Book Review 3
March 31st, 2007 at 15:44

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Eggheads
March 31st, 2007 at 12:25

I think one of my favourite TV programmes at the moment is the Dermot Murnghan fronted quiz programme Eggheads, which airs daily on BBC Two. For the uninitiated, it pits a team of contestants (usually a pub quiz team or something) against a team of moderately well known quiz champions, like Judith Keppel from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. They go head to head in a series of sudden death rounds on a variety of topics before ending on a general knowledge round.

One of the best bits is the interaction between presenter and contestants. There’s no studio audience, and the studio is very large, dark, quiet and empty, so you get the impression the contestants are trapped in one mad-man’s sadistic game of ritual humiliation. Not only are the contestants being humiliated by their lack of trivia knowledge, but every awkward bit of banter resonates around the studio like a bad smell that won’t go away.

Because of the lack of audience, it is up to only Dermot and two pieces of library music to create the tension. This leads of Dermot saying a lot of ultimately meaningless things to try and up-the-ante a bit: “You lost the first round… won the second… then lost the third… I’m spotting a pattern here!“, as if to imply that losing the next round would be even worse for the contestants because not only would they decrease their chances of winning the money, they’d break the fabric of space-time itself. Well, probably.
There’s also some spectacularly embarrassing exchanges when Dermot tries to make some light conversation with the contestants.

“So Derek, it says here you’re a farmer…?”

“Yep.”

“See many cows?”

“Yep.”

“Alright… now lets crack on! Which country is the world’s largest exporter of tin?”

The production team have clearly told the contestants to try and “deduce” their answers to try and make the programme more exciting. It’s excruciating trying to watch an idiot apply reason to their answers:

“Well I know that the Netherlands only make tulips and drugs… and the Spanish are work-shy and lazy, so I can’t imagine them exporting anything… so I’m going to have to go with Bolivia, Dermot.

Basically Eggheads is like playing an under-clocked ItBox in a dystopian library.

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Slapped by the invisible hands of the market
March 31st, 2007 at 01:42

Hey! Are you middle class? Does your home have two cars parked outside? Perhaps the vicar comes round for tea occasionally? Isn’t life great when you’ll never have to worry about not being able to afford your next meal, or multinational corporations mercilessly exploiting your labour and forcing you into a lifetime of slavery?

But wait, what about those “brown people” on TV who are poor? You know the ones - they sometimes appear on the news between the important items about house prices and the dangers to avoid when buying your second property in Spain. They may be in abject poverty whilst you live it up, but don’t worry! There’s an easy way to absolve your guilt and clear your conscience! All you have to do is buy ‘Fair Trade’ goods and you needn’t worry about the adverse effects of your ultra-consuming self-centred lifestyle ever again!

Tell me if I’m wrong, but surely by promoting the fair trade brand and urging consumers to buy fair trade coffee, over say, Nestlé coffee, whilst actually paying third world farmers a “fair rate” for their produce and helping increase their standard of living, is at the same time is it not also robbing the Nestlé farmers of even the pittance they get anyway? Won’t that make Nestlé completely abandon their farmers if the economics of it go into the red as no one is buying it? Meaning that Nestlé farmers will lose their customer and their chance of selling their own coffee beans, even if it is at a dreadful rate?

It seems to be favouring one group of poor people over another. The only difference is that one of the groups of poor people don’t mind being patronised by smug couples who hold “dinner parties” and don’t mind spending an extra fifty pence to get their coffee. Yeah, I know I probably wouldn’t complain about being patronised if it were my only chance of subsistence.

Fair Trade, as in the brand, as far as I can tell in my capacity as an amateur economist and opinionated loudmouth, will never work. The neo-liberal world system is inherently geared against such high-concept ideas as “not screwing over the developing world”. The post-Keynesian system has created an almost irreversible state of economic anarchy, where if we even tried to achieve anything other than positive numbers on the balance sheet the rest of the world will screw us over (see: complex interdependence).

Unfortunately, the only way we’re going to be able to help the developing world is by completely reorganising the world system, both politically and economically. Which, er, ain’t going to happen, because us middle-class twats are blinded by consumerism and have too much to lose by instigating change, and the poor are too busy dying.

As for a vaguely workable solution, how about getting the EU involved? After all, despite collectively being the biggest provider of aid to the developing world, it throws down a massive subsidy to prop up its own pointless agricultural industries. It’s basically like if I were in a fight with you, and I gave you a sword to attack me with, but at the same time gave myself a BFG9000.

If the EU were to make one altruistic gesture (which it will never do, but work with me here, folks), it should completely dismantle its farming industries. It doesn’t need them. They only started subsidising them in the first place just in case a big war broke out which crippled food supply routes. It seems obvious, but I should point out that another World War is simply not going to happen. It’s either nuclear holocaust or nowt these days. And I don’t think in the event of nuclear holocaust the first thing on our minds is going to be about our sustainable food supply- presumably the first, and indeed last thing on our minds will be “what’s that bright white light doing coming towards me?”

So basically, my point is that fair trade is unworkable. Don’t get me wrong- I’m not pleased by this. It makes me very angry. The economics of it are incompatible with our globalised world, and no amount of bearded men in woollen jumpers standing behind a fair trade stall in a photo in a local paper is going to solve the world’s problems.

Reading this back, I think I must have had some pent up anger inside me. I think I’ll have a Coca-Cola(tm) to calm down.

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Column - 30/03/07
March 30th, 2007 at 23:35

Read it online: here. Or read the original, complete with original swearing: here.

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Tedious university update!
March 30th, 2007 at 01:14

Today I had an enormous weight lifted off of my shoulders. The bastard who put it there ran off, and I couldn’t chase after him to enact revenge because I was weighed down by the weight on my shoulders.

I also had another figurative weight lifted off of my shoulders. I handed in my last essay of the year. In the past nine days, I’ve had four essays due in, totally ten thousand words in total, meaning that I’ve spent the last month essentially in a blind panic. It probably would have been more productive to have spent the time researching and writing the essays rather than blindly panicking, but it’s amazing what your mind goes through in a crisis.

All of the questions I have been posed in the essays have been academic-sounding and have required equally academic answers. I’ve been asked for example “Who are the winners and losers in the globalisation process?” and “How has the recent revolution in information technology made the media a powerful influence on US foreign policy?”. I was even asked “European Monetary Union was both an economically and politically driven process. Discuss”, and that isn’t even a question.

(The fourth question, for those keeping track, was about if the end of the Cold War has increased in the influence of liberal theories in the international relations academy. The short answer is “yeah, a bit”, the long answer is “Read my essay, I’m not writing it again”).

I’m actually experiencing a sense of loss, now that I’ve no more essays to write. I think this weekend I’ll be at a loss for things to do. I might try and apply the liberal/realist paradigm to things that don’t necessarily fall under the remit of the school of International Relations. Or, y’know, shout abuse at some foreigners or something.

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Echoes of myself
March 28th, 2007 at 01:38

As long time readers and window cleaners might know, I’m quite willing to criticise people. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a strong enough character to dare criticise people to their faces, I’m the sort of awful bastard who will do it behind their backs on the internet to like-minded individuals, who are, in all likelihood, criticising me in another MSN window talking to someone else. But I do worry when doing this - I worry that I might be seemingly unknowingly describing myself if I talk complain about someone being, say, a dullard. And then I worry that whoever I’m talking to is pasting what I’m saying over and commenting on the multiple layers of irony that ice every one of my words like a topping on an inedible (and thus ironic) cake.

What makes this worse is when I can see myself in other people. Not literally. I don’t live in the future and talk only to well polished silver robots- but if I notice that the person I’m talking to has a similar negative character trait to me.

I’ll often start telling an anecdote (“I met Kilroy once…”), and only later realise that the story is mind-numbingly tedious, horrendously in-jokey to the extent where the person I’m talking to won’t understand, or requires more context than the Israeli/Palestine situation.

In this situation, there is always a choice: you can either soldier through the story, pointing out all of the details in their glorious inanity and bore the listener to death, risking coming across as the most boring person alive, or cut your losses and end the anecdote prematurely. I usually opt for this latter approach by saying something like “long story short I met Kilroy… er… that’s it”, leaving out any clever remarks or observations that make up the meat of the story - which only leaves the listener bitterly disappointed. But not bored. Like how five minutes before the end of every episode of Doctor Who the Doctor discovers there’s a ‘Deus Ex-Machina’ button on his sonic screwdriver. Again.

This problem is only exacerbated by my choice of anecdote. If I’m speaking to someone I don’t really know, I’ll still try and retell an anecdote that relies on heavy character knowledge of myself. “Blah blah blah… and it turns out they were a window cleaner!” I might say expecting a laugh, forgetting that the person I’m talking to doesn’t follow my blog and thus my tedious life as avidly as, er, me.

Basically I’m saying that I don’t want to come across as a boring twat. Look, I’m even ending this blog entry fairly abruptly as I can’t think of a way to better describe this without becoming even more boring.

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Society Proprietary
March 27th, 2007 at 16:52

Here’s something I never thought I’d do: I appear to be taking an active role in a student life. I appear to have been talked into being a part of the people who organise the Globalisation Society, which, as the name suggests is basically an excuse to get celebrities down and get photos of myself doing a thumbs up with them under the pretence of them doing a talk on globalisation or related issues.

At least, I’m hoping that’s what it’ll be. I’m not too clued up on globalisation.

Last December I met Tony Benn, of “well respected lefty type” fame. Unfortunately, the worst thing in the world happened and the batteries in my camera died at the moment the picture of me and Tony was taken, meaning I’ve no pictorial proof of this event ever happening - so I could just be making this up. My camera batteries died just after I won four gold medals in athletics at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games too, incidentally.

Sarah tells me she only wanted my help because of my extensive celebrity contacts. After all, who else can boast that they’ve received e-mails from both Malcolm Rifkind and Kate Lawler? Y’know, her off Big Brother and the former foreign secretary.

I think the real reason because they know that I (figuratively) ooze charisma and likeability out of every orifice, and want to use my image to publicise the society - a bit like how ITV will use Coronation Street as the lead in on a failing series to try and inherit a bit audience and not look like a tedious lowest common denominator failure.

Either this or that I can make websites, anyway.

Additionally yesterday, Sean, Sarah and I were discussing the society with one of my lecturers, when the scariest thing happened: he told me that he’d heard about my website from another member of staff, so needless to say I’m now double checking everything I’ve ever written to make sure I’ve never said anything critical of the lovely, lovely people at university.

So, er, hello everyone at my university’s business school!

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Shatt-on-the-al-Arab
March 24th, 2007 at 20:59

The literal gunboat diplomacy that’s been going on today has interested me a bit. Okay, that’s a lie, I just wanted to use this title for a blog post.

What I find most interesting is that the whole dispute seems to hinge on the 1975 Algiers Agreement, which is when Iran and Iraq agreed their maritime borders… it was a treaty negotiated by then-Iraqi Vice President Saddam Hussein.

I think its interesting that international law outlives whoever negotiated it. I mean, it has to otherwise the whole international system would break down, but this presumably means that if Saddam had signed a treaty with The Netherlands to trade clogs for oil, then the American occupiers would be forced to honour this commitment and cope with the mountains of unnecessary wooden shoes that go with it, or risk all hell breaking loose in an anarchic international system as everyone doesn’t both honouring the treaty commitments.

The only way treaties can be enforced is essentially through peer-review, as there’s no greater authority, so in order to create order from chaos, all of the other countries would be forced to make sure that America complies with the Dutch shoe deal. I imagine America, as the hegemon and self-declared protector of freedom and the rule of law (cough, cough) would have to think long and hard about invading itself. Or at least imposing sanctions.

I do wonder though if this whole boat thing will end up with history repeating itself. I mean, it’d be new to me, as I wasn’t around in the early 1980s when Iran pulled the hostage trick the first time around, so I’d find it gripping and exciting… Almost exactly like popping bubble wrap, basically. But old people on the other hand might say things like “change the record Ahmadinejad”, whilst struggling to work a mobile phone, understand modern music, and perpetuate many other old people stereotypes.

(I think this might be the first time I’ve ever vaguely written about what I actually study academically, so, er, hooray, I guess.)

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Directors Commentary
March 24th, 2007 at 20:27

Yeah, there’s a typo in the graphics - I like to think this adds to the charm rather than makes it look sloppily made.

If it means nothing to you, you probably should have watched the original first.

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Column - 23/03/07
March 23rd, 2007 at 15:44

Regular commentator Arthur Embleton, has posted a comment suggesting that I post whenever I get a new column published. This sounds like a good idea to me, as it allow for more shameless self-promotion. Look! It’s me in a paper:

Click for big, or if you’re not a fan of squinting, you can read the original here, or perhaps you’d like to read it on the Herald & Post website by clicking here?

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