i Ken has gambling addiction?
May 1st, 2008 at 16:23

Today was quite an exciting day – I handed in my dissertation, possibly the last piece of academic work I’ll ever do, aside from the three exams I’ve got coming up soon. Whilst it was a huge relief to take the gigantic weight off of my shoulders (I kept it there to remind me to finish my dissertation), I was hit with the realisation that I don’t have anything else lined up to do after my last exam on May 22nd – no job, no masters course, nothing, for the rest of my life.

So I thought, if I’m going to be an unemployed waster for the rest of my life, I may as well start early – so I went to a betting shop to do some gambling.

I’ve never been to a betting shop before, because I’ve always assumed they look a bit seedy – why else do they cover up the windows… what do they have to hide? Organised crime? The dregs of society depressingly pissing away their meagre wealth by watching skinny dogs run along a track?

Turns out that it was the latter. Although the former could have been going on for all I knew.

I walked through the door, and it was as depressing as I’d imagined – there were three men in there, who looked like they had no where to be, one of them playing the fruit machine and the other two watching the Greyhound racing – I initially thought that it was horse racing, before realising that’d be too classy – and there was a grumpy woman behind the counter.

I thought “Yeah, this is a scene I want to be a part of”.

So I told the woman I wanted to place a bet. What was I betting on? The London election, of course. After carefully studying the odds, and realising that the odds on Boris were backwards because they were so certain that he was going to win, I decided to risk a bet on Ken.

It isn’t looking good for Ken at the moment – the latest YouGov poll has Boris 6% ahead (after second preference) whereas every other polling company apparently has it as “too close to call” – I’m hoping that the actual results will massively swing in Ken’s favour, because hopefully when the London voters are in the polling booth, with their pencil hovering above the ballot sheet, they’ll take a step back and think “what the fuck am I doing?”, and vote for the less evil candidate.

Also: YouGov was founded by Stephen Shakespeare, a major Tory donor, and they apparently rely heavily on internet polling, which is probably pretty unrepresentative and unreliable… so I’m hoping they’re hideously bias and wrong. Hopefully it’ll be like the 1992 General Election when everyone apparently thought Neil Kinnock had it in the bag.

So fingers crossed, Ken will fluke it and win – if he does, I apparently stand to win £17.50 (having bet a fiver). If he doesn’t, Boris’s reign will start as the Tories mean to go on – by taking money off of poor people like me. And I don’t even live in London. It’ll be an extra kick in the face to accompany the first one I’ll get by the Tories being in power somewhere.

So if you’re a Londoner reading, Vote for Ken! Not just for my sake, but for the good of London!

If this goes well, I could really get into this gambling lark.

Comments(0)

Monetary Fallacy
February 18th, 2008 at 23:02

Economics is a hard subject, and I imagine that working in the world of finance is difficult business. You need lots of highly specialised skills if you want to work in the city – like the ability to use two phones at once, and being able to wear braces without looking like you’ve just stepped out of the nineteenth century.

In these turbulent economic times, we have to put our faith in these people, so we have to assume they know what they’re doing. Most economic concepts are simply too abstract for us to grasp – understanding what bonds, futures and dead cat bounces are is almost as complex as understanding quantum physics, or what would possess someone to actually buy Kerry Katona’s autobiography.

So the question arises, how can we sort out these problems? The national debt is apparently £1.3 trillion – which is pretty big. The Chancellor taking out another high-APR credit card and paying off the national debt with that probably isn’t going to sort this out, it will merely delay it – and its not like we can call in the loans that we’ve given the developing world over the years – the “Make Poverty History” campaign showed how mean that is… and besides, even if we sent the toughest, burliest looking men to the developing world to act as loan sharks it would be futile. Sure, they might come back with their video recorders, but we couldn’t sell them on to, say, America, because they have different sockets in the back of their TVs to us.

So dealing with the forthcoming economic problems looks tricky, and has economists and the general public alike scratching their heads, furrowing their brows and chewing pen lids to pieces. Does anyone know what to do?

Ignorance has never stopped me from commenting on a topic before, so I’ve come up with a solution that thinks outside the box a little bit: tax the poor more.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating a Thatcherite policy that relies on giving rich people loads of money and hoping it’ll filter down to the poor people, as that obviously doesn’t work – what I’m suggesting is a little ruse that we can use to exploit the goodwill of the rest of the world. So make sure you don’t tell anyone foreign about my brilliant plan or this might not work.

If we tax the poor 100% of their income they will be left with nothing – and our poor people will be living on significantly less than a dollar a day (in fact, exactly one dollar less than a dollar a day), and thus qualify as living in absolute poverty. All we have to do then is give Bono and Bob Geldof a ring, and before we know it, they’ll be benefit concerts around the world to raise money for us.

“Just £14 a month is enough to give a family of four a subscription to Sky Sports”, concerned celebrities will say on adverts shown around the world, “and just £6 will pay for three hours in a multi-storey car park”. Then all we have to do is wrack up the desperation by explaining that some of the most rural British people have to drive up to maybe ten miles a week to reach a supermarket to get food and bottled water and the money will come flooding in.

Sure, some may claim that we’re essentially “sponging off benefits”, but we should be able to take that, as it’s not like our right wing press have never accused foreigners of doing that before.

Comments(0)

Big Brother is watching you
September 10th, 2007 at 12:03

This is slightly creepy. After logging on to the council website to pay my parking fine, I put the details on the ticket in, and I was given the option to “view evidence”. It turns out that the traffic warden has been taking photos of my car. I didn’t realise they could do that. Whilst this is arguably a massive invasion of privacy and yet another sign that a surveillance culture is turning modern society into an Orwellian nightmare, it also has an upside: I get to post action photos of the actual thrilling event.

The amazing thing, I think, is that the photographer was the bastard traffic warden himself. With photography skills like these, I wonder if he’s got a Flickr account and is one of the many semi-pro photographers on there who post endless artsy black and white pictures of their pets?

I think the lesson here is to pay and display when you park, kids.

Comments(5)

Fairground Idea
August 11th, 2007 at 23:14

I’ve had an incredible idea for a new travelling funfair. The business plan is impeccable, because business is at the very heart of my idea.

Basically, each attraction would be priced individually, and the prices would vary according to market conditions. If not many people are using it the price will go down, and if its popular the price will go up: supply and demand, basically.

What would I call my fair? The Laissez-Fair, of course.

For example, rather than the queue for the dodgems being massive and no one wanting a go on the rigged coconut shy, the dodgems would be priced highly and the coconut shy would be dirt cheap… but would still turn a profit because the coconuts would be glued down.

There would be no queues because the visitors would be manipulated by changing prices, ensuring an equal spread of people throughout the fair.

Thinking this through, I could theme the entire fair around macro-economics. Those bungie capsule things could have the two towers at painted up like graph axis and it could be a homage to elasticity of demand? The ferris wheel? The economic cycle. Roller coaster? From the side it’d look like a graph of boom and bust. I’m still trying to think of a way to link the log-flume to trickle down economics.

There could be a terrifying new ride like those machines that hoist you up and then let you fall to the ground at speed. It could be called “Black Wednesday”.

I can’t see how this can possibly fail, as it would be self regulating. Crowds would be consistent throughout the week rather than it being packed on Friday and Saturday nights, as people would deliberately time their visits for when it is cheaper, so they’d never be any off-peak periods when its too expensive to keep the place open. Competitors wouldn’t have a chance, because if they tried to muscle in on the economics-themed-fairground market, they’d be pushed out using my rapid reaction market forces, as my prices would fall when demand is diluted by rivals. And in terms of social benefits, it will school people in basic economics – which is a valuable public service.

Look out for me on Dragons Den.

Comments(0)

Johnny Quest thinks I’m a sell out.
April 26th, 2007 at 20:43

Yesterday I received an interesting e-mail from someone wanting to “sponsor” (as he put it) some posts on my blog. “Hmm…” I thought, as I realised that I’d been presented with my first opportunity to properly sell out on all of my opinions, lose all credibility in the eyes of my peers, but maybe make some money, which would be help cushion the victimisation and social exclusion that I’d then be on the receiving end of.

I was a bit sceptical – he was asking for a “positively or neutrally framed review” of whatever products and services he told me to write about. Here’s part of my reply:

“If I were to do this, I’d want to decide whether to participate on a company-by-company basis, and I’d clearly flag up to my readers that I am being paid by the company to write the article. My credibility means a lot to me, and I think my readers are savvy enough to know when there’s a hidden motive behind something. I imagine that it would be within your interest to let me point out to readers what is going on – Google for ‘alliwantforchristmasisapsp‘ if you’re unsure as to why!

“If I were to review a product, then I would actually want to review it, and not just regurgitate a press release. Similarly, whilst you ask for a ‘good or neutrally framed’ review, I would still approach it objectively – obviously I would not be unjustifiably cynical or negative, though.”

I’m not willing to be used as some sort of corporate shill. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll happily sell out if the price is right, but just because I’m a blogger doesn’t mean that I’ve got no concept of journalistic ethics. I get the impression that the marketing men think blogs and viral marketing are key to reaching difficult demographics that TV advertising doesn’t reach (ie: young people), and think that because its the internet, then they can subvert normal accepted standards of advertising practice.

It got a little more bizarre when I recieved another e-mail giving me some more specifics. Rather than explain it, here’s how they described what they want me to do:

“We are not asking that you review any products or services, but rather just have a look and comment and add a link within the first 200 word of the post or a couple of links inline text links; one to the home page or article and one to a specific product page. You are also welcome to link to any other resource that you like in the post, whether this is general market research, a comparison with a competitor – whatever you like – while not essential, is ok with us. However, we do ask is that not defamatory comments are made.”

“We certainly do not want bogus reviews or anything that would require a disclaimer on the post – just make a comment if you feel it is worth doing so and do so with your own flair and style.” They basically wanted me to astroturf for them. They don’t seem to understand that I’d want to put a disclaimer on anything that I’ve been paid to write on a specific topic about*.

What makes this particularly odd is the companies who they wanted me to promote. I’m not sure what companies you’d associate with me, but all of the companies listed later in this second e-mail were offering financial services of sorts.

Why on earth would you take financial advice from me? I think you’d get more success taking advice on nation-building from the Bush administration, or advice on how to tackle fires from Alan Ball. (Too soon?)

And wouldn’t you readers think that it’s a bit odd that rather than posting stupid videos, or, er, complained about selling out, I started doing comparisons of the mortgages that different banks offer? “Wow, I’ve just found this really great mortgage! It’s a variable rate tracker so you know it can save you, yes, you, a lot of money!”

So I’ve e-mailed back and said that I’m not interested. Was this the right thing to do? What would you have done in my position? Why not post a comment and tell me?

Also! Are you a big company? As I made clear a few paragraphs ago, I don’t mind writing stuff for money, as long as it is done fairly, and flagged up. For example, I could review your companies products. Of course, I’d be objective, but if your company’s stuff is any good, then this shouldn’t bother you. Why not send me free stuff and/or money? Contact me on james (at) jamesomalley.co.uk if you’re interested.

(* ie: You can pay me to write stuff if I can write what I like, and I won’t get on my high horse about receiving payment, as if I’m given the freedom to write what I like then I’m not being censored or whatever. You know what I mean.)

Comments(2)

Top 3: Economists
April 10th, 2007 at 23:58

I’m trying to start a running joke, and I’m only having limited success. Whenever someone mentions a well known person to me, I’ll rank them in a list of my favourite members of their occupation. For example, when discussing the new £20 note, I’ll tell people that Adam Smith is my third favourite economist, implying that I have really specific ranked lists of favourites for a number of things.

Here’s the thing: I would genuinely like to have ranked lists of my favourite things. In fact, lists of favourites are my second most desired metaphysical possession (after charisma and before modesty).

So to try and make it a reality, here’s a list of my three favourite economists:

JAMES O’MALLEY’S TOP THREE ECONOMISTS

3) Adam Smith

How can you not like a man who has has a sort of reverse invisibility cloak and can instead see invisible things. He spotted some invisible hands meddling with the market, and then wrote about them so that we mere mortals can too detect market forces. He’s basically like Isaac Newton if he were hit on the head by some bullion instead of an apple and didn’t turn into a religious nutter later in his life.

He wins bonus points for being a bit of an all-rounder and appealing to all sides of the political spectrum: He theorised division of labour, and thus mass production ages before Henry Ford, setting us comfortable westerners up for an easy life. Excellent. He was, however, in favour of progressive taxation and (figuratively) taxing the shit out of the rich, which is also excellent. Adam Smith is a top bloke. I’d invite him to my birthday party.

2) John Maynard Keynes

Keynes is so good, there’s a school of economic thought named after him: Keynesian Economics. He was a big fan of state intervention in the economy to keep things afloat, and his ideas kept the world going after World War II. Unfortunately, things fucked up for his ideas when there was an oil crisis in the 70s and Nixon de-linked the Dollar from the gold standard, which caused the entire world system to unravel… but lets not mention that. Keynes was dead by then anyway, so it’s not like he ever knew anyway.

1) John Kenneth Galbraith

I don’t actually know that much about ‘JKG’, but what I do know is that he’s the most quotable man on earth, and after all, the quotability of a person is a much better judge of them than their body of work and character. Here’s some things he’s said according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia:

• “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
• “It is a well known and very important fact that America’s founding fathers did not like taxation without representation. It is a lesser known and equally important fact that they did not much like taxation with representation.”
• “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
• (On being asked what it is like having reached the age of 90) “Better than the alternative.”
• “Under Capitalism, man exploits man, under Communism, exactly the opposite” (Wikipedia reckons this is falsely attributed to him, but I disagree as BBC News says otherwise.)

Next time: My Top 3 Civil Engineers. (Look forward to it).

Comments(0)

London II
April 5th, 2007 at 02:27

As you might know, having watched the video blog below, I went to London yesterday with JD and Fundar. We went there to see the third series of That Mitchell & Webb Sound being recorded. It’s basically like their similarly named telly sketch show, only if you close your eyes.

The day began at 11am, when we caught the train.

Coke Price Watch: 500ml bottle; At the station; Cost: £1.00.

About 90 minutes later and we were in central London.

Coke Price Watch: 500ml bottle; London St Pancras; Cost: £1.10.

Our first port of call was Camden market. It was a bit weird, as it was full of people in a different socio-economic group to me. Or at least people who dressed like it. Being a market, the place was covered in people hawking tat – even the shops were open at the front and sprawled out into the streets. It reminded me of seeing a news correspondent walk through a crowded Kabul market place, I mean, if Afghanistan was populated exclusively by goths.

One man even offered to sell us cannabis – not that I realised at the time.

Almost every other market stall was selling t-shirts with “hilarious” slogans. As you might know if you’re a regular viewer of my torso, I quite like t-shirts with slogans on. I’m currently wearing an excellent t-shirt with “I’m blogging this” printed on it, for example. The trouble is, it was like the t-shirts on sale were bought wholesale by people who are a few years behind everyone else. “National Pornographic” isn’t clever or funny and “I’m a bomb technician, if you see me running try to catch up” was old even when the first alchemists were inventing explosions for the first time.

Our next port of call was Leicester Square, where we went to get some lunch and have a look around.

Coke Price Watch: 500ml bottle; Leicester Square Subway; Cost: £1.20.

When I wasn’t buying overpriced Coke, we were trying to be too clever for our own good. We put together an excellently long shot for the video, and then JD phoned his brother to see if he could see us on a webcam. He could, although unfortunately screenshot evidence of this incredible event does not exist.

After lunch we headed to Embankment, which is just next to Whitehall, where all of the big Government buildings are. I love London because its so easy just to stumble into landmarks. It makes it almost unremarkable when you realise you’re standing outside of Royal Bank of Canada head office.

It took us a second to realise that we were standing outside the Ministry of Defence. Unfortunately, as you might see if you’ve watched the video, I didn’t remember to take the opportunity to mention the MOD’s seven paper cuts last year. We walked past it and bumped into the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. I’m the sort of person who finds this exciting.

Standing outside the FCO was Tim Marshall, Sky News’ Political editor. In retrospect, I probably should have gone and harassed him – after all, he is a celebrity, and I assume celebrities love nothing more than idiot members of the public going up to them and talking to them because they recognise them, despite not being able to remember their name.

Sort of next to the Foreign Office is Downing Street. The Downing Street. Despite it just being an old house that you can barely see behind the multiple layers of security (a ramp, a big set of gates, a number of police with machine guns) it was dead exciting. I reeled off as much Downing Street trivia as I could on the off chance that the Policeman near me would say “Hey, you know your stuff, want to go in for a look around?” Unfortunately he just continued to look stern.

Excellently, it was about at this point that I tried to show-off my knowledge of history by explaining that Whitehall used to be one massive Palace of Whitehall before it was destroyed by a fire. Fundar, being a cynic and troll, accused me of making this up just seconds before we passed a sign explaining that a building was the last remaining segment of the Palace of Whitehall.

Just behind the foreign office, when we weren’t really sure where we were going, we stumbled upon the Treasury. Not just any old treasury too mind- Her Majesty’s Treasury. I missed a golden opportunity to see if I could get in because I’m a tax-man – it would have made an excellent scene in the video too. I did, however, have this excellent photograph taken of me:

After a bit more walking we ended up near Parliament and Brian Haw’s anti-war protest. MPs passed a law to try and get rid of Brian, by banning protesting near Parliament without a license a couple of years ago – unfortunately for them, Brian’s still there because he’s been continuously protesting since before the ban came into force. Interestingly, Brian’s patch of green is surrounded entirely by a massive roundabout, and the conspiracy theorist within me thinks that they’ve made it intentionally difficult to get to the centre where Brian is by altering the traffic light patterns, as I was stuck in the centre for a good five minutes before I dared cross the road.

We spent a few minutes standing outside Westminster Abbey. We were going to go in for a couple of minutes, but discovered that it costs eight pounds to visit a church. Although you could apparently “worship for free”. I didn’t think I could get away with pretending to be religious.

We walked down past the Palace of Westminster to the green where they do the live reports on the telly and did a bit for the video, before deciding to head to the Tate Modern. Exciting travel story: we took the circle line from Westminster to Mansion House.

It turns out that St Paul’s Cathedral is right next to Mansion House, and opposite the Millennium Bridge.

Coke Pepsi Price Watch: 500ml bottle; Tate Modern; Price: £1.55 (yes, 55).

Unfortunately, it’s my sad duty to report that the Tate Modern is the most overrated place in history. Even more so than the Auschwitz “theme park” the Nazis set up during World War II.

I feel like an idiot for not being able to appreciate modern art, but most of it is shit. One of the biggest pieces (in terms of physical size) was Matisse’s Snail (click that for a picture). It’s some coloured paper laid out on to a bigger piece of paper. It looks like something a child with learning difficulties could have made.

What makes it worse is the, er, back-story, as it isn’t even deep and metaphorical. According to the textual description next to it, Matisse saw a snail, and then laid out some coloured paper in a shape (very, very, very, very) vaguely resembling a snail. That’s it? That’s shit.

Beret-wearing sycophants probably look at the same picture and say in their trumped-up posh accent and say to each other “that’s bloody brilliant, oh, it’s just so inspirational. My god, it’s a work of genius.”

Another incredible work was a canvas painted almost entirely orange, apart from a strip down the right hand side which was painted a slightly darker orange, the premise being that the darker line is “disruptive”, or something like that. I’ve never seen such pretentious bollocks, and I’m a regular viewer of Newsnight Review.

It must be great being an artsy twat, as you’d experience such an exciting life. “Fuck me! It’s a lightswitch… that’s just, like, so powerful… on and off, representing despair and consequence“.

One of the more ridiculous things was some metal tiles on the floor. Apparently this changes the viewers interaction with art by allowing you to walk on it. That’s fucking incredible. I mean, walking on tiles. Genius.

Judging by my experience with one of the members of staff, they seem to have employed the snootiest minimum wage workers available. I was carrying a sealed Pepsi, bought from their own cafe through one of the galleries, and a Zoe Wanamaker-esque woman approached me, and said without even mentioning the brand, “I see you have a carbonated drink, could you put it away please? We’ve had people drop them before causing spillages”. I can’t imagine the disasterous repercussions of Pepsi getting near birdshit on a canvas, or whatever. I’d have thought the artsy Tate people would enjoy interpreting what the Pepsi stain represents.

In fairness, it wasn’t all terrible. Roy Lichenstein’s Whaam! was good. And there was a gallery of some framed pages of an old Soviet magazine showing the industrialization of the USSR, which was interesting. And I can’t really complain about the entrance price, as it was free.

After we left the Tate bitterly disappointed, we thought it finally time to head to the Drill Hall to see Mitchell & Webb. We took the tube to Goodge Street.

Coke Price Watch: 500mlish glass; Goodge Street Hamburger Union; £1.65.

Before the show, we went to Hamburger Union, which seems to be a medium-speed food chain exclusive to London. We filmed some more video here.

Coke Price Watch: 330ml can; The Drill Hall; £1.

Finally, we got into Mitchell and Webb ready for the recording. Our tickets had been validated and we had been allocated seats. Unfortunately, before we could go in the theatre, we had to wait in a tiny bar for around an hour standing up with around 200 other people. It was almost unbearable after a day of running around London. My legs hurt and I was overheating, but we stuck with it, as, after all, we were now at the primary reason why we were in London.

Mitchell and Webb recorded two shows at once, so we got approximately 90 minutes of new sketches from them, supported by Olivia Coleman and James Bachman And they were excellent. There were a few about a doctor arguing with a patient who got diagnosis’s off of the internet, which got progressively more surreal. If this sketch makes the translation to their second TV series, I imagine “I’m Bill Paxton” will become a well known catchphrase. You’ll know why when you see it.

Other memorable sketches were “Celebrity Fame Zepplin”, in which Mitchell reeled off hundreds and hundreds of reality TV clichés in quick succession and parodies if Radio 4’s Afternoon Play.

In retrospect, I should have taken my iTalk and covertly recorded it so I could write more about this. I can’t remember many more of the things they did, but I remember enjoying it immensely. So, er, I guess I win.

I had an incredibly good day over all, and I don’t think even if I had bumped into Hitler on the train home he could have dampened my spirit that much. London late at night is surprisingly non-threatening, but we were in a reasonably posh area- right near Tavistock Square, of London Bombings fame, in fact. I imagine I’d be telling a different story if they’d been recording the radio show in Hackney or wherever. And you’d be reading this from my will rather than my blog.

It was also a research packed day – our serious scientific survey has conclusively proved that London prices are infinitely more expensive than rural England. Which, er, is no surprise really.

I would highly recommend listening to That Mitchell & Webb Sound when it’s broadcast on the radio – I’ll plug it on here when it is, as it’s dead good.

Well done for making it through nearly 2000 words too. Why not watch the video?

Comments(3)

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.

Comments(2)

Don’t mention the ‘R’ word
March 2nd, 2007 at 01:42

Apparently the world’s business people have been collectively shitting themselves over the past few days and selling off stock like each share certificate is laced with Polonium-210, because they’re all scared of recession. Now, I’m no economist (where did you get that idea?), but if there’s one thing I remember from my A-level economics lessons is that boom and bust are self-fulfilling prophecies. A bit like how if you have a load of ingredients and a cook book, its a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy that you’re going to end up with a cake.

Basically, if everyone goes “Ooh shit, I better stop spending money and saving up in case there’s a recession” there will be less spending in the economy, and less people buying stuff. Less people buying stuff is bad for business causing them to make less money, causing them to lay people off and cut their own spending, leading to, er, a recession.

(And just to show I was listening to Mr Sullivan, I suggest a cut of interest rates in order to stimulate spending.)

So if everyone stopped worrying, the problem would solve itself. So for fucks sake, financial markets, stop talking about a recession. They say if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all – so be nice to the economy.

What can we, the normal people do? It is our PATRIOTIC DUTY to keep buying stuff in order to keep the economy going and stop it all going tits up. You’ve been thinking about buying that PDA you don’t need? Or that DVD box set? How about a car that you can’t afford? You must buy them, for the good of the country!

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Health Scare
December 13th, 2006 at 02:58

Last week, my mum had some sort of medical scare. Long story short, she’s perfectly fine and it was nothing, but that didn’t stop the family from collectively bricking it for a few days. The vaguely interesting thing about it, aside from, er, my mother’s health, was that she got the scan done privately.

This meant that it got done (that’s a medical term) within five days, rather than twenty-something, as what would have happened had she had it done on the NHS. I’m sure regular blog readers have by now figured out the moral dilemma this creates and the direction in which this is going: private healthcare? Wtf?

I think the NHS is bitchin’- the second greatest institution this country has (after the BBC), and I’ll always cite it as a reason why Britain is better than America, (and that’s about as patriotic as I’ll get).

In fact, I’ve always assumed my opinion is “Private healthcare shouldn’t be allowed, everyone should use the NHS”. I think this has turned out to be one of those high-principled altruistic things you support until you realise that siding with the baddies helps you in your own personal circumstances. Like how you’d be against animal testing until you need to grow a new ear on your back. Or like how you’d be in favour of making murder illegal, up until the point when you’re on the run after killing five prostitutes.

Don’t get me wrong- I don’t think that we should privatise the NHS – that’d be awful. The idea of having to remember your chip & pin number whilst you have a saucepan stuck on your head or whatever is ridiculous. At risk of sounding like Hitler: I dare say private health care has its place. And poor people can go fuck themselves.

Having this all new opinion worries me slightly: are all of my other opinions as flexible? Are all of my opinions motivated by self interest? And I called myself something of a lefty? I’m terrible.

At the moment I think that student loans are awful, and students should get grants. Big fat grants too. Do I think this because I believe that education should be free for all who want it, and that it will enrich society as a whole, creating an educated and flexible workforce ready to meet the challenges of the 21st century workplace? (I assume that the 21st century workplace needs more media studies graduates, and that the challenges involve analysing a Bond film for instances of “dramatic tension”).

Or do I really believe the student loans thing because I am an awful student, who wants to contribute nothing to society and just get some free money to buy some consumer electronics with?

I’ve always said that I’m in favour of taxing the wealthy in order to redistribute wealth to help the poor. For the past three months, since I started at work, I’ve been taxed at basic rate (or “BR”, as its known in the trade), and I was taxed about £300 overall… and I felt robbed. All I could think about was what I could have bought with the money that had been stolen from me by those bastards at the tax office, rather than that the money was helping to finance hospitals, schools and illegal wars. It is until I get my massive tax rebate, anyway.

I think at this rate of moral decline I’ll be looking at a career in either BAE Systems’ marketing department, or as the Conservative Party’s chief fund raiser and honour nominator.

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