.

Another woman in advanced old age (in Australia) had been going progressively deaf over the years. She was implanted and within a week of returning from hospital (that's a ridiculously fast recovery - it's usually longer) was able to ring her oldest friend in the UK - a woman who she had not been able to speak to for seven years, and who she had given up on ever being able to speak to again, because their respective ages made travel difficult. Once the crying was over they talked for three hours, and when I met her, were talking weekly.

How can someone deny that sort of miracle to a person?

------

On a more cheerful note, my deaf mate was heading off to travel in Vietnam. I asked how he was going to handle the language barrier - because there is very little crossover between Asian languages and English.

He looked at me incredulously, and wrote on our conversation pad, "I don't speak English, and I do OK here."

I wrote back, "Oh yeah, good point there. I forgot!"

Impotent, and with a small penis

2006-12-04T15:44:00.000Z

It must be great to be impotent.
It must also be great to have a tiny penis.

I say this, because I am constantly emailed by people enquiring about the state of my potency, and the size of my potentate. There must be millions of people out there who genuinely want to help me, and are only thwarted by the fact that my bishop stands unaided, and performs on cue.

On my lonely days, however, I wish things were not quote so functional. On those days I could reply to the emails by saying, "Actually, things aren't so great in the pants department. Can you help me?"

I would be immediately surrounded by love and joy as these thousands of people rush to my aid with sidenafil citrate, pumps, patches and plungers. There would be a mass laying on of hands - it would be like a group hug from the centipede family. It would be lovely.

But alas, by gusset filler functions perfectly normally so I will go on my lonely way, wishing for a little pop gun that only shoots blanks.

A proportional response?

2006-08-07T12:43:00.000+01:00

In my last post I mentioned, in passing, that Israel had invaded Lebanon. Of course in the Orwellian doublespeak that is the dialogue of modern warfare it was not called an invasion - euphemisms like "conflict", and "proportional response" were bandied about - even when the Israelis blew up a UN observation post that had been there for eighteen years - not months, years. Eighteen years!

The term that most offended me was "proportional response". The response was not proportional, it was paranoid, reactionary and totally out of proportion, as the coffin counter shows.

However, the claims that the Israelis are not targeting civillians surprises me to. I have seen footage of Israeli asassins destroying one single apartment in an apartment block in order to eliminate a military target without taking out any civillians. At that time the world was caught-up on the legalities of Israeli military helicopters going into Palestine (or Jordan, depending on your politics) and destroying said single apartment. Whatever the legalities, it proved, beyond doubt, the surgical precision that Israeli agents are able to achieve when they want to. Which is why the scenes of entire streets blown to pieces makes me think that the Israelis wanted that to happen. If a group that can destroy individual cars on the road, and individual rooms in buildings suddenly destroys a neighbourhood, it is disingenuous for that group to expect us to believe them when they say that it was unintentional.

If this is how Israel responds to eighty casualties, I would hate to see how it responds to its road toll.

Hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned

2006-07-24T22:11:00.000+01:00

The main trick to negotiating with someone is to get as much information as you can about them, and their situation, their pressure points and their pleasure points. Armed with this knowledge you can push towards a satisfactory resolution for both parties.

If you think your negotiation will end in an unbalanced resolution, where the other party may not be entirely satisfied with their lot, you also need to consider your own pressure points once the negotiation is over, because an opponent with nothing to lose will see only up-side in attacking you - and suddenly the negotiation is not over.

If you have been paying any attention to the blogsphere, or the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Times or CNN in the last week you will know that Israel has invaded Lebanon and that Petite Anglaise was fired from her job for bringing disrepute on her employer. Petite's account indicates that her employer spent a weekend reading her blog. She says quite thoroughly, though I suspect he just clicked the "working girl" category to read the work posts - a great example of poor preparation, and an indirect cause of the subsequent media storm.

You see, if you read Petite thoroughly, looking at the profiles and blogs of those who post comments, you will discover that Petite is read widely by media types. She would be within six degrees of separation from almost every Newspaper editor in the English speaking world. Being her boss you would also have noticed that she is articulate in two languages, intelligent, very good looking, and a single mum. Having read her blog you would know that she writes beautifully, and sensitively, about her daughter - you are not firing Petite, you are firing Tadpole's mum - and has ambitions beyond the secretarial. Having seen the book covers in her right sidebar, you would know that she admires bloggers turned authors, and you could assume that she wants to join their ranks. And if you fire her, she will have a lot of time on her hands. She is, in short, a media darling in waiting, willing and able to step up to the plate.

And still he fired her. According to Petite's timeline he read the blog on the weekend and she was out by the end of the week. It looks to me like a hasty decision, made without considering all the angles. A more cunning person would have discussed the matter with Petite, given her a written warning, and requested that she not identify her workplace or use company facilities for blogging. A wise person would have given her the warning, then moved her into corporate communications. By firing Petite they have given her no option but to take her plight public. It is simply the path of least resistance - she has no job, nothing to lose by publishing, and 3000 readers per day who she habitually uses as confidants. What else would she do?

The employer's subsequent media management has been even more short-sighted. So far it has been media relations by "No comment" and not returning phone calls; giving Petite complete control over the story without, surprisingly, ever mentioning the name of the company. The company appears utterly discredited, either by its unfair treatment of a staff member, or the inadequacy of its HR policies in the face of such a challenge. (May large, conservative companies now require staff to sign a contract prohibiting them from blogging, or blogging about work). The company's cold, unsophisticated and reactionary media strategy - so favoured by the archly conservative end of British society - was utterly discredited by its disastrous impact on the British royal family's reputation following the death of Princess Diana. A more evolved organisation would have put its own side of the story, stating why it believes it behaved rationally and reasonably. And if it cannot come up with a plausible explanation, it should recognise that it is in an indefensible position and begin remediation before the media storm becomes a tornado.

Media relations aside; the most potentially damaging fallout for the employer will occur if it wins against Petite at the industrial relations tribunal. Because all Petite did was talk, abstractly, about work in a public forum, a victory would set the precedent that discussing work in a public forum not controlled by your workplace - regardless of whether you identify your employer - brings discredit on your employer.

This would prevent anybody from discussing their job at after work drinks with friends; it would prevent students from discussing their work during continuing education - as is required to become a chartered accountant; and it would ultimately mean that the man who fired Petite should lose his own job for his presentation at the meeting of the International Tax Planning Association in Lausanne last month, or at least for any comments he made about work between sessions.

[Petite and her erstwhile employer have been invited to comment.]

It's little wonder really...

2006-06-22T14:30:00.000+01:00

In the wee small hours this morning, somewhere between the alarm going off and waking up, I was listening to the radio. The BBC man and his reporter were discussing a new report into parking in London and three facts leaped out of the burble at me:

That one in five parking tickets is challenged successfully
That one in three parking officers is assaulted - some with baseball bats and other weapons
They are thinking of increasing parking fines in some places to £160

This, in turn, inspired three thought streams:

So what they are actually saying is that one in five parking tickets is an extortion attempt that fails. Given the number of dodgy parking tickets that people don't bother fighting, the proportion of fraudulent parking tickets must be immense.
People are violently objecting to parking officers illegally ticketing their cars. Or parking officers are violently objecting to people who try to stop them illegally ticketing their cars. I mention this flipside, because the violence is not always one-way. Our porter challenged the parking inspector in our street and the parking inspector hit him with his parking ticket machine. So the parking inspector took a weapon to a concerned citizen who pointed out that he had not waited the statutory five minutes before writing the ticket, and that he would act as a witness. It ended happily though. About a nanosecond after the parking inspector hit our porter, he discovered - the hard way - that our porter is a retired middleweight boxer. I bet it wasn't written up that way in the inspector's log though.
It costs more to park illegally than it does to speed, or to drive through a stop sign

Even in my slightly befuddled sleepy state, having had these thoughts, I had a revelation. An epiphany even.

Perhaps less of 1 will lead to less 2.

I was wondering if anyone else shared my revelation when, outside Bayswater Tube this morning, I saw a parking inspector hiding behind a phone box on Queensway while she typed a car's details into her computer. The car was in the side street, driver in the driving seat, engine running, while the passenger hopped out to catch the tube. The passenger didn't take more than a moment to get out, so really the car was stopped at a stop sign and the alighting passenger was a coincidence. Essentially, the parking officer was about to fine a driver for stopping at a stop sign. (Which makes sense, given that the fines tell us that it is more important to park properly than drive properly.)

So I smacked her head into the side of the phone box.

[Actually, I didn't. I stopped walking, did a double take, walked into the station, walked back out again to see if I actually saw what I thought I saw, then someone approached her to ask a question and the car drove away.]

Just how secure is Guantanamo Bay?

2006-06-12T13:51:00.000+01:00

A MILITARY investigation into the suicides of three inmates at Guantanamo Bay was under way yesterday as American officials sought to counter international condemnation over the deaths, dismissing them as a “PR stunt” aimed at discrediting the US.

It worked.

The US now looks ridiculous and insecure. It's pathetic.

Or perhaps I'm being heavy handed here. It seems that modern warfare is all about PR and I might be hopelessly out of fashion when I see tragedy in a person so tormented that death looks like their best option.

The ludicrousness of animal rights zealotry

2006-05-29T15:11:00.000+01:00

Last weekend I was sheltering from the wind and rain at Damo's Spring barbecue when I got chatting to a couple of Australian vets, who are living and working in London. Vets are on a good wicket here - especially Australian ones. This couple were in the enviable situation of having two cars and two flats because both had jobs which came with a car and accommodation. Given that they actually wanted to live together, this had led to a strange decrease in their quality of life, given that no matter which flat they are living in they have to be up and out by 8.30am to move the other car out of the resident parking zone, or feed the parking meter. But that's not my point.

They were telling me that Australian vets are very much in demand in the UK becuase they have been trained to do surgery on live animals. There was a slight pause in the conversation at that moment - which they seemed to be expecting, I think they were used to it - before I said, "I'm sorry, are you telling me that an English vet student can be a vet without any surgical training." Yes they said. English vets never do surgery on a live animal until they are let loose on the world and people are paying for their services. I asked why, and they explained that because of the animal liberation movement, British vet students don't do surgery on live animals. Australians do, therefore, people running veterenary clinics like to hire Australians, who have surgical experience, over English, who do not.

So, I said, it's concievable that a caring animal liberationist protester could accidentally run over a fox on the way home from terrorising some poor farmer. They could carefully lie the wounded animal on a blanket - covering its eyes to keep it calm - and gently place it in the back of the car, and drive it carefully to the local vet. Once at the vet they could discover that the vet has never actually done surgery on a live animal before, and thus may be more dangerous to the fox than its original injuries. The couple nodded in agreement.

How do you hold a baby's coffin?

2006-05-19T17:38:00.000+01:00

I have always thought that Funerals are quite fun affairs - death and loss aside. Sure, the whole mourning thing is very upsetting, but it is also cleansing and cathartic, and leaves you feeling better afterwards. And there is also the celebration thing: celebrating a life lived, hopefully well. I have thought this since the first funeral I attended - my Grandfather's, or my Great Aunt's, not sure - which united cousins and friends who I had not seen for years. It was, ultimately, a reunion party that left us feeling more positive, like the worst was over.

I thought that I was alone in thinking this. Or perhaps that it was just my family, because we were having a laugh in the funeral car about some of the ridiculously funny things that my Grandfather used to do and say. Some of these had names - "The Toilet Seat Incident"; or was it Aunty Thelma's epic travels in her own train carriage, or when she thought her nurse was a gypsy because he had an earring. It doesn't matter, really. The point is that all the stories were infectious and pretty soon we were in the comedy car. At one point I apologised to the driver for our extremely bad taste. He didn't mind. He said that the biggest emotional struggle for a funeral car driver is keeping a straight face when the rest of the car is laughing. He said they are usually quite funny drives.

And funerals can be quite sexy: everyone wears their best clothes; the women look all flushed and vulnerable; the men look all stoic, while betraying an emotional range they usually conceal; and of course teenagers discover a whole new set of adult emotions to experiment with. This I also thought was my own idea until I found thirteen films that agree with me.

Having made these observations over the years, it took today to gel them into the single idea that ultimately a funeral is a positive experience. Because today was the exception that proves the rule.

This morning I held Universal Wifey's trembling hand at the back of a crematorium, tears rolling down our cheeks to the droning lullaby of a Hindu Priest. The casket was ridiculously small - like a dolls-house toy - and it occurred to me that with something so small the usual funerary pomp just doesn't work. You can't have many flowers, because the casket is smaller than the bouquet. The coffin is too small for pallbearers, so it has to be carried by one person, awkwardly. A hearse is a ridiculous conceit when the coffin fits on a lap. And without the formality the whole event becomes horribly personal and intimate. And when there is only fifteen minutes of life to celebrate, nothing can offset the gutting misery of lost hope and shattered dreams.

Again, I thought that this might have been my own observation, until we were waiting to pay our respects to the parents and I saw the undertaker crack. Have you ever seen an undertaker cry?

Also published on www.universalcritic.com.

Is the world car as worldly as it seems

2006-05-12T08:37:00.000+01:00

I like to buy good things. Once I have learned what to look for I try to buy the best I can afford - at the best price, naturally - and then use it until it is totally worn out. It feels like I spend my money more wisely that way.

Of course, sometimes my obsessive search for good value can backfire. I ordered some Bang & Olufsen earphones online recently, but instead of buying them from Bang & Olufsen, I bought them on eBay, for a third of the price, from a guy who claims to be selling the OEM version. Of course, when they turned up they looked just like the Bang & Olufsen earphones, they fitted just like Bang & Olufsen earphones, and I must say, they even sound a lot like Bang & Olufsen earphones - much better than the standard ones that came with my MP3 player. Of course a lot of that comes down to the quality of the fit. But you see, they are not Bang & Olufsen earphones, they are just like Bang & Olufsen earphones. This message is hammered home by the brand name 'Like' written on the side. And because they are not the real thing, I feel a little ripped off.

It's a similar ripped off sense that my sister-in-law felt when her landlord finally replaced her washing machine, which promptly failed. When the warranty repair man came out from the washing machine company he said, 'This looks just like one of ours from the outside, except that we only make washing machines. We don't have a washer dryer - this is a Chinese rip off.' And so chinese rip offs have been on my mind lately.

Of course, I can always console myself that I once owned a Mercedes-Benz. I loved it - loved it enough to take pictures, as you can see - it gave me confidence at a time when I had none.

It reassured me, as I drove up to a job interview, that I didn't really need a new job. So I got the job, of course. And through that job, I met my wife, and her dad approved of the way I kept my car, and so on - life began again.

The Mercedes-Benz S class has, for generations, been the pinnacle of automotive development. They were consistently twenty years ahead of their time, and the biggest of the saloons - the Mercedes 300SEL 6.3, the 450SEL 6.9 and the 560SEL were frequently described as the best cars of their time. Mine was 26 years old when I bought it, and was the best value car I could buy at the time - it had the exact same specification as the 26 years younger, top of the range Holden Commodore (the large GM saloon in Australia) of the time, for a quarter of the price.

The cars were so good - and so damn expensive - because Mercedes-Benz built them up to their own standards, rather than down to the local standards. And the Merceds-Benz standard exceeded the local design rules everywhere on the planet. They were a world car.

But is the world car so worldly now? Mercedes' reign has certainly been under assault in the last decade and a half - first BMW rose to glory; now Audi is coming in from behind, snapping its jaws and making aggressive noises, and even the Volkswagen Golf is as much of a world car as the Mercedes ever was. So when, in the past, governments and expats would only ever buy Mercedes - because who on earth knew what a Holden Commodore, or a Kia Proton was back then - there are now a raft of excellent cars to choose from, and Mercedes is just one of them. (Case in point, our UK car is a Golf.)

In the face of this competition, Mercedes should be focussing on the strategy that made it so good in the first place - setting its own standards higher, and living up to them. It looked like it was doing so well with the new E Class - a superb piece of engineering, until it started having problems with its electrics. And the very sexy new S class was released, and then embarrassed when, in early March, Mercedes-Benz recalled 33,000 S class cars in China.

Nowhere else, but China. There was a problem with the evaporator lines and the fuel lines coming into conflict with eachother and causing leaks. The problem isn't really relevant, but the fact that it only happened in China is. You see, if the world car fails it should either fail worldwide, or fail in some specific localised component. It should not fail in a local market on a sub assembly so crucial as the fuel system.

How is this going to make the Chinese market feel. It's going to make it feel like Mercedes-Benz is shipping sub-standard product to market in China. It's going to send the message that China may be an important market to make money in, but it's not important enough to ship good product. It's almost as if Mercedes Benz is not waiting for Chinese counterfitters to copy its product with some sub-standard immitation, because it's heading into the marketplace to do it itself. And that's not on.

2006-05-09T13:29:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the lack of punting here for the last month or so. We are both snowed under at work and home - Damien is entertaining relatives, and I got married, and am now trying to buy a house.

At the risk of driving you away though, I have had time to participate in a particularly lively discussion over at Anna's blog, and been universally critical over here.

And we'll be back to punting as soon as possible.

Save Damo!

2006-04-18T19:11:00.000+01:00

Phillip Adams
Late Night Live
ABC Radio National

Phillip

My mate Damien Xxxxxxx was an intelligent, upstanding, well respected guy, holding his own in the big bad world of the British. I looked away for 20 minutes while I went home to Oz to get married, and he has turned into this.

Poor Damo appears to be channeling Bazza McKenzie - which, while useful in an altercation, does nothing for those of us who have to live and work in an atmosphere of mutual respect, if not understanding, with the British. He has even gone so far as suggesting Melbourne as a place to live over Sydney - and all this from a Brisbane boy.

I blame you and your Bazza mates - Crocker and Humphries - and ultimately your devil spawn McKenzie. I know that there is nothing you can do, but it is part of your penance to see the damage you have caused.

Damian

PS: Love your show and have ordered an MP3 player so I can listen to your podcasts.

Melbourne is the place to be

2006-04-17T20:11:00.000+01:00

Queen Elizabeth II
Buckingham Palace
England

Dear Liz,

Great galloping goannas! Since the Commonwealth Games last month, you should really take a squiz at Melbourne as a place to lay your hat (s). I’m told that Tony and Cherie liked the place so much that they were looking to pull up stumps to move out here. We thought it was all a bit suss and Cherie was just looking for a place to be King Dick for a while. My mates were grinning like shot foxes when they heard that. This place needs more tall poppies, like London needs more rain – ha.

Let me tell you something for free - Melbourne is not a place to vege-out in your trackie-daks and thongs, though. By jingos, by crikey, you can’t be a tight-arse and own a home here – well, maybe out in the sticks you can.

Melbourne is sport capital of the world, well, its up there with Manchester. Slap-bang in the middle of a whopping great big bay – you better get in before the Septic Tanks come over from Houston.

The G is great for the footy and the cricket, there’s Keating’s Grand Prix, and I hear that you love the gg’s. Melbourne’s also the home of VB and when the weather’s on it can be a real scorcher – perfect for you and your hats. Best coffee in the world, thanks to the wogs – I kid you not. The Frenchies can bugger off though.

I heard recently that when you were last out in Oz, you opened the races in Gundagai. Apparently you told Price Philip about the place, and he asked “Wear the fox hat?”. I think he’s being rude – flamin’ galah.

Melbourne is an hour from the snow, and an hour away from the beach. When the surf is up at Bell’s, it’s better than a kick in the teeth. You pommies wouldn’t have anything to grizzle about in Melbourne.

After Sydney and the Olympics, property prices went up like a rat up a drain-pipe. The locals threw a wobbly as home prices went through the roof – I feel that there may have been a few quiet rip-offs though as the locals took advantage. How’s the serenity? Have you ever seen the film – The Castle?

Saw in the papers that you’re about to turn 80 (did you and Hugh Hefner know each other as kids?) – congratulations. Hope the Duke puts on a bit of a do for you – something really lairy with plenty of liquid amber, a few steaks and prawns on the Barbie, and a great big pavlova.

Anyway, give Melbourne a burl, next time you’re Down Under.

No wuckin’ furries.

Hooroo.

Bruce Dingham

Office politics resembles the playground

2006-03-23T06:52:00.000Z

Dropping my son off to nursery yesterday, I saw children getting down to business in the playground. Aside from the actual work roles, it struck me how similar the characters from a child’s playground are perhaps now to be found in the average workplace. Machiavellian attitude seems to exist at a very young age.

You have the Leader; serious demeanour, aged slightly older and therefore slightly more experience. They assume the position, because of self belief.

Then you have the Perceived Leader (not always the same individual); the person with the better ideas, and more friends. Their friends feel that this individual, with their informal power, should challenge the Leader, however due to limited self belief, these people are not ready for the challenge.

There is the Bully; male or female, who rally their troops each week with a new target to pull to pieces. These people leave little paths of destruction. They know the ropes, having been in the environment for longer than most and they are pretty happy about staying in this position. And yet when their authority of power is questioned, they crumble pretty quickly.

I saw a Joker in the playground; I know these exist in most workplace as I feel that a portion of this individual is me. They are the comedian, the fool, the arse. In the playground they make up songs, jokes, games. In the workplace, they leave notes to call My Lyon on other peoples’ desks, and when the individual calls back, they find it is London Zoo. Perhaps lacking in size, or positional power, they make up with wit and are therefore continuously running into the Bully.

What about the Subservient?; They are eager to please everyone, usually to the detriment of themselves. Their beautifully packed lunch, or in the office their home-made cake and due diligence report are everyone’s property.

The Groupie; these are the support networks around the Leader, the Perceived Leader and the Bully. These are the hyenas of the playground or the office, with little grey matter amongst the lot of them. What they do have is killer instinct, a trait left over from the dinosaur or raptor era, a hunter mentality.

The Organiser; invaluable in any environment, these individuals are the doers rather than talkers.

The Stylist; they are the fashion police. First to the playground with proudly worn knee-high socks or the new hairstyle, or even one of their older brother’s cigarettes, the ability to pick up a trend first has stayed with them. These days they are involved with sponsoring World Vision or green flares.

And finally, the Moaner; intelligent but fearful of change, they have been there forever and resentful about the people, not the situation.

It would seem that apart from growing in size, leopards do not change their spots and the concept of management is the ability to handle a three year olds’ temper tantrum. I would love to get your feedback on which of these you have at your work - I am sure there are more to add!

Stop global warming - hug an economist

2006-03-16T23:14:00.000Z

My brother is a free market economist - a real one, who works with organisations like the UN, the WTO and the giant shape-shifting lizards that control the world. We get together whenever we can, and we usually argue. Our latest argument was held in Paris, because Mum was visiting and Paris is halfway between my home and his two.

Being a free market economist, I thought he would have a more enlightened approach to global warming. But he does not, as I will explain.

The basic facts are that, despite popular opinion, the scientists are divided about whether global warming is natural, or is caused by the unnatural intervention of human waste, polution and other sorts of intervention generally caused by industrialisation (and globalisation of you are one of those globalised anti-globalisation protesters, known fondly to most of us as Marxists).

My brother argues that it is a natural phenomenon, there is nothing we can do, so we should just juice up the Maybach - unless you can find something bigger - and drive around watching DVDs and sipping Martinis until the cows come home, or the milk is delivered, depending on your politics. And this is where his argument comes unstuck, because the cause of global warming is largely irrelevant.

We have been presented with two scenarios:

It is our fault and unless we do something we are all going to die in an ice age triggered by global warming
It is nature's fault, there is nothing we can do, we are all going to die in an ice age triggered by global warming

We also have two options:

Do something
Do nothing

With two possible outcomes:

If we do nothing, the world will get hotter, the polar ice caps will melt, causing the Gulf Stream to reverse, there will be another ice age, and we will all die
If we do something, the world will get hotter, the polar ice caps will melt, causing the Gulf Stream to reverse, there will be another ice age - or not! - it may not happen - our actions might make a difference and we will all die of old age instead of ice age

Also, doing something will increase economic activity through the researching and developing new techologies like bio-fuels and efficiency innovations like BMW's Turbosteamer, and reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, especially oil. That, in turn, will reduce the power of OPEC over the world's economies, easing the influence that oil prices have over monetary policy (oil prices and interest rates have similar impacts).

And most importantly, if we are all going to die anyway, be it by ice age, or old age, we may as well have fun on the way. Let's try these new ideas: let's make our cars go faster, and handle better, powered by a bowl of porrige and a pair of stockings. Let's make our paints less toxic, our buildings warmer, or better ventilated, or lit by solar tubes. Let's make our planes fly in space to save fuel, or go the slow way round in zepelins. Let's build massive, computer designed, hyper efficient sailing ships to move cargo about. Let's have electric cars, or ride bikes to work - it's more fun than a bus. Let's take the time to walk home, instead of rushing to get to the gym before dinner. Let's take control of our lives, of our world and the way we live. Let's say,

If we're going down, we'll go down kicking!

Oh, you could also help settle our argument by taking part in this very worthy research project.

An ode to Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou - aka George Michael.

2006-03-01T22:37:00.000Z

He is only 42 years old and in the middle of another balls-up. So, is George stepping up on to his soapbox in his own speaker’s corner with a message to read between the lines?

Spinning supposedly out of control, in a manner similar to that of Brian Harvey of East17 fame or Boy George in his New York apartment, this week the George Michael was found slumped over his car’s wheel. Rather than a public lavatory in Los Angeles, Hyde Park Corner was the scene for his latest public appearance. On the surface it seems that over the past several years, George is more and more amounting to little.

Man, I am a fan. Well, for the second half of his career anyway. Wham wasn’t for me – I wasn’t sure of those fluro t-shirts and magnificently groomed hair-pieces. But I am sure that his solo career was absolutely pure and simple ambrosia. Don’t you line him up to be stoned… I am confident that at least one of his 85 million records belonged to you at one stage.

Is his situation to lead once again to questioning from his public? My feeling on him being found comatose in his car at 2am is perhaps a sign of an individual who has little left. The Sun has claimed that sex toys were found in the boot of his car, which was parked at an amazingly dangerous angle to the curb and that strong alcohol could provide the dutch-pride, yet what are we to read into this?

The Times comments on the fact that perhaps his personal tragedies; the loss of his boyfriend Anselmo Feleppa to Aids and the death of his mother ten years ago to cancer, have taken his ambition away. Yet, is it sufficient reason to stick one’s head in the proverbial oven?

“It was my own stupid fault”, he said in a statement last night. Feeling a trifle embarrassed after spending a night in a police cell, photos showed George looking tired.

Back in 2001, ‘George from North London’ called in live to ITV1 to wish ‘all the best’ to the departing presenters Richard and Judy from This Morning. Might this week’s episode in Hyde Park have relevance as another attempt by George to comment indirectly to his public on his plight? “The only thing I care about is that people know that I was properly tested by a police doctor on Saturday night, who stated … that I was not impaired in any way and should be allowed to drive home”.

Why should George need to lie to his public? Is this a sign of prolonged indifference, put down… perhaps to the heart of his matter? Nothing to see here – move on people.

Let’s go outside
In the moonshine
Take me to the places that I love best

There’s nothing here but flesh and bone
there’s nothing more, nothing more
let’s go outside

When the moon is high
and the grass is jumpin’
come on, just keep on funkin’

Lazy

2006-02-23T13:41:00.000Z

Damien is unwell. He will return to our screens next week.

Don’t shoot José, Mr Cheney, he just wants a chat

2006-02-18T22:12:00.000Z

Have you ever seen quail? It’s a very small bird – about the size of a grapefruit – and very different from a Harry Wittington, which is a large human with legal training. Harry was shot by Dick Chaney while quail hunting recently, and nearly killed from the resulting heart attack. The visual difference between a quail and a Wittington is about the same as the difference between a grapefruit and a large refrigerator.

You would think that, even outdoors, it would be easy to pick the difference between a grapefruit and a refrigerator. It’s something that most people do indoors quite readily. It is rare for people to mistakenly put the milk back in the grapefruit, and despite eating-out a lot, I have never been served refrigerator in any form: not in a salad, not in a dressing, not cut in half with brown sugar sprinkled on top. Not once.

Now of course I don’t want to trivialise hunting by comparing it to breakfast. Hunting is serious business. The most serious part of the business occurs when the gun is shouldered and prey is in the sights. At that point, if you cannot tell the difference between grapefruit and a refrigerator, you have a big problem. A big problem.

Now whatever your opinion of Dick Chaney, he knows enough about problems to avoid the grapefruit-refrigerator one. He can tell the difference between a quail, which is a small bird, and a Harry Wittington, which is a large human with legal training. This prompts two questions:

1. If this is how Dick Chaney treats his friends, how does he treat his enemies?

2. Are we talking about the right kind of quail?

The second question is more important than it might first seem. You see, although a quail is a small bird, and thus easy to distinguish from a Harry Wittington, a Quayle is a large human with legal training. When viewed from a distance, over the sights of a shotgun, and through a bush, er shrub, Dan Quayle and Harry Wittington are largely indistinguishable without the aid of a spelling bee. Depending on Dick Chaney’s opinion of the Quayle, this may answer the first question.

Knowing Dick Chaney’s opinion of Dan Quayle is probably of paramount importance to Mr José Bové, a French farmer turned away from the US last week. He was detained at JFK airport, en-route to a speaking engagement at a conference organised by Cornell University’s Labour Institute (Reuters, in The Guardian, 10 Feb 2006, p7). Mr Bové appears to have been a threat to the USA since one of his anti-GM food protests resulted in him wrecking a McDonalds Restaurant – show me a seven-year-old that has not tried that one – earning him a six week prison sentence. And as if that was not enough, he wantonly destroyed a field of GM corn in France, and served four months! (Foolishly, he did not follow Michelle Shocked’s lead and write a song about it – though she burned a barn too, which may improve the audience appeal.)

So Mr Bové was refused entry to the USAbecause he doesn’t like GM food. That means Gwynneth Paltrow is not returning, because we saw her down at Fresh & Wild the other day, which will surely get her banned. (We were there too, but we didn't inhale.) Or would she be allowed into LA, but banned from the East Coast?

Honestly, what possible threat could Mr Bové be to the American way of life? (How could I be so stupid? I realised as I typed the question that he might encourage people to eat less refined food and reduce their sugar intake leading to the destruction of the doughnut industry, the sugary drink industry, the Twinkie industry, the diabetes treatment industry, the heart disease industry, the sitting on the couch chugging down beers and burgers industry – it could stop the world turning.) It also threatens Monsanto – the world’s main proponent of GM cropping.

What sort of power does Monsanto have? A lot. The Australian -US free trade negotiations faltered when Australia wanted to label GM foods so that consumers could chose for themselves. Anti-competitive, said the US, despite most of its agriculture being GM free – only Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Soy Beans were seriously threatened.

Roundup, of course, is an outstanding herbicide – unless you want to kill Roundup Ready Soy Beans. It would have removed those pesky bushes, er shrubs, that caused the Quayle-Wittington mishap. Maybe Monsanto should ship a drum of Roundup with its next round of political donations. Oh yes, Monsanto and Dick are good friends, which makes me glad, because with friends like Dick, Monsanto will be taking a bullet any day now, and bio-diversity can slowly return to normal. Which brings me to the final question:

3. What is normal?

Is Britain showing signs of a leisure lifestyle?

2006-02-13T21:35:00.000Z

Over the past five years, Britain has been coping with the highest level of obesity in its history. Perhaps a combination of following American consumption trends and a pen chance for becoming thoroughly involved with one’s life-work, inclining (declining??) towards too much tv (Corrie/ East Enders, and celebrities in jungles, on islands and in endemol) and a keen habit for elevenses (Walkers’ crisps, Mr Kipling’s cakes and a bit of Tunnock’s Mallow).

It is February 2006. The days are becoming longer, the television has finished with Pete Burns and the average British armchair viewer is currently besieged by sport, sport and more sport. We’ve seen the results of this year’s Superbowl, the football season is coming to a heightened climax, the Winter Olympics have started and the 6 Nations rugby is upon us. And we’re in the process of developing our new year’s resolutions (which I am willing to bet would have a high chance of critiquing one’s fitness levels for the year ahead).

However, I am also willing to bet that this year the average British armchair viewer will have more determination in getting up-and-out to pick up a little heard of concept called lifestyle. In essence, a lifestyle is all about you organising your life, rather than it manipulating you. And I am willing to raise this bet so that one’s lifestyle focus moving forward will include the focus of leisure.

UK gym members have grown from 5.3 million in 2002 to 6.1 million in 2004 – a 15% growth. 42 public leisure centres opened in 2001. This number rose 300% to the 124 centres that opened in 2004.

It is only 2 ½ years until the Beijing Olympics, and 6 ½ years until the London Olympics. The London Olympic committee is reviewing the possibility of achieving a similar Gold-medal target to that which the Australians achieved with the Sydney Olympics – which means that sport infrastructure over the next few years will grow exponentially in the UK. Powerleague, Goals and JJB now have close to 50 separate venues for grass-roots football.

In the past 6 months alone, Andy Murray has set up Raw-Tennis, David Beckham has set up football academies and Manchester (remember the Commonwealth games) continues its push towards eternal fitness orientation by hosting this years badminton championships. American Express has joined a local government initiative in upgrading run-down tennis courts around the UK. Today, the Daily Telegraph looks at a growing trend to use sports psychologists in the corporate sector to help staff perform better at work. And olympic rowers are taking on the high seas and rowing in the nude to the Caribbean for 40 days and 40 nights.

Our culture is changing. Thornton chocolates, Big Macs and clotted cream with scones seem to be becoming a thing of the past. Personally, I feel it is about time.

False idols, graven images, cartoons and Snickers pie

2006-02-08T09:00:00.000Z

There has been much talk of fame lately. Annie Lennox started it. She said, in a pre-Christmas interview in the Sunday Times that we don’t have famous people any more, only infamous people – and thus we value misdeeds over good deeds. Big Brother took it all mainstream and now the hubbub is chattering about chavs and wondering when people will stop being famous for getting their baps out and start being famous again for doing good things, like discovering Penicillin , and inventing TV so that people can get famous by getting their baps out on it.

But has fame ever been louder than infamy? Sure, the Logies are world famous in Australia as the local TV awards, but outside that hallowed land, how many people rate John Logie Baird, Karl Ferdinand Braun and Guglielmo Marconi over Pamela Anderson, Jodie Marsh, Dolly Parton, Lara Croft, Jessica Rabbit, Janet Jackson and other famous wearers of breasts.

It is easy to stay infamous and hard to stay famous. In the short term, infamous people become the but of jokes, and urban myths and remain the currency of conversation for generations – it’s easy to joke about Pete Burns and his gorilla coat, but hard to joke about Christiaan Barnard, or the Dalai Lama – famous people just get respected into irrelevance. In the long term, the misdeeds of the infamous - the genocide of Hitler, the violence of Genghis Khan and the blowjobs of Cleopatra – carry them into legend.

Of course the Christian Right is about to say, “Jesus is famous for being good!”, but is he? Moses, Jesus, Mohamed so famous that they are almost as well known as Ronald McDonald (Who I would discuss, except that he is too powerful). But are they famous for being good, or were they infamous first?

They were rebels: Moses led the Jewish slave rebellion against the Egyptian Pharaoh, followed immediately by the Great Running Away (or Exodus, to use the professional term); Jesus drove the merchants from the temple (and inadvertently started the Zionist domination of commerce conspiracy theory) and put the Pharisees offside by being more holy; and Mohamed rebelled against the corruption of God’s word by Jews and Christians by presenting a revised edition – a very nice re-branding effort there. All three were infamous before they were famous.

One of Mohamed’s key sticking points was the worship of graven images. He accused Christians of being more interested in worshiping statues of a crucified Israeli and his mother than the God they represented. That is why Muslim zealots are so touchy about representing images of any of God’s creations – especially people – and the stated reason for Arab countries' impressive performance in geometrically based decorative arts. (Although I do have a private theory about an advanced knowledge of geometry and a need to show off, which I may expand in the future.)

Given this background, you can see why Muslim scholars, over the years, were particularly averse to having images of The Prophet around. They would hate to be accused of worshiping Mohamed, when they should be worshiping Allah. And so it became accepted that you didn’t depict The Prophet, and in a way, that became a kind of worship in itself.

So all those riots about the cartoons that depict The Prophet – the murder, the screaming, shouting, hared and bile – comes from the fact that a bunch of people who have not seen the cartoons are upset that good Muslims everywhere may be corrupted into worshiping a pencil drawing of a bearded man. In my limited experience of these things, satirising something rarely leads to us believing init, but you can judge for yourselves, thanks to Tim Blair. As for the murder and mayhem, it is being whipped up by a bunch of irresponsible imams who gave up on Allah long ago, ignoring the message and worshiping the book - just worshiping another graven image of God’s creation.

Of course religious zealots are not the only dangerous ones. Now our tastebuds are threatened by food fascists attacking Anthony Worral Thompsons’s Snickers Pie. It is a monumentally unhealthy, but it’s just a dessert. It’s not meant to be the cornerstone of your diet, just some party food that you might eat once or twice, then never touch again. That might be enough for normal people, but like all zealots, the food fascists have a weak resolve. They know that they will be the first to crack (if they haven't already) unless any temptation is legislated out of existence. Of course it makes the zealots easy to spot: they will be the ones walking out of the supermarket with organic mascarpone and a roll of puff pastry hiding the five snickers bars at the bottom of their shopping bag.

Why is Western government keen for our society to be continually focussed on spending?

2006-02-06T21:47:00.000Z

I belong to that group broadly brushed as middle-class-Generation-X (born 1970), a child of an early Baby Boomer couple (born 1941 and 1943). Ever since I could remember, I saw my parents work hard to save, save, save as interest rates were high, high, high. Growing up, we scrimped and saved. My brother and I had paper routes from the age of 8 and we learnt the value of working hard to achieve one's goals. We went to university and it was there I majored in Economics and Marketing - discovering a love for macro economics.

In this week's news, Mr Brown is commented as being keen to close the productivity gap, that is, bringing the UK productivity in line with the US. Apparently us UK workers (I visaged the word 'drones') are being destined for digital lifestyles; software developers for mobile communications and digital tv technology within various sectors.

This strikes me as being odd for few reasons.

Firstly, why is the US's productivity being established as a benchmark for the UK to compete with? Would not the China's productivity be a more realistic target if we were to raise the bar here? The US is apparently growing at the slowest pace in three years. In addition, the US have a new Federal Reserve Chairman for the first time since 1987 which I feel may bring in some higher interest rates again - does this make the US an easier target for Mr Brown? China's GDP, on the other hand, has grown from 8% in 1973 to 19% in 2004 (on a par with both US and Europe). If we are compete effectively with our GDP, should China not be the ideal target?

Secondly, if GDP is THE tool for an objective comparison between countries the world over, shouldn't there be a more efficient government system than changing the ways we manage our infrastructure every time a new party comes to power? Understandably a country's population votes for a change of party every several years, however constantly changing party policies could be argued as being detrimental to the GDP.

Thirdly, I caught a show on BBC2 on Thursday 8pm called "How to pay off your mortgage in 2 years". It occured to me that those clever old souls over at the BBC were on to something. For the last decade we have been subject to the concept of 'credit is good' - this month saw the release of a debit-card for kids, and we have seen every facet of the plethora of tv shows and consumer magazines on constantly better homes and gardens. Suddenly we are back to the ways of the 70s and 80s where saving seems to be the way forward. In 2004 the US (the country of true consumerism - emulated in all good west societies), had mortgage debt levels over $8billion, consumer debt has quadrupled since 1987 and credit card debt levels are on average over $8,000 per family. We have seen the tell-tale signs of tighter money over the past couple of years - it is not often that retailers put up signs that say "70% off SALE". Keeping interest rates low has encouraged consumer spending. Are we in for a return to double-digit interest rates again?

It just stuck me how an interesting phenonema this was for the world over.