Are we surprised at the contempt in which politicians hold the voter? There was a comment the other day on the radio from a frustrated Brit who mewed: “If my vote really meant anything they would take it away.” The honest answer is, no need... it’s simply ignored.
Has the great European jaw-jaw resulted in a draw-draw? When the history of Brexit is eventually written, no matter on which side of the great divide you stand, the sheer lack of understanding by politicians as to what a clock is, will stand as a supreme lesson. I cannot think of a peace treaty let alone a deal negotiation which has taken two years... and that does not look like it’s long enough! At the time of writing this blog, it seems like the negotiation is going into extra time to prevent everyone throwing their toys out of the pram. Yet, so far this chit-chat (note: with our friends and allies) has cost the British taxpayer on expenses, travel and outside consultation fees around £600m. Nearly a billion dollars and it’s got nowhere. That is in itself such a monumental achievement I have to pinch myself whilst re-reading my own text. To paraphrase dear Winston, “Never in the field of human negotiation has so much time been wasted at so much cost by so few to the utter bewilderment of so many...” Like him or not I suspect the UK might have saved a fortune by asking perma-tanned occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to thrash out a deal for a fee of say £100m, with a £100m bonus if he could wrap it all up in the time it takes the English cricket team to play a test series. Sadly, La Donald had just got another job when this all started so we might have needed another slippery deal maker. Anyone know what happened to the other Donald, Don King?
Have these little blogs been sprouting up elsewhere? Recently I may have been suffering delusions of grandeur as a bunch of themes from my recent missives seem to have been turning up in the wider press in a number of musings of weekly columnists. Of course it could simply be that great minds think alike and fools seldom differ. However recent posts about the Oscars (Oscar night... just has me riveted to my seat, January 24th) and hidden car rental charges (Extra! Extra! Read All About it... Actually we’d rather you didn’t which is why we put the extra costs in the fine print, January 5th) have both popped up in British national newspapers. So if you are a bored columnist itching for a quick answer to your highly paid weekly article... sod off. Otherwise I shall be forced to ask the advise of my litigious Japanese lawyer Mr. So-Sue-Me. Of course these regurgitations of my latest ramblings could be pure coincidence in the same way as those columns which have included ideas might find their articles repeated here... quite uncanny!
Give a damn about the Oscars? The whole thing has got further up its arse than a proctologist’s middle finger. No one cares, because the last decade’s nominated movies are quasi arthouse that do not resonate with the audience. In an attempt to show making movies is really all abaht aaaart, dahling, the Academy has recently become all coy about nominating truly mass appeal movies. And who was responsible for this sudden fit of hubris, a desire to show a more cultured less crass side of the entertainment industry? A man imbued with a strong sense of the aspirations of the pinnacle of quality and not our baser instincts; Harvey Weinstein. Pay attention Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. You want to know why the Oscar shindig is as exciting as watching toast getting cold? Try looking at the movies you allow to get nominated....let alone win! The last ten years’ winners were , LaLa Land, Moonlight, Spotlight, Birdman, 12 Years a Slave, Argo, The Artist, The King’s Speech, The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire. I can barely remember what most of these are about? They may be worthy but are minnows compared with the 1970’s. The winners that decade were: Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather Part II, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs Kramer. You’ve probably seen them all, and I can pretty clearly remember the stories even though released 40-50 years ago. US viewer audience for 1970 Oscars 55.2 million. US viewer audience last year, 26.5 million The only thing that sank faster was The Titanic (one of the last broad appeal movies to win back in 1997/8). I am pretty certain neither Rocky, Patton nor The Sting if made now, would even be nominated. So dear fellows and voters of the Academy, try and remember you are in the ENTERTAINMENT Industry. Get back to your roots and out of your ego. Start nominating movies that mean something to the general public and they might watch the awards!
Does any advertiser not understand that POA/ Price on Application actually stands for Pisses Off Anyone? When idly leafing through a six-month-old copy of Country Life at the dentist, I am amazed at the practice of sticking POA against the price of some of the houses advertised for sale. Same for when I pour over my monthly car porn magazines and fantasise about which classic car I might buy when my ship comes in (and after I have suitably bribed my wife with whatever retail therapy most floats her boat). What is the logic behind Price On Application? It’s an immediate turn off. Is it because there is such heat in the market that from day of publication to day of printing that prices will inexorably rise? I thought in terms of property, that was illegal and called gazumping. You always agree a price with the vendor that’s as fixed as an airline stewardesses smile. We live in a digital age. Prices can be checked and compared in a nano-second. Is the advertiser insinuating: “So, pay attention here. Most of you great unwashed, don’t get your hopes up. You cannot afford it and I simply cannot be bothered to talk to anyone before I know he or she has the readies to cough up the ludicrous sum I don’t dare print.” This is appalling customer service as it forces me to pick up a phone or log on to reveal this nugget of information. My time is being wasted by this ludicrous printed version of the dance of the seven veils. Don’t be coy Mr. Advertiser. Show me what you got! On occasions when bored (usually when waiting at airports) I give in to the devil in me and ring the offending advertiser: “Good morning. I wonder if you would tell me the price you are asking for the ‘Gilt-Palace-Nightmare’ in Dubai or ‘Please-stop-and-arrest-me-gold-plated-yuk-wagon’ advertised in the current edition of Shiny Things I can’t Really Afford?” When given the number, my unerring response is: “That cheap! No wonder you did not want to advertise the price as it shows how little you know about market value.” Sit back and then listen to a ten-minute barrage of self-important claptrap. It passes the time before boarding.
Do we seek solace mixing with people who on joining a group or club revert to stereotype? “I never want to be a member of a club which would let me in,” may be a classic Groucho Marx line and a cliché but for good reason... It’s true. I have been very lucky to have been invited as a guest to several clubs and they break down into the following seven categories. Back to school There are a handful of Gentlemen’s Clubs in London holding a male only policy. They are all in Pall Mall and St. James and distinctly different to other Gentleman's clubs that can only operate by having scantily club members of the opposite sex. The London Gentleman’s club is really just public school (private school in the US) for boys who never grew up and miss nanny. The place runs on old fashioned rules. The Nanny organises the social desk and membership fees but that’s the only woman you will see. You better turn up in a tie, shoes polished, nails clipped and hair brushed. Yes, you can drink, but do not get rowdy. Most of the food is what I call nursery menu. A perfect lunch would be: Windsor soup, Steak and Kidney Pudding, Jam Roly-Poly, & Welsh Rarebit. Conversation through the meal with other members sharing your refectory style table equally as stodgy and bland. This is followed with a port and a snooze reading yesterday’s The Times. These throw-back establishments work on handed down privilege, who you know and how you behave. I am sorry to delude new members who have fought their way up in society through hard work and brains to join but… Old Biffo and Squiffy in the corner still look down on you as nouveau riche; the same way they dismissed Johnny Foreigner as a new boy at Rugby or that boy with the flash watch as parents “working in trade”. Back to Basics Health clubs. No frills. Over sophisticated gym equipment and eye wateringly expensive juices, drinks and rabbit food. Staff preachy and superior with bodies buffed to within an inch of their lives. Off peak these caverns of sweat are filled with the bored and rich. These poor souls have nothing else to do except cheat on their partner and sneak off for plastic surgery to show the results of all the dieting and training they pretend to follow. Peak time it’s just an overcrowded dating agency. Back to the Future The Lovie playroom. Media based haunts are filled with overloud voices recalling their last meeting with Brad and Angelina, how genuine the Spielberg’s are and what a shame about Amy’s drug abuse. Always in slightly seedy parts of town set up by failed media wannabes who see this as their entree into the glitterati. The propeller head equivalent of techy clubs are full of earnest members trying to convince you to invest in some crypto crapto currency or hint they might get you into an angel start up fund with guaranteed returns. “So, you’ve invested yourself,” is a sure-fire way of getting rid of them... and leaving you with absolutely no one to talk to. Pointless. Back to the Wall The exclusive nightclub. Exclusive because there are only so many people willing to spend £10k a year for membership to an overcrowded noisy hell-hole that charges prices that are an insult and a door policy that admits only good-looking people with an IQ quota the same as their shoe size. To make it worse should you be insecure enough to have to order a five litre bottle of vodka or a jeroboam of champagne for £1,000, the staff bring attention to your vulgarity by having sparklers light up the bottles as they bring them to you and alert everyone else in the place who is tonight’s soft touch. If you have to go to one for a night of drug fueled fun, you never want them to have your real name anyway. Always make sure someone else is the member. Back in the saddle The Horsey Club. Filled with overweight florid faced men and woman who bray when they laugh. If you ask for the bridal suite it’s a large room full of saddles, riding crops and Gucci buckles and the last place you’d want to spend your honeymoon. If you can separate the bullshit from real horse manure you might get a good tip on a horse. The Back Nine What can I say about a golf club except I don’t want to join one. Ever. It’s a chance for you to dress up like an extra from a Blaxploitation movie, though ethnic minority representation still remains low. Members may slice their tee shots to the left or right, but politics is invariably to the right. I speak with some experience here when in Myrtle Beach a club member made the mistake of asking me my opinion on abortion. “The obvious answer is it is not really a man’s decision; though if it were men who got pregnant, I suspect termination would be so easy it would come from an ATM machine. “No religion recognises a miscarriage or the trauma that causes. So, until they do they cannot go on about the rights of a foetus.” He pulled a gun on me and called security to eject the “limey liberal pinko”! Back Inside There is a great line in the TV series set in a woman’s prison Orange is the New Black with a character greeting a new inmate saying… “Welcome to the 1950s”. The speaker is not referring to the building or facilities. But to the clubs. The Narco Mexicans stick to one group, The Neo-Nazis another, right down to the Nepalese Horse thieves or Belgian child molesters. Everyone has a group. It’s basic. It’s for protection. So, on that note console yourself that Bernie Madoff is not the wife of some 6’6” ex Cripps member but closely closeted with some other fraudster both cheating at monopoly but a least paying protection money to keep their balls.
Has swearing become the big no-no on Facebook... as opposed to: how to build a nuclear bomb on a rainy afternoon, five different ways to slice and dice a noisy next door neighbour or learn to shish-kebab the infidel in ten easy steps? I understand that algorithms are being introduced as electronic bleepers to cull blogger’s profanity. Therefore this might be my last blog for a while as I dial down my language. So what happens to my friends on Fanny Hands Lane in Scunthorpe or Butt Hill road in Penistone who are ornithologists and want to discuss the mating habits of a blue tit, a skiddy-cock, nicker-pecker, boobyalla or assapanick? Will the marine biologist from Cockermouth in Cumbria and their aholehole and bummalo fishes be banished from showing pictures or the insect lovers and their cute six legged cockchafers have their accounts closed? No more stories from holiday-makers out to catch a dik-dik (a small antilope) or out for a sail with a fuksheet (foresail). Clearly one man’s passion is Facebook’s poison.
Do superstars worth hundreds of millions put so little value on their integrity? Super famous people stooping to leverage their relationship with the public to push products, always seems a bit grubby to me. Whilst I understand a minor soap star, weather girl or game show host might need a few extra bucks to pay for the perma-tan, do Oscar winning mega celebrities worth $100m + really need to sell his or her sole for a few extra bits of silver? The admirable George Clooney pulls in a few million by pushing coffee and watches. He says this money funds his charity work. Fair enough you might say. But for me if I wanted to give to charity, I’d do it with what I earn from my day job, not from extra goodies moonlighting as a pitchman for products I don’t really use on a regular basis.
Am I confused as to what happens at a sex addiction clinic? If you are addicted to heroin and you check into a clinic, they have to wean you off using methadone or similar. So if you check in with sex addiction what is the cure process? “OK Mr.Weinstein. We will start you off on three 20 year old nurses a day down to two after the first week. Next sex with the 60 year Old head matron followed by a blow up doll and then finally a cup of cocoa and Mills and Boon novels. If the addiction still persists we will force feed you viagra and lock you in a room for a massage with Shrek’s wife Fiona... and Shrek himself to make up a threesome afterwards”.
Does my courier company sometimes think I'm psychic? Not only must I know when their little websites tell me my goodies are on the van, when in reality they aren't, even if they are due to be delivered over a 13 hour time spread from 6am to 7pm, it's just a guide. I clearly would not sit pining for the delivery van all day and half the night when I really know the window during the day he will come, so can arrange my day accordingly. The company also knows I get a tingling in my head on those days the driver gets lost or fancies a quick one with that lovely lady at number 22 and joshes to say I was out anyway and could we do it all again tomorrow. My how we laugh at that one! Now, as my courier thinks I still believe in fairies, unicorns and that La Donald is not bald, I must also have faith in Customer Service.... a contradiction in terms right up there with New Classic, Civil Servant and Gourmet Pizza. Nevertheless after three days of hide and hide (nothing to seek) I give them a call. Punching in more numbers and data than on a battalion of lottery tickets I eventually get a voice that asks again for all the same information… only to be put on hold… listening to music so awful as to make me bless Kenny Gee. But hope springs eternal and just as I am about to hang up some one chirps: “I am putting you through now"… to listen to more music. The call centre based out in Ulan Bator might offer to call me back and if by some miracle they do I note the number is withheld. God forbid a customer might want to initiate contact! When I get to be king any customer service (yes you BA, Vodafone, Insurance claims departments, etc., etc.) that does not have listed names with emails or direct phone lines will be made: A)to cut the White House Lawn with nail scissors and then B)to pick up the cut blades with tweezers.
Do my brains turn to mush at auctions? No matter how hard I try, if my wife and I go to an auction, I manage to find something that I cannot possibly live without. The fact I never knew there were such things as Chinese fire alarm sticks, Japanese tangerine bowls, 1850 suppository machines, or opium smokers headrests is irrelevant. Once discovered, life is not worth living without them. Once I have made that leap, I am free-falling into the money pit that is bidding. Now not only is my life incomplete without Winston Churchill's dentures or silver sugar tongs in the shape of a wishbone, but no one else can have it! Even if I promise my wife a limit at auction, seeing someone else outbidding me is as provocative as a Bernie Saunders supporter at a Trump rally. So I end up triumphant paying too much for something that in the cold light of day is as useful as a chocolate teapot (let me know if any readers have one for sale).
Does Charity have to go hand in hand with the foghorn of unrelated publicity and self-promotion? John Lennon famously said at a Royal Variety Performance in aid of Charity: "You guys in the cheap seats can clap, while you lot in the dress circle just rattle your jewelry." I am shocked at not only how much tickets for gala dinners now cost but the tiny fraction of the nights' takings that eventually filter down to the charity. The amount of money that disappears into the promotion and overhead of mega Charity Balls is eye watering, sometimes over 90%. Is it really all worth it? Women are shoehorned into impossible dresses and men pretend they look like James Bond when they are just held into their tight fitting dinner jackets by Uni-Bond. The food is a delicate balance between pretentious and uneatable. The vast ballroom is either hot enough to poach an egg in my underpants or cold enough to hear the hair on my legs crackle. As the tables are the size of a skating rink, I cannot speak to anyone but my immediate 'neighbour without a megaphone. Worst is, I invariably end up seated next to some airhead who drones on about how at a previous event she sat next to a loved up A list movie duo or Wall Street killer couple. "It was simply so amusing, dahling, " she gushes. She explains that the (now divorcing) couple competed against each other in the auction for a week in some other zillionaire's hermetically sealed villa. "Between the two they drove the price through the roof......they took a bow of course."
In all that's logical, has the world's most powerful democracy and its two parties come up with such unappealing candidates? What is remarkable is that both Trump and Clinton can engender such visceral dislike! Ex pluribus unum is the motto of finding the President of the United States but Good Golly Miss Molly how can it have filtered down to Shrillery or The Hairstyle? I suspect the real reason is the battle is about the perceived status quo vs something new. I'm no fan of the current status quo but I'm not sure any alternative is the right one. But oh woe, the fault for the candidates must fall to the respective parties.
For an industry marked out for its pursuit of the new, can traditional broadcast and channel TV fail to see it's no longer at the crossroads....it's waaaaaaay past them. Netflix and others like Amazon have clearly demonstrated we like to consume our content at our own speed, not spoon fed episodes once a week. Does anyone have a show that's an appointment to view anymore? No, you just record it on your PVR and when you have half a dozen or so you sit down with a drink and a bucket of ice cream and off you go.
Do I have to see my dear transatlantic cousins twist and turn in the wind of argument over gun control? I know this is a subject that has undone many a Brit scribbler but I am deeply perplexed at the argument that it's practically divine a right to bare arms.... or arm bears.... and then quote the second amendment. Isn't that the point? It was an AMENDMENT. The original needed altering. It wasn't right first time. Perhaps in this day and age it ain't right now? The constitution was changed to allow you Colonials to bear arms to form a militia against perfidious Albion....but we ain't coming after you anymore. And if you think even a battle-bus full of patriotic armed citizens was going to prevent a modern attack such as 911 or the Boston bombers, that's wildly optimistic? A hand gun revolver if you must, and a bolt action rifle for hunting, but Yogi and Boo-Boo don't wear Kevlar nor run at 70 miles an hour so you don't need armor piercing bullets that pop out at a zillion rounds a second to stop them. Clearly if you have a country with a gabillion guns sloshing around in it, it's a trifle tricky to ask everyone to hand them back. And I suspect the least likely to then hand them back are those that you would most like to. It's therefore tough beyond belief but you have to start somewhere. How about the manufacturing bullets for certain weapons becomes an imprisonable offence unless supplied at a shooting range? I accept there are some countries who's citizens are armed to the teeth and live a relatively peaceful existence; Switzerland for instance (I claim a little bias here as I have a Swiss passport). Every citizen is issued with a rifle to defend against invasion. It's actually pretty pointless because if Uncle Putin wanted to get in, all the passes are mined and blowing those up is far more effective than a bunch of yodeling bankers trying to take pot shots at the Russian Army. Still no one has gone on a murdering rampage as far as I know. However maybe it's because gunfire exchange is less evident in Swiss culture. Heidi was not packin' an Uzi as she wandered around the Alps, and even William Tell could only fire one arrow at a time...even if it was at his son's head! The peaceful locals are renowned for whipping up cuckoo clocks not 3D printed handguns, chocolates not 1, 000 round magazines.
Are certain driver types clearly a danger to themselves and others? As I drive along our crowded streets I find I have some consistency at whom I am invariably shouting at. Women or men in wide brimmed hats should be given a very wide berth indeed. They are constantly checking themselves in the rear view mirror without paying any attention to the cars snaking behind them for five miles as they trundle along. Their sole priority is to maintain their well turned out appearance. Any Uber Driver seems oblivious for the need to move at the maximum permitted speed limit but rather they glower and prod at their Satnavs, talk on their mobile to clients they cannot find whilst opening yet another air freshener. Nissan Micra drivers always seem to have a passenger with whom the driver is constantly arguing; hence the car swerves like doing the rhumba. However as the combined ages of the two passengers invariably exceeds a century and a half, the swerving is conducted at speeds a stray tortoise would have no trouble avoiding.
On earth am I expected to pay more for something than advertised when it's about to expire? Even ticket touts at a concert or sports match lower the prices as the National Anthem plays to clear out the last of their stock. BUT...... Recently I was in Germany with three colleagues. Our meeting ended sooner than expected and we arrived four hours early at Dusseldorf Airport. Each had bought a return ticket from the UK and back for under £100 on Easyjet. We were all prepared to bin the return ticket as Easyjet had only one flight that night. However another large national carrier had an earlier flight. Despite having advertised the exact flight a few days earlier for similar prices to Easyjet, they now wanted £400 each one way! The argument being I suppose if it was such a late request standing at the airport we would pay the premium! Doh! Out of interest I asked how many tickets they had open… 20. Ten minutes before the plane left I went back to the ticket desk. "Now how many seats are still open on the plane"? "Still twenty, " the woman replied, questioning why I would bother to ask!! If my party had bought tickets at a sensible price they would have sold four more tickets, four more rounds of crappy sandwiches and several rounds of overpriced drinks. Instead that specific airline has pissed me off. I will try and avoid travelling with them ever again and put the experience in a blog. Anyone out there from the airline ticketing departments of a major carrier care to comment. Clue. Their old advert jingle was. ♫We take more fare/care of you, ♫ Fly the flag, fly the flag.
Is stupidity forgiven if it's environmentally acceptable? I accept plastic bags seem as indestructible as Donald Trump (and equally need to be done away with) but why in all that's holy am I not offered paper bags in UK supermarkets as an alternative. I either leave juggling unpacked groceries like I am auditioning for Cirque du Soleil or made to feel like I must sit on the naughty step as I have to pay for another plastic bag I don't want. On top of that staff from Safeways to Selfridges are getting very gun-shy at asking customers to pay for plastic bags that many want to now put over the check-out staff’s head!
And when did tipping become compulsory? Surely that's a contradiction in terms? And yet in many instances leaving no tip will result in a glare that Medusa herself would be proud of; and that’s if you’re lucky. A choice swear word or a clip round the ear is a distinct possibility. Tipping now seems to have more nefarious uses. One example, is it can be used to avoid companies obeying the law. Some restaurants hire people below minimum wage and make it up by the service charge. So without the 'discretionary charge' they are in breach of employment law. Other variations can be anything from laundering cash to covering up running a numbers racket.
Do Western Governments think no further than the next sound bite and company executives are unable to see past their annual bonus and the specifications on their next BMW? We need to understand that long-term planning is more than just remembering to set the TiVo or Skybox to record every episode of Homeland. Former Chairman of the People's Republic of China President Chou En Lai was asked once what he thought of the 1789 French Revolution. He replied "It's too early to say." Take cars. For my generation a car was aspirational on a number of levels. Along with total independence and the sheer exhilaration of driving was added the heady mix of sex and cool. We had no mobile phone, let alone Facebook, so you had to physically visit people in your car. When you did, normally the only chance of 'hooking up' was in the back seat, so 'the cooler the wheels, the sexier the heels'. My and millions of other's youth was full of parked cars that wobbled like jello and was why Lucifer had a bumper crop of souls from 1949- 1990. We gladly traded them for four wheels. Three generations drooled at the prospect of owning a car....and behind it all stood behemoths like Ford, General Motors and Chrysler down to (then) independents like Ferrari, Maserati, Lotus and Lamborghini. All employed a zillion people in their own businesses as well as the countless ancillaries from advertising agencies, tyre companies and design studios to the local gas station and body shops. Now everyone seems taken by surprise that the current generation are not really interested in cars; sales in the developed world are plummeting and we are heading towards automotive employment Armageddon. How could this be??????? A suggestion? Maybe something to do with the fact over the past twenty years successive Governments have made motoring as appetising as a waiter sneezing over a burger? All the fun and skill of driving has been replaced by mad costs, nannying computers and insane road planning. Roadworks stretch into the horizon and traffic police spend three hours investigating a mild knock of two cars in rush hour. Insurance companies treat kids with one minor infraction on their license as being as dangerous as Kim Jong Un with a migraine. George Orwell could not have imagined the level of surveillance, nor Creusus the level of tax on fuel and the Maquis de Sade would have quivered at the endless constriction of traffic jams. SPEED KILLS is flashed everywhere. Speed never killed anyone. Stopping does. The Government (and so mass media) took sex out of cars.......and are now panicking that no one wants to buy them. Did anyone for the teensiest moment think or say... "OK, environmentally we need to tighten things up, but maybe turning one of the largest employment sectors in the world into a pariah might make Mr. Magoo's short-sightedness look like 20/20 vision?"