13 Facts for 13 Miles

I’m training for the Cardiff Half Marathon for Cancer Research UK — see www.justgiving.com/hectorshalf and please donate! I thought I’d break up the pain of training by coming up with 13 fun facts about my limited experience of running any sort of distance so far…

1. Finding 13 flat miles is fine in Cardiff. It is goddamn impossible in Cornwall unless you count a mile on an 18% gradient as approaching flat.
2. Finding 13 (safe) miles of tarmacked road in Cardiff again does not prove the most difficult challenge. In the environs of Hayle, you should define “tarmacked” as including the following: lane, footpath, grass field, sand, dune and mud.
3. Wellingtons are my preferred item of footwear as a result of 2).
4. A sharp stick can be useful when jogging to either (a) fend off curious livestock (b) to lean on during breaks and (c) as a crude aid to the more mountainous stretches.
5. All dogs are allergic to the dayglo orange of my high-viz running vest (see 2) again re. lack of pavements in this county)
6. Cornwall is the sort of place where you should check the tide before going for a run.
7. My knees hurt when I run downhill — this is perhaps not the best sign.
8. Stopping drinking to train means I wake up properly in the morning. This is something of a novelty and something I might try and stick to.
9. 13 miles is the same as 20.92 km, 68620 metres, 823 680 inches,  and 20 921 472 millimeters.
10. The Zutons is the best band I’ve found (so far) to run to.
11. My ears glow a ridiculous red after even moderate exercise — expect traffic light sized glow on October 18th!
12. My next run is to Camborne, if I don’t come back then this blog stands as a memorial.
13. Embarassingly, I still drove the 1/2 mile to Co-Op today.

Work: The Good, The Bad And the Ugly

I love my job…No, don’t insert “sarcasm” inverted commas there, I really do. I also wish to keep it and avoid the blog-themed fiasco of last time I let “work” and “blog” meet (think rubidium in a thunderstorm and you’ll be about right), so I thought I’d take a comic look at some of the things that make Generic Shop such a great place to work. Oh, and because I’m feeling anal, I’m going to do it in a list style:

Meeting people.
All the time. Incessantly. That’ll be £2.50… is it raining? I hadn’t noticed, and no, the twelve people before you didn’t say the same thing… They thought it was effing sunny!

Meeting interesting people.
Technically a subcategory of the above, there are several subcategories here: the odd, the weird, the mad and the casually racist. For example, an elderly gentleman smelling of urine opined to me, whilst counting out two pence pieces exceptionally slowly to the sum of about £4.56 that this recession was pretty damn bad, wasn’t it? I returned my agreement.

He continued that there weren’t any jobs. I confirmed that this was an unfortunate side-effect of the current economic slump (he was at roughly the £2 mark now and had uncovered a £2 coin so I hoped this might be the end of our exchange). However, resorting to his limitless collection of (alarmingly sticky) 5ps, he told me that his son had been laid off from the factory (I didn’t enquire which). I offered the due condolences (and considered offering said son my job). He then continued, without a blink or a pause for breath, that there were Polish and black people with jobs and it made him sick…

I paused. Having assisted him with the counting I’d secured the £2 coin and so now only had to make up the fiddly pence. I gave him the special “I work here so can’t disagree openly with you you racist scum” look of doubt and said noncommitantly that it was certainly true that some people had jobs when others didn’t. With his £4.56 in my hands I thought this exchange was over and I could go back to being sardonic about the weather… But no, where’s the sodding queue when you need one?

He continued in a mildly racist tone — opining that his Polish neighbours had a job and they’d only been here for five years, and reiterated that both his son (and brother it now seemed) were without work. At points like this, I wish the Panic alarm under the till had a second  ”rescue from nutjob customer” alarm. Finally, my boss emerged with some task or other for me and I disengaged from racist-wee man, only for him to turn around and interupt my boss and begin the whole sorry story again. I slunk gratefully away and hid in the back…

Actually, discussing the weather is quite pleasant.

Occasional Devastatingly Pretty Men
Oh, and the 97.4% of unattractive types that make up the rest of the population. Most unfair.

Cryptic instructions on pieces of paper:
Personal favourite from a friend in a similar business being a cryptic note from the owner when out for the afternoon saying “don’t forget to stack the shelves.” Also entertaining is the archaeological treasure trove of the stockroom where pens and lists of stock needed at some previous juncture can accumulate.

Tills:
You think an electro-mechanical system for the taking and giving of money is unentertaining? Think again. Try a till which has an incomplete barcode database (and a list of non-scanning items as long as your arm stabled to it) and manufacturers of certain (confectionary) products who see fit to print barcodes either incomplete/missing completely or over the top of other text.

Being able to say “next please” and everyone around you move:
Usually.

All views included in the above are entirely personal and do not in any respect reflect the opinions I hold whilst at work (and being paid!) or those of my Employer or any other affiliated or interested party. Direct any comments/additions/complaints to the comments section below.

12 Interesting (ish) Facts From 24 Hours (ish)

Like a fajita in a can, this post pretty much does what it says on the tin. Basically its the lazy mans’ blog post where I list 12 interesting (and sometimes related) things that have occurred to me lately and hope the Universe gives a shit…

Feel free to re-post with your own if you’ve had a particularly exciting/dull day!

1. Caravans should be banned: I missed 2 service stations during my drive home as a result of the solid line of caravans, coaches and other boxes on wheels blocking the left-hand lane. Bah humbug. Feel like Jeremy Clarkson, and as a dirty hippie liberal I don’t often say that.
2. New record for the 212 miles (yep, I counted them) door-to-door from 7 Bev Cres, HYL to 111 Wy Rd, CDF: 3.5 hours. Got cut up by: 1 x caravan, 1 x peugeot, 1 x smart car and 1 x caravan towing a smart-car (God those people must’ve been cool. “Look dear, we’ve got a car that looks like a shoe. I know what’ll go well with it — a box! Shoe-box-shoe, geddit?!”
3. Wages confirmed for this season (probably) £6.20 SCORE!
4. Just been for my first jog back home and surprised to find Cardiff is more aesthetically pleasing to jog around than Cornwall (well, the shit bit I live in anyway)
5. Cornwall is probably the dullest place in the Universe. And yes, I’ve been to Swindon.
6. Tidied and rearranged my room(s)! I’m not really posh, I just live in the attic. Of a bungalow. Confused, you should be?
7. Well, that was the plan. Actually spent an evening reading old copies of the Beano/Dandy/Sparky when clearing out a cupboard and found my old box of about seven years of said comics. Woop-de-la-woop!
8. Beat chess computer (at chess!!!)
9. First episode of ISIHAC on BBC Radio 4 tonight and I am thus spiritually fulfilled. If you missed it, check it out on iPlayer!
10. Writing this to avoid writing any of the other, serious writing things I’m meant to be tackling at the moment.
11. Trying to decide whether I should either upgrade my Mac or car or both and how the hell I could afford either.
12. Er… I had salad for tea… OK, perhaps 12 is harder than it sounds…

Tory FAIL

I have hesitated a moment before this final “Big 3″ parties fail for two reasons. Firstly because it would be all too easy to trot out the usual series of problems with the Conservatives, something which would be unfair given the emphasis on contemporanaeity in the previous two posts. Secondly, there is the temptation to wait till after the EU parliamentary election results have been announced, or to foreshadow them in some way. However, as anyone with the time and patience can scroll through back issues of this blog or engage me in conversation to find out my views of the Tories over the langue duree, I am going to focus here primarily on their ostensible re-invention.

So, where do Cameron’s cuddly Conservatives stand on what is (miracles aside) the cusp of entering government? The Tories have never been the greenest party, this has not changed. The only green thing about them is their new logo which implies the environmental credentials absent from a party in the pocket of big business.

Their dedication to the free market (a position which they share with both other main parties) seems to remain undented despite the “unprecedented” economic circumstances. Indeed, Cameron’s criticism of the government, when not vapid rhetoric, seems to rest on the assumption that crass deregulation is a human right of bankers. And Cameron knows all about bankers. Whilst its unfair to paint a whole party with one brush, the attitude that us poor folks are jealous of the rich chaps with their big houses (that look a bit like Balmoral donchaknow) does persist in some parts of the party.

This is similarly latent in the leadership’s at best luke-warm attitude to social justice and human rights issues in general. In this respect the Tories have not out-grown or out-moded the “nasty party” label. Indeed, Cameron has suggested that, in the European Parliament at least, the Tories are closer “ideologically” to the loose conflagration of extreme right wing parties which cluster round a loose collection of ideologies ranging from skeptical Europhobia, homophobia, sexism, a variety of forms of racial supremacy to a fringe Latvian party which holds an annual celebration of Latvian collaboration with the Waffen-SS. Is this really the modern, forward looking, open image of Britain that we really wish to present to the world?

The Tories Europhobia places them at the rough centre of a more generalised British anxiety about the European Union (some of it misplaced, some of it justified). However, this loose far-right alliance is something very different. It suggests that the modern day new hug-a-hoodie Conservative is fundamentally uncertain as to whether bigotry in itself is unjustified.

Couple this with economic policies which implicitly sanction cutbacks of public services (something that “Call me Dave” Cameron has touted several times now) and Britain does not face a rosy future. After all, the implicit caveat of “public services” is not just the bowler-hatted (Brussels-bound) bureaucrat, its also teachers, nurses, firemen, and thats before we consider the various things that public money goes some way toward – cf. roads, railways, protection of the environment, electricity generation etc. Low taxes may appear like a good plan — we’d all like to think Nozick was right  a little bit — but in the end they will be taxing on the services which the worst off in society rely upon (Hurrah for Rawls!)

In short, Cameron has performed an image revolution and that is all.

Lib Dem FAIL

The Lib Dems have little reason to be chirpy. Not only do they continue to fail to deliver as the self-styled party of local government, finally it seems that the political mood is moving against them. Having lost their majorities in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset (the former being a new Unitary Authority, more on this later), the sickening yellow colour of the south-west looks like it might be, at long last, changing.

Although the Lib Dems are still the second largest party in Cornwall’s new Unitary Authority (UA), this is quite a fall given that they held sway over a large number of the district councils the UA has replaced and were the lone voice supporting the UA in the referendum several years ago. Tellingly, the referendum — which as is traditional in such matters in this country was non-binding — so the approximately 87% of Cornish people who voted against the Unitary Authority views’ counted for nothing.

So that’s what the Lib Dems mean when they claim to be the party of “local government” (if they do that at a local level, heaven forbid what they would be like if they got into government!) The Lib Dems have failed the people of Cornwall and have rightly lost control of the council. Their policy promises are vacuous, as their referendum on the UA showed.

If listening to the people is what the Lib Dems claim to be all about, they have singularly failed. There has been inaction on redevelopment of many towns (Hayle, my home town included) over the last 30 years, housing development has been entirely unsustainable and unsuited (with the interests of property developers trumping local interest — see the Lib Dems implausible claims to “sustainability” and look at the ludicrous new developments in many towns), major local developments are mired in council dawdling (cf. the various new councils, roads and shops which have been proposed over the years). This is not forgetting their singular failure to solve the perennial rural problems of seasonal unemployment (especially amongst the young), out-dated public transport (try getting anywhere by bus after about 9pm) and an infrastructure developed in a style which is often “surreal” (one Lib Dem candidate in Hayle made it his big manifesto promise to solve a huge traffic hump on a bend which his own party implemented on the old District council).

The Lib Dems like to blame all this on central government, happy in the knowledge that they will never be the party of central government. Yet if Lib Dems can do nothing in local government because of central government, it raises two questions: why do local authorities (or whatever type) exist? More importantly, is there any reason to vote the Lib Dems in?  The people of the south west have learnt the answer to this latter question slowly and painfully over the last ten or so years.

Labour FAIL

I feel like a Tory sometimes. There, I’ve said it. Before anyone requisitions a shredder to destroy my Labour Party membership card, give me ooh 500 or so words to explain why. The reason is simple. The media has suggested it (but owing to the fact that the telly journalists presume everyone watching has a minutely small attention span), they presume that events of 13 years ago can’t really compare to the Up To The Minute Drama of the unendingly tedious 24 hr news cycle. Basically, to return to the subject:

     We’re back in the chuffing 1990s.

Only the tables have thoroughly turned. We have traditional Labour voters disillusioned by the high sleaze and infighting of parliamentarians. We have a new, reinvigorated opposition which has successfully transformed its “nasty shit party” image into a potential future government, led by a potential future Prime Minister. Talking of PMs we have PM who makes John Major look both decisive and charismatic. We have a Cabinet of non-entities and the dregs of the last ten years of politics, including some that we had all mercifully hoped were long dead and gone (Mandelson). Furthermore, a reshuffle of the Cabinet throws up the same selection of uninteresting grey men who singularly fail to grab the public imagination and who are so riven by in-fighting that coherent government begins to look impossible. Add to that one of the worst economic crises in a decade!

Add to that the worst local election results for a party-in-government since Major’s final years and you can’t help my cynicism and vague sense of deja vu.

I  confidently predict that Labour will lose the next election. They will lose it not because the British people have gone off ideas of fairness, equality and social justice. They will lose it in part because in part, after three terms in government for any party, entropy and policy become co-terminous. They will lose it because the Tories have successfully seized the public imagination. They will lose it because the Tories have successfully appropriated the same agenda of fairness, equality, social justice and most importantly, good governance.

They have, in short, appropriated the image of a party of government. Something which isn’t at all unfamiliar to any Labour supporters around in 1997.

Back in 1995/6, this was a significant  concern in the dying days of Major’s Tory government. Similarly, no cohesive challenge on his leadership emerged during that torpid end-of-an-era year when an election could be called. The leadership of both parties seems to be in agreement that being let down slowly and gracefully is better than the inevitable absolute implosion (which, if the parallel proves true) will occur to both losing parties.

Just how bad Cameron’s Tories will be for the British people — and in some ways this isn’t the sort of question that anyone who is an active supporter of another political party can ever objectively answer — remains to be seen, especially as categories like “the British people” are so slippery. In my view, if this government wants  a chance of returning to government within a decade, they need to do only one thing: go to the country and seek a new mandate. Whether we win or not is not really the issue — this is the fair and just thing to do.

Good Ideas?

I am obviously procrastinating, three essays aren’t going to write themselves but I thought I really should blog something to celebrate the approximate 1st birthday of this benighted little corner of the internet that I call home… (well, not my actual homepage, that’s cardiff.ac.uk because I haven’t been arsed to change it since year 1, and not “home” as in where I sleep since sleeping on a website can be bad for your back…) I feel like I’ve digressed.

Here’s 10 Good Ideas that have occurred to me during the last 365 ish days…

1. Drinking, then not drinking, then alternating between the two
    It’d be really good to be able to say that the teetotal pledge which this blog started with persisted for all of the 365 days, unfortunately 65 would be a more accurate count.
2. Doing an MA
   A very expensive way to stay involved with student radio (and I don’t even get to put Dr before my name legitimately!)
3. Getting a new printer on my DSA allowance
    Previous experience should have confirmed to me that it is compulsory for the printers that the DSA survive to be as disabled as the person using them. This meant I acquired a dyspraxic borderline autistic printer which couldn’t quite grasp the notion of “black”
4. A selection of games for various consoles:
   Alas I can post nothing more than the title since high level talks are still in progress, suffice to say the game will be called “The Third Reich for the Wii” and will leave development hell sometime this millenium (never has a phrase been quite so appropriate)
5. Fajitas in a can — Faj-in-a-can, need I say more?
6. Much procrastination, most of it pointless
7. Several essays.
8. Errm… cooked a bit.
9. … …
10. God listing 10 productive things is hard…

Well, that year was worth it, wasn’t it? 

Now to see what 2009-10 will bring…

How do I work? (Do I work?!)

Quickie

After the post-literary socio-deconstruction of my last two posts, this one shall be the equivalent of your starter for ten. Imagine I’m on Mastermind, it might make it funny

 

And with me in the studio tonight, we have Mr Hector Benjamin Roddan, Student. And your hobbies include Doctor Who, student radio, Doctor Who and the Labour Party. For your specialist subject, you have chosen stress and other immunochemical reactions…. Starting now.

Q1. What …

A: Aaargh!

Time for bed I think.

Homage

Combining truth and untruth is a carefully honed skill most often demonstrated in the construction of the TV news. What I have attempted here (in the preceding post) is a none too skillful attempt to combine several banal features — my standing on a rooftop, unusual weather six months ago and meteor sightings from a variety of places round the world — into a single narrative. If anything, I hope to demonstrate the ease with which an allegedly coherent narrative or story can be put together from disparate elements.

I deliberately avoided aping the “constant present” tense of broadcast journalism, despite the nature of my sources, since (a) it tires me and (b) I love H G Wells’ (who is paraphrased in some ways throughout the piece). In particular, I wanted to have a go at the Wellsian retrospective commentator which he employs to great effect in War of the Worlds, the Time Machine and Island of Dr Moreau among others.

The second, and perhaps more interesting aim of the piece was to demonstrate the power of a narrative (even a contrived and fictive one such as this). Of course, using the “constant present” and all the other acoutrement of modern journalism imbibes a much greater truth-value to a given piece. However, I hope that in this limited article I have shown the significant role of narrative in hinting at a particular causal explanation for given phenomenon. 

As a wise man once said, the right words, in the right order at the right moment in the right broadcast can collapse the economy, overthrow the government…

Moments

What do you call fiction and fact combined? Faction? Fict? Fation? Perhaps the precise term varies dependent on the particular amount of fact or fiction included. It could go like this…

 

It was the Austen footage from that warm Sunday in February that confirmed it. Even though the signs had been there for quite some time…

Something was happening — up there, in the skies above us. Some power or force was making itself known. Of course, we know now that the warning signs had been there for months. But tucked away in the back pages of BBC News Online, that fateful February, nobody knew. The Swedish footage had been dramatic, but that had barely made a ripple on the international press. Who could’ve linked the approach of the fireball with the unseasonable weather preceding it? Who could’ve known that the disrupted summer of 2008 was the work of far more than mere global warming?

That, on the cusp of the 21st century, some great power beyond the detection of human science was making itself known to us is beyond question. Yet as I stood on the roof in the balmy calm of that February evening, I was utterly oblivious to these portents or the brave new world they heralded…

Good News?

I agree with David Cameron. There, I’ve said it. Now to add the significant list of caveats… Actually, sod it. Anyone wanting to know my views on teflon toff boy merely has to glance through the archives of this blog.

But in all seriousness, times have changed. This has become a hackneyed cliche pretty much overnight as a result of the massive economic downturn/recession/depression/cock-up. A telling demonstration of this came today as old Etonian stereotype Cameron announced (like a character in Yes Minister*) bonuses for his chums in the city were, well, y’know, really not on. Extraordinarily, he did not rule out the nationalisation of the indebted behemoth. He went further in saying that low-level bonuses for ordinary employees of Leviathan bank Lloyds TSB (or LTSBHBOSRBS + Gloucester) were to be encouraged. 

This is true on a number of levels, the most obvious being that it is unfair to punish an employee for the flagrant crimes of his or her employer. Secondly, such bonuses will go a small way to kick-starting the all-important consumer spending which (in the manner of four hundred men trying to hold onto one single straw) the Government assures us is the only way out of the recession.

However, not only does Cameron’s observation demonstrate the political sea-change which the current deprecession it also makes a pertinent (if cheap) political point that the current “Labour” government continued the Thatcherite financial deregulation which got us into this mess. Admitting the mistake of this policy can only be a vote-winner. Banks owned by the public should be run in the public interest. 

The time for light touch regulation is over.

 

* Maybe a spin-off entitled “Yes Leader of the Opposition”
^ Why use one term when you can use them all?

Valentines

Two posts in one day? I’m practically on fire… no wait, I am actually burning up.

So its the annual capitalist smooch fest which from a cynical point of view is probably only designed to boost the revenue of Clintons’ Cards in the February lull between Christmas and Easter. This point was brought home to me by the rather excellent News Quiz on Radio 4 (yes, I”m that middle class) where it was observed that one bastion of the card industry is now retailing Christmas cards not just to your husband, boyfriend, wife and girlfriend but also for your cat.

I was dubious about the point of this endeavour until, some time later, I walked past an entirely fictional local restaurant and saw a man and a cat staring lovingly at each other over a single candle.

You can’t make it up can you… Or perhaps you can?

Focus — Return to the Blogsphere

I sit at my desk to start work. This does not happen so I go on to something else. Its the usual Gmail – Gmail – Facebook – Mail – Gmail – Gmail – Facebook cycle. Only on the fourth circuit does this behaviour seem a teensy bit eccentric and maybe a tad compulsive. I check my library books are all renewed instead (they are) — so I do a fifth lap.

Work has now, shall we say, slipped some distance from my mind, enough for me to make lunch, tidy my desk and have a nap. Within half an hour of waking up I find myself browsing with alleged interest through the Cardiff Students’ Union Annual Report.

This is officially a crisis. I can procrastinate in many novel and interesting ways. A non-exhaustive list could include the following: I can cook, I can write nonsense verse. I could do something alternatively productive like plan an essay or prepare for next weeks show (on 87.7 FM across Cardiff or xpressradio.co.uk for the rest of the globe — Fridays at 11), I could answer the growing mound of emails, I could go for a walk. I could fix my printer’s permanent USB related stutter. I could put my DVDs in chronological order. I could make my bed or do the laundry. I could listen to the radio. I could even watch telly. I could clean my room — and believe me, it needs it. I could straighten the rug in my room. I could straighten the rug in the hallway. I could even do both at the same time if I stretched a little. I could hoover the living room or sit in the garden. I could even stand outside in a t-shirt and get a cold, then I’d have something to really moan about.

But no, I am even procrastinating against procrastinating. For those (non-existent) avid readers who have noticed the dearth of bloggy goodness on these pages of late, welcome back. If you’re new, then thrice welcome. The ultimate tool of productive procrastination is back.

Internships or Internment?

This government has all too often been in the pocket of big business at the expense of supporting working people and the proposed internship programme strikes me as a further nail in the coffin of the social credentials of New Labour. 

The government has taken the obvious position in defence of many policies of “we can’t just do nothing,” but in this case it seems to be a case of “we can’t just be seen to be doing nothing, we must do something because otherwise we won’t be seen to be doing something, we’ll be seen to be doing nothing” (to paraphrase Yes Minister). Its also a wonderful example of Politicians’ Logic – “Something Must Be Done — This is Something, therefore We Must Do It.” Perhaps given the pisspoor state of Her Majesty’s Opposition when it comes to such a thing as policy, none of this is surprising.

The proposed Internship scheme will allegedly help graduates in the uncertain period after completing their degrees, as well as preparing the relevant skills base for the fabled (and long-distant) “up turn.” However, I fail to see how short term contracts at low wages picking up basic skills benefits anyone other than employers. Lammy (on Radio 4’s iPM) claimed that ’some skills were better then no skills – presumably the same logic applies to pay.

Current experience of graduates in a range of subjects – as some readers will be aware – does not differ greatly from the consequence of this proposal. I.E. Short term, low-paid unreliable work. Its called temping or seasonal work. And as far as I can see, as one of the most poorly regulated sectors, frequently in the press for the exploitation or poor treatment of worker of all skill levels, its the one sector which – in a period of unprecedented wider economic uncertainty – this Government should not be encouraging.

Of course, it serves to demonstrate just how important big business is to the government. The large employers’ benefits are manifold – low paid, high skilled workers on short-term contracts. No wonder CEOs are welcoming the scheme…

 

The thing that baffles me is why graduates are.*

 

* According to a BBC poll anyway.

Why are the British so Dumb?

There are many brilliant things about these islands, but all this British genius – how to put this politely – well, shall we say, it doesn’t travel very well… In a recent trip to Egypt, the following classics were overheard from fellow tourists…

In reference to a partially derelict tennement …

“This place, is so dusty. Just look at that building there. It could really do with a lick of paint – its so dusty!”

In reference to the advice not to drink the tap water…

“The tap water looks fine to me. I think they’re only telling us so as to make us PAY for bottled water!” (thanks to Charmain for that one)

At the pyramids (Giza, Cairo):

“I’m not getting off the bus! It said on the news the Israelis and Palestinians were bombing each other at Giza!”

No love, that’s Gaza.

In reference to a building site, Tunisia:

Wife: What are you doing?
Husband: (scribbling away in a notebook) I’m taking notes of that building site, and when I get home, I’m reporting them to building standards! (Thanks to Garry for that one!) 

After visiting an exceptionally well preserved Roman city:

“Well, I don’t know why they drove us all the way up there. You could see just as good pictures in books.”

On being on a cruise holiday up the Nile:

“I didn’t think we’d spend so long on the water.”

On not tipping (after being told by guide not to tip):

“That woman, she’s been to Egypt before. And she knows you’ve got to tip, so why come back to Egypt if she knows you’ve got to tip.”

Feel free to post below any further examples of good old British stupidity.