Loretta Napoleoni - Rogue Economics: Capitalism's New Reality

Loretta Napoleoni explains it here.

Our world is full of fantasies and illusions: the kingdom of the rogue economy is a feral force endemic to society.

Almost every product we consume has its own secret story. The most dangerous conduit of rogue economy is the global market because it allows rogue products to contaminate traditional economies and turns all of us consumers into its unconscious business partners.

We the consumers know very little about these economic interdependencies, we ignore the dark secrets of what we consume because we are trapped in the market matrix, the complex network of illusions and commercial fantasies which reshape our world.

As in the cult movie ‘Matrix’, consumers have no idea of reality and they think the global village they inhabit is an idyllic world. Both, consumers and citizens are caught in a dream. ‘Have you ever dreamed a dream so realistic that it seemed true than reality? What if you are not going to wake up? How could you make the difference between the reality and your dream? Says Morpheus in ‘Matrix’. That dream is our gilded prison.

To go back to reality we have to exit the market matrix and look at the world from its boundaries, with the eyes of victims: the slaves, the destitute, the population of many developing countries upon which globalization outlaws are building the landmarks of rogue economics.

How fitting to my previous blog post. As if I haven't been thinking along these lines for the last few years, but at last here's somebody, an economist, saying exactly what my mind has been slowly fermenting in isolation. And her reference to the analogy of The Matrix makes it clear that she connects popular science fiction with Real Life Economics.

That's intellectual affirmation of some sort. So why is it that simple facts that are obvious to people like myself, and to people like her, almost never get explained in mainstream journalism?

Clearly, mainstream journalism is a fundamental component in the structure of the Market Matrix.

Triad Gang Murder in London

Apparently this was a triad gang killing, and it was bloody and nasty. Also see the BBC piece.

In over-globalized London, misery from all over the planet arrives and feeds on the profits of drug-dealing, money-laundering, extortion, you-name-it.

And they exist because above them are ever larger layers of over-specialized economic citizens who are so removed from Nature, the Planet, and Love, that they in one way or another are decadent, selfish, greedy, paranoid etcetera.

Institutions deal with it speedily, and the rest of the world goes on its merry way, living in its Matrix of Illusions and Delusions. Which reminds me of a superb Italian economist who had her book reviewed on the BBC World Service last night, see next post about Rogue Economics.

Globalization, Globalisation, and the Pope

I was astonished to hear this clip on the BBC yesterday morning, from one of the Pope's New York speeches, and it took a while to find it here on Vatican Radio.

Globalization has humanity poised between two poles. On the one hand, there is a growing sense of interconnectedness and interdependency between peoples even when – geographically and culturally speaking – they are far apart. This new situation offers the potential for enhancing a sense of global solidarity and shared responsibility for the well-being of mankind. On the other hand, we cannot deny that the rapid changes occurring in our world also present some disturbing signs of fragmentation and a retreat into individualism. The expanding use of electronic communications has in some cases paradoxically resulted in greater isolation. Many people – including the young – are seeking therefore more authentic forms of community. Also of grave concern is the spread of a secularist ideology that undermines or even rejects transcendent truth. The very possibility of divine revelation, and therefore of Christian faith, is often placed into question by cultural trends widely present in academia, the mass media and public debate.

When you think about it, without a doubt the Catholic Church is probably one of the first and the original of all Globalist Institutions. Therefore although it is heartening to hear anything intelligent said at all, it is rather disappointing to hear only that

"we cannot deny that the rapid changes occurring in our world also present some disturbing signs of fragmentation and a retreat into individualism"

So here we have the Pope, saying that the Catholic Church regards the biggest threat from Globalisation to be the threat to its power.

I would like to teach the Catholic Church to Love the Planet. They need to learn.

Chinese boycotting French Goods

The interesting bit is that Carrefour has got 100 hypermarkets in China. Is it obvious yet that globalization is a disease that covers the face of the Earth?

Will the bourgeois wealthy in Beijing and Shanghai join the boycott? I can't imagine how the Chinese will live without brandy. They might have to go back to rice wine. As for the working class? They'll just have to give up booze, because rice prices are at record levels.

The Green Party in the London Elections

Following on from the absence of economic policy in the London mayoral elections here we have Sian Berry in the New Statesman. Well, it's a shame that she's playing up slightly to her hair colour, because in this non-sexist, non-racist, non-denominational, non-bigoted 2008 version of Babylon 5 called London, I had hoped for a piercing, raging, unassailable, thunderbolt of a political campaign from the Greens this year.

Oh well, too much lettuce, I guess.

Never mind, when everything becomes extinct, there will so much less chance of being reincarnated as something creepy crawly.

Clouds and the Noise of Roads, Cars and Aeroplanes

On cloudy days, the noise from roads gets reflected back to the ground, and so the noise of cars banging away down a road is louder for everyone around.

It's absolutely horrible. The people in their super-insulated BMWs and Toyotas think that life is wonderful, but the noise that they're making is drowning out the chance of any conversation. No wonder everyone has to block it out by wearing Ipods in their ears, and by staying inside double-glazed homes and blogging instead of getting outside.

It is plain nasty, all the traffic noise, aeroplane noise and motorised traffic noise. This noise will not go away even if all those wonderful men and women all drove electric cars that are powered by hydrogen fuel-cells, because most road noise comes from air turbulence and tires belting down a surface. There is NO way to greenwash the noise from Car and Aeroplane traffic, because it has nothing to do with Climate Change.

But it is Environmental Pollution that is killing the Quality of Life for all the people, for they are forced to become caged men and women instead of being free as they were born to be, outdoors in the open air.

Food biodiversity in our Topsy Turvy Spring

So last year was a La Nina year, following the record hot and dry El Nino in the previous year. What's a year and when does it begin and end? This spring has been weird. On Valentine's day, everything was bursting into spring bud and flower, bees were buzzing about, and flies were breeding. And since then we have had the coldest 2 months of the whole winter. (What's going on? Who cares why and what does it matter if we can't fix it? Yes, climate change and global warming have fallen out of fashion as ever as soon as the cold set in. No, we aren't going to fix it, and it looks like most of humanity will carry on making it worse..)

Now the trees are starting to come into leaf. What is so strange is that although Hawthorn was flowering in February, the subsequent cold put a hold on many other trees. I see that hornbeam is now coming out - they like clay, so the cold and wet feet that they have from this weather doesn't slow them down. Other trees (beech or sycamore?) have swollen buds but haven't opened yet. The ash has started flowering, and oaks in some places are coming out. Wild Crab Apple went into furious blossom in early March, but since has stalled and has yet got no leaves. Plums are flowering gradually, different parts coming into blossom over the past 3 weeks.

All the naturalized daffodils and hyacinths have finished, even though few of them got fertilized because there were few days worthy of insect pollinators. But now all the other later spring flowering bulbs, tulips, grape hyacinths etc are in full bloom. Though the bluebells will not be out for another two weeks.

It's all so mixed, so confused, and so gradual and sporadic and scattered all over time and space. There are a multitude of different trees and plants that deal with the climate differently, and we can see that in action. We are living in a mixed climate, where different aspects of biodiversity are all minding their own business in the endless competition for survival.

How could any GM seed designer ever design crop seeds to cope for such variation? They couldn't. It is pointless for intelligent people to speak of biodiversity or food security, without their being able to speak of food biosecurity. We need people all over the world to grow as diverse a range of crops as possible, not just a few strains of high yielding seeds designed, marketed and distributed by a Monsanto type of company. Is this not obvious to people? Should it not be most obvious to all scientists, or are there too many scientists whom are so specialized that they cannot see the wood for the trees, even when the trees haven't come into leaf yet?

Meanwhile, in Today's news, the Pope is visiting Zimbabwe, making apologies for the shameful boatload of Child Abuse victims sitting in Durban port. The President of Iceland, Jonathan Sachs, has asked Zimbabwe's neighbouring countries, namely Israel, Peru and Australia to obstruct the shipment of these arms and legs over the territories. But tomorrow is a famous Jewish festival that revolves around children, and Robert Mugabe has pointed out that

Civilizations that worship lifeless things eventually become lifeless.


Hence, I scorn this blog, this lifeless blog, and its computer, its electricity, its inanimate lifeless copper and fibreoptic veins that connect to other millions of silicon-hearts all pulsing with holes and electrons across their own millions of semiconductor barriers.

For the Planet has no more Love to give away. Love will never be the same again.

The absence of Economic Policy in the London Mayoral and Local Elections

Given that the people of Britain spend so much time telling other people how to run a democracy, it is worthwhile examining this upcoming election.

Aside from trite and pedestrian promises, and despite being in the throes of the biggest manifestation of flawed Globalist Economics, the Credit Crunch, none of the campaigning has thrown up any discussion of Free-market Globalism or Planetary Environmental Economics.

The fact is that London lives off the fat of the planet, and has hedged all its bets on being the financial heart of a Globalist Economic system.

Yet here we have an election for a mayor, and none of the candidates are intelligent enough to speak out about whether this vision for London will be a deliberate conscious policy, or whether they will just blunder on with what is there already.

Have intelligent people all become extinct even before all the species in the Amazonian rainforest?

An attack on the Unscience of Common Economics

Thank goodness for Scientific American!

Here on Love and the Planet, I have been disgusted for some time with the basis of the modern common philosophies of Economics that have been driving human development. Indeed, a search for "economics" on this blog is a rather awesome reminder of the history of my disgust, e.g. 1
and 2

(Personally, I hate to read my old postings, because as a blogger, there is nothing worse than being reminded how awful things were, and how little they've changed).

So here is Scientific American, finally attacking some of the unscience of Economics. I think they were being a bit reserved and rather too kind, but then, being scientific, they have to separate their opinion from their evidence.

And of course, there are very few indications I have come across that Economics are becoming Planetary in the right direction, aside from 3 I do not accept that Carbon Trading is sufficient; it has no consideration of the value of any of the species of life on the planet, let alone of the value of Intact Interconnected Ecosystems. Carbon Trading merely addresses only one very small facet of managing Human Development on this Planet.

Construction Firms and The Office of Fair Trading

Curious, it seems, that despite all the attempts to distract the democratic population with spurious, it seems, causes and issues, that here we have an instance where The Office of Fair Trading has steadfastly been doing its job and has something to show for it today.

All that construction, and human development, all at ultimate cost to the public purse, facilitated with easy Global Finance when money was slushing about cheaply. All done without one of the major features of a free market.

I think Adam Smith must have been a marvellous conjurer of Man's Wants

Men's paws shod with old blinkers

In that land, at that time, there was a wealthy merchant. Having been born to simple folk, the several wives and several businesses he had acquired over years of ruthless smiling gave him the status he needed to feel like a big man.

Nonetheless, at moments, such as in the stillness of the dawn light, he harked back to his youth, and searched for the feelings that he knew he once felt.

For he was older now, than his father was, when he turned his back on his father's simple ways, and ventured into the wider world in the certainty of wit-gotten wealth.

Who would have warned him that the wives would one day inspire so little? Amongst his peers there was endless ribaldry and chatter of ageless virility that could be fortified by merry drink, powdered animal parts, and little pills bought from an internet doctor. He played along in the banter, knowing since he was a child that if you were all together in the same boat, you must cheer each other along until you reach safe shores.

The women, he knew, spoke openly about their own changes. He thought about how it must be, to be they. When in their prime, they could either bring men to their knees, or they produced men from between their knees. Then slowly the decline began, and accelerated, until one day undeniably, the regularity of the workings of their womb stopped.

Surely, he thought, men are not the same?

What the World Needs Now

Humanity's need for fashion
in every aspect of its culture,
from Politics to Toilet paper,
Wearies me
From Head to Tail.
There are just too many people,
And they have evolved
with humanists
and religions
and science
and technology,
so there will always be too many people.
There is no wilderness left,
real or virtual,
to give any more escape
to all the living things that need it.
This vacuum that is the blogosphere
has less life
than a square foot of rainforest soil,
than a cubic foot of coral sea.
It is all bland
humanity.

Biofools Day

Today is a sad day for the UK, for the Fools that run this Government still have allowed the RTFO to come into effect today, despites the fact that they know the world has a food shortage, and that biofuel crops have been carved out of virgin natural habitats.

Most of all, today is the ultimate Own Goal for the Green Movement, because the Monbiot ilk which pressed so hard for this type of sustainability, have been unable to halt what they set in motion.

The Green Movement of the Monbiot Wing have been obsessed with halting Climate Change. This obsession has been at the expense of protecting diminishing and precious Natural Habitats, which are suffering encroachment by the inexorable juggernaut of Human Development, regardless of Climate Change.

At no point in the history of this Green Nonsense did anybody ever suggest that people should give up their cars, give their roads, and walk, cycle, or ride a horse instead of switching to biofuels. No, for Man still Loves Cars, even though Cars are growing old and ugly. Cars are making the Planet, and all its creatures and living things great and small, extinct. Man is the worst lover that this Planet has ever had. It is time for the Planet to Dump Him.

The Planet must dump Man.
Yes, dump. Not re-use, or recycle. Dump Man.

Waiting for Ageism to die Out in the Old World

You might as well wait for God. The only Ism that will not grow old and die. In the New World, the battle against ageism is decades ahead of that in the Old World.

In Britain, the youth have always been favoured in employment, because:

- they are more likely to be physically fit (biological ageism)
- they are innocent and ignorant and no threat to their seniors (Machiavellian Ageism)
- they excite the hormones of those whom have not yet had their fill of youth. (sexist ageism)

But Free Tibet. Free Palestine. Free NHS Treatment Forever.

And most importantly,

Buy One Get One Free. Because even those who are all hearts and no brains can count up to one.

A Few of the Old own the World,
and they use Many of the Young
to keep them in the Lifestyles
to Which They are Accustomed.
Free The Economy of Machiavellian Ageism.

The Economics of Sport and the Olympics

Humans and animals have to eat. After they have eaten, they have time and energy. This is either spent on getting the next meal, or if that is an easy bet, it becomes spare time and energy.

Sport is an example of an entertainment that spends spare time and energy. It is a luxury of large organised human groupings. In our modern globalized technologized energy-dependent economic world, there is a lot of spare time and energy in its 6 Billion Human Population.

Sport itself has further specialized. It is now normal that for every one person performing at Sport, over 10000 people are only watching, either in a stadium or on Television. The Olympics are the pinnacle of Globalized Sport Economics. All this time and energy is wasted, instead of being spent on getting the next meal. This time and energy is spare only because of fossil-fueled industrialized agriculture. The work of only one wheat farmer using tractors, chemical fertilizers, GM seed and combine harvesters is enough to feed 10000 people.

Is this desirable? The basis of human economics is that it services human wants. What it does not recognize is that human wants move with fashion. Once it was hugely unfashionable to toil over soil. In substitute, lazing in the spectacle of modern sport has become the unthinking aspiration. Such an aspiration is merely fashion. Who says that Humanity should want this?

Has humanity revisited its reasons for its Wants, so that it can design Global Economics to include Flexibility, Redundancy and Regression? For example, Can Global Economics allow for the human want for some toil over the soil, and the Human Want for Natural Food grown as Part of a Natural Sustainable Ecosystem rich in Living things and Species Diversity?

Unfortunately, Global Economics does not yet answer this simple challenge. Those who ask these simple challenging questions have not even got a voice yet, and a blog like this might never get heard.

The Economics of the Olympics are too old-fashioned.

The Totally Global, International, Planetary Olympic Sport

Loveandtheplanet is now bored beyond distraction of hearing about the Olympics, Tibet, human rights, and China, in an endless loop, stuck in a groove, on permanent replay. You get to a point in a media frenzy when you know that the media and its talking heads have ceased to collect and disseminate new facts, information, or history, and are no longer contributing to the intelligence of its audience, or to the development of solutions.

Everyone knows that the Olympics are not happening in a real place or space, or that the athletes are real human beings. It is fairly obvious if you look at your 40 inch Flat Screen TV that there is not enough space in your TV for full-size human beings to be running, jumping, swimming and behaving like Wild Homo Sapiens. So it must be even more obvious that the Olympics are going to be entirely computer-generated. This is a shame, because I rather prefer the Wild, only because there is nearly none of it left on the planet, and so wild Homo Sapiens are rather precious.

So in response to this year's Tibetan Olympics, held high in the Himalayan intermontane plateau, I propose a new event, which will henceforth be known as the Everests. After all, Mount Olympia is just a molehill.

The EVERESTS will be local. Everyone will participate, so long as they own a remote control.

Their preparation will require them to buy a plane ticket to fly to a foreign land, where they have few friends or family, or where their friends or family are living in an isolated ghetto that is living in its own little world that has nothing to do with that foreign land.

Then these competitors will be required to get a job and to do it. They must not think about what is the product or the purpose of their job, but they must work very hard at it, and earn lots of cash. At the end of the week, they must spend some of that cash to get drunk on cheap booze, so that they are ready to work again on Monday. They must not, under any circumstances, fall ill or get sick.

They must also spend as much of their cash on rent and food as is possible, but they must save up some of it to buy the latest 60 inch Disposable Television from their local supermarket. Oh, I forgot. First they must save up their cash to buy a big, big, big car. Then they can drive to the supermarket to buy their Disposable Television.

And now the competitors are all prepared for the Everests. They must use the remote control and clasp it in one hand while clutching a beer or a bag of crisps in the other hand. They will all be winners, except for one loser, for the last one to switch off the television will be the Loser.

P.S. Apologies to the Nepalese for stealing their mountain for the name of this new competition. Free Nepal. Free times over. Free Nepal. Free Nepal. Free Nepal. Save Nepal. Save Nepal. Save Nepal.

Next blog post will be, the Economics of the Olympics, also known as The Doctrine of Human Wants, also known as Me, Me, Me and my Plastic Card.

Singing singing Buttercups and Daisies

The English, just like so many people around the world, have lost their culture. And just to confirm it, trying to find this on Google took almost longer than going to a library!

Meanwhile, they have been assiduous at preserving the Bricks and Mortar of old buildings that sit stodgily and empty of the living people and culture that built them. The buildings of England are like pickled dead things in a Nazi scientist's laboratory. But you can sell that to a stupid tourist very easily, because there are always more tourists from America, Australia, India, China, Japan, etc., etc., And the tourists never read blogs like this. They are far too busy shopping.

Because indigenous cultural diversity in England has disappeared under the Juggernaut of Globalism, is it any surprise that the English are always desperate to fly away on holidays or to emigrate? It is no longer easy to get a thrill from just going to Strawberry Fair. No, nowadays you have to fly around the world to Kerala while complaining about the crowds on the roads, at the airports, and in the holiday resorts. So Ri-fol, Ri-fol.....

As I was going to Strawberry Fair,
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies,
I met a maiden taking her wares, fol-de-dee.
Her eyes were blue and golden her hair,
As she went on to Strawberry Fair.

Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-li-do,
Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-dee.

"Kind sir, pray pick of my basket," she said;
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies
"My cherries ripe or my roses red, fol-de-dee.
My strawberries sweet I can of them spare,
As I go on to Strawberry Fair."

Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-li-do,
Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-dee.

"Your cherries soon will be wasted away;"
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies
"Your roses wither'd and never stay, fol-de-dee.
'Tis not to seek such perishing ware,
That I am tramping to Strawberry Fair."

Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-li-do,
Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-dee.

"I want to purchase a generous heart;"
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies
"A tongue that neither is nimble nor tart, fol-de-dee
An honest mind, but such trifles are rare.
I doubt if they're found at Strawberry Fair."

Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-li-do,
Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-dee.

"The price I offer, my sweet pretty maid;"
Singing, singing, buttercups and daisies
"A ring of gold on your finger displayed, fol-de-dee,
So come, make over to me your ware
In church today at Strawberry Fair."

Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-li-do,
Ri-fol, Ri-fol, Tol-de-riddle-dee.

Love

To Love is:

- to Care for,
- to Protect
- to Nurture.

Most women do this to their children naturally and usually very well. This is why there are now over 6 billion humans on the planet.

To love the Planet is:

- to Care for the Planet,
- to Protect the Planet,
- to Nurture the Planet.

Most men cannot do this naturally. Nature has for most of Mankind's history, been seen as an enemy. By seeing it as an enemy, Mankind has fought to control and master Nature, and hence has evolved and multiplied at its expense.

Hence to love the Planet is uncommon, especially at this point in Man's history, when it has expanded so rapidly, so aggressively, on the strength of the urge to control and dominate Nature. For only when these common sort of men have exhausted Nature will they exhaust themselves. And only after they have exhausted themselves will the day come for those who can love the planet to take over. Except that there would be no planet left to love.

Hence it follows that those who love the planet, must control Man, before both are devastated.

This has happened before in history. The threat of Nuclear Holocaust was perhaps the best recent example.

The current threat is far more insidious.....

Life Extinction

Bigger Threat Than Global Warming: Mass Species Extinction

11 months after this Independent article, is anything better?

So here we have the New Generation of British Environmentalist Celebrity, Chris Packham trying to spread the discussion to the Youth of Today.

Extinction is still Not Okay. Chris Packham's little provocation is only useful in drawing attention to the fact that Conservationists around the world have very limited resources, and the Planet has got a lot of species dying out.

Meanwhile, lots of money is still spent on wars.

Saving Guyana Tropical Rainforest and ALL its species

The Economy is a subsidiary of the Environment, and NOT the other way around.

The best way of saving any species is to save it where it normally lives, namely in its natural habitat. This is because you save all the things that live with it, and all the things that are interdependent with it, including its food chain.

That is why it is so important to save the few wild places left on this tiny planet called earth.

So news of a way of saving the Guyanese tropical rainforest comes this week and is the first hopeful example of Global Enviromental Economics.

You can also hear about this in the interview with Hylton Murray-Philipson on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme (at about 11.5 minutes into the clip).

Here is a transcript...

BBC's Greg Wood: Canopy Capital has bought 371000 hectares (that is about the size of the island of Majorca). Now, this is about recognizing that Rainforest doesn't just store carbon, which is tradeable, but that they can also provide other services, if you like. For example, they are a catalyst for rainfall in other areas of the world - a commodity which potentially has value for farmers cultivating crops. Canopy Capital claims the deal puts a financial value on rainforest for the first time, and its director, Hylton Murray-Phillipson is here. Good morning. How do you put a value, a tradeable value on the rainforest and those benefits that you outline?

Hylton Murray-Phillipson: That is extremely difficult to do. I could say, invite me back in 12 months time and I will tell you. What I am absolutely convinced of is that the world cannot go along the model that we established since the 19th Century, treating the environment as an externality to economic growth. That was fine when the population was 1.5 billion in 1900, now we are 6.5 billion heading towards 9 billion in the middle of this century. Every single thing in this planet depends on those ecosystem services. The Economy is a subsidiary of the Environment, and NOT the other way around. Whether you want soya in Brazil, rainfall in Lima, or whether you even want crops in the American Midwest, you have to place a value on the rainfall generation of the forest.

I would like to IMMEDIATELY correct the misimpression created by your introduction that we have bought land in Guyana. We have definitively NOT done that. What we have entered into is a partnership to bring value to the ecosystem services of that forest. The forest remains the property of the people of Guyana and specifically the Irokwama reserve.

Greg Wood: But you still expect to make a return, a profit, out of it, and to many people, while your aims will be laudable, perhaps not the right way to go about preserving the environment and the benefits that you set out.

HMP: Well I think that would be a great pity. I think that the only way we are going to turn around the trend of destruction of tropical rainforest is to harness the power of money and markets in conservation. We HAVE to engage the profit motive. It is very important, I would like to make clear, that we DO manage to turn these assets into a profitable enterprise; that 80% of the upside benefit will go to the local communities and local stakeholders.

Laugh In Laugh Out

Last In Last Out
Laugh In Laugh Out

He who laughs First laughs Last.
(First In Laugh Out First Out?)

He who laughs not at all?
Is not getting his share of Laughter.

So that's why socially cohesive populations permit themselves only timid giggles and restrained chuckles?

Naive liberalism is ignorant or immoral

All freedoms, like the rolling of dice, give different outcomes that are either successes or failures.

Liberals are quick to champion the right to a freedom,
Many are quick to claim credit for the successes.

But what of the failures and adverse outcomes?
Even the few who are noble enough to accept the responsibility rarely have the ability or power to make amends.

For once something is broken, it often is impossible to repair.

Prevention is better than cure.

Naive liberalism that does not provide for the outcomes of the liberties championed, is a disservice to society. Naive liberalism is politically useful to individuals whom wish to profit from others' miseries.

Extinction is not okay

Extinction is a part of Evolution.

Ordinary people now say it. Ordinary people who once had the passion to care for all the living species on this planet.

But

Extinction is only as much a part of Evolution, as Death is a part of your Life.

...in relative time.

So why are ordinary people now talking the walk of the Dead?

And is it good to let them stop caring?

No.

So solve it.

Why did it hurt?
They cared once.
They cared so much that it hurt.
It hurt too much for them to care any more.
Someone talked them into facing ~death~,
But talked them out of Living.
Instead they walk like zombies in the global consumerist economy.
Talking the Death of the Planet,
Looking how to fit into the whirl of money,
And clutching the mantra of The Economist,
Entirely distracted by Climate Change.
The species?
They have forgotten that they should
at least
leave the Earth
as they found it,
so that a future child
can stare in wonder
At species in the Wild.

Dave Gorman joins the Disillusioned

It is so nice to know that the celebrities are catching up with the real world. You're not alone, Dave. And you're not the last to find out that the world you thought was still out there, is already ALL gone, thanks to Globalization. Global Corporations, Mass Production, Industrialization of everything.

So maybe the other celebrities will finally let on that there is no dream out there, so put out the stars in your eyes, and save what you can while the sun shines.

Contemplation of Hermitage

Is hermitage good or bad?

Has the individual become a hermit through choice, or not? Is it good for the hermit, or good for the Group, or not?

Man is a Social Animal.
So shall Animals be as Man..

In Nature, what there was once of it, the lone wolf was cast out by the pack.

What combination of individual choice or external circumstance caused a wolf to become lone?

The casting out depends on the season as well as on the explicit inavailability of food. The alpha male will drive out other males whom: threaten his mating rights; will not grovel; or do not contribute adequately to the pack's hunt. The alpha female will drive out other females whom: have lost the attention of the alpha male; do not contribute adequately to the raising of the offspring or to the hunt.

There will be others whom will become lone voluntarily even though it appears that there is no apparent pressure for them to be cast out.

Given that there are Hermits, and there are Lone Wolves, and that some are Outcast, and some are Voluntary:

in Man, the Voluntary Hermit will be the individual who either:
- foresees and preempts the eventuality of the casting out
- through randomly inherent difference, seeks his chances separate from the group.

Is the Outcast Hermit lesser?

What are the evolutionary opportunities for the different options?

The voluntary hermit will have the advantage of seeking new territories while there is still adequate food locally and while there is no competition from the later hermits. The voluntary hermit has the disadvantage of enduring risk that might never have become forced upon him.

The outcast hermit has the advantage of having nothing left to lose, but at a time when there might be nothing else left to gain.

*******

Can the voluntary hermit rejoin the Group at some future time? Yes, if conditions are suitable for him to rejoin. If the conditions are not suitable, then these are likely, but not certain, to be the conditions where he would have become an outcast in any case.

********

The condition of hermitage is sometimes voluntary, sometimes not.

Where it is voluntary, there is at least the option of checking if the Social Group is more beneficial.

Where it is involuntary, hermitage is a challenge, which might as well be seized as an opportunity.

That's Life, in a snail shell.

The Globalists: World Economic Forum

So this is in the news today.

The ultimate collection of Globalists. People who want to set policies that affect the whole planet.

And organised by people in Geneva. And you thought the Swiss just kept time and sold substitutes for sex?

They also sell a value system (the sort that buffered Einstein), and lots of tourism. Environmentally damaging international tourism, from Weekend ski trips to Long-haul World Seminars.

Why do the Swiss let this happen? From their lofty position high in the leafy melting Alpine mountains, maybe they think they can look down at the world more successfully than everybody else? Or maybe the Swiss spend so much time brokering between divergent cultures that they are the quintessential globalists and peace seekers.

The Alps have a good ski season this winter, global warming not withstanding, so there won't be much complaint heard from them about how their Globalism is destroying their local environment. But what is left of the Swiss local culture?

There is not a lot of local culture left in Switzerland. And they seem to do nothing to stop the damage, let alone begin to reverse it. Think Nestle. Do the Swiss drink milk squeezed the same morning from the dairy cow on their local farm. Of course not. And they can't remember how to do it, even if they wanted to. They have sold their souls and their culture and their land for an easy life, for World Peace, in a way that was directed by their World War 2 experience. They have been pushed this far by the experience of a war that finished 62 years ago. How long can you be pushed, before it becomes time for you to be pulled?

Is there a famous Swiss Luddite in history? Or is there still to be one?

Is it possible to have World Peace without all-pervasive and inexorable Social and Industrial Globalism?

Rise up, Luddites versus the Borg, the Antz, the Matrix

Fuse the Borg, the Matrix, and populate it with the Antz, and if you have seen all those, you have a picture of the world you live in.

So why are Luddites so derided and ridiculed? Just because they were shown to be losers at their time? That did not mean that their time would never come. Or that they would never be needed.

Rise up, Luddites. Unless of course you're a Mennonite, which I think is ultra cool, in which case, go and beget.

The Borg, the Antz, the Planet You Were Born in

Big World out there.. Big Planet. You think? Maybe not as big as it used to be.

A shrunken planet, called a global village. Now it becomes a global suburb.

What job do you do? One that is a tiny cog in a machine bigger than ever before in human history. You may live in a suburban house, drive a suburban car, and have a suburban wife, but your part is so small, and part of a huge juggernaut that marches over this globe, this planet this Earth.

Do you have a choice? Did you ever? You play your role because you are tied to the Borg-like system, like one of many Antz, even when you have asked the question, you gave up on finding an alternative. You are afraid of living without those things that are called Wealth. You have less choice today than your parents, or their parents before them. Maybe you live in a poor village that is not part of our Global Economic Borg. It will not be long. Even if you are in the darkest bowels of the Congo, you will be swallowed up soon. We have people whom think that they will rescue you from poverty, while all they have to offer is another version of slavery, after all these centuries. These fools are born too quickly too be stopped. Quickly, teach them what is the meaning of their baubles and gaudy frippery, this wealth that they are beholden to.

Once the Global Economists measured Wealth in Televisions. Once they measured it in cars. Now everyone has a television, and all the fools also have cars, and they cannot live without them. If Wealth is something that you cannot live without, then the great container ships of commerce should be laden heavily with Heroin.

All Wealth is not something to be shied from just because it is Good to do so. Wealth has to be defined, and prioritized. Understand what wealth it is that you really need, what are those most important things to you, and shy from the rest. Help others to understand what is truly of value, and they will be wealthy simply from this knowledge.

Passion in Poetry

Passion only comes through in certain ways. You may have the same or even greater passions than Amy Winehouse, but if you haven't got the diaphragm and vocal cords to express it, who is going to know.

So then there is so called poetry, such as:

Better to Die In Rapture
Than to Lie and Rot Away
You will be My Coffin
And I will be Your Grave
Take My Lips, Suck In My Soul
You're the Half that Makes Me Whole.

I am delighted to say that I wrote it a long time ago, and I have no time for it now. Hence it is being published. It is copyright to me, me, me.

Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but memories

And Stop Those Who Do Otherwise.

Arrest Them.

Lock Them Up.

Re-educate Them, Or Brainwash Them, Or Get them addicted to something that is only Self-Destructive, for example, computer games, or blogging?

Blogs Live

They come back to life!

Flog a Blog

Either for money or for the fun of it?

Site Under Reconstruction

Building Works. This site is under reconstruction. We apologize for the inconvenience at this time. As most of you are cerebral intellectuals, building works are a bit physical and dirty for you: so in the meantime, stare at the middle of this screen, and contemplate eternity???

It is not Still, Still it is winter,

It's been windy, gusty, not too nice. Heavy floods in Carlisle. Under the numbness, I'm feeling yearnings for summer. I even went back to June in my Archives, to remind myself! How funny it is to read things that I have forgotten I had written! I didn't know it was possible to entertain yourself this way. I always knew that I was two totally different people in winter versus summer.

It gives me an idea that has never really crossed my mind, which must be the engine of some writers. To take your one person, and to write it for another part of you. So SummerMe can write little loving Blog Posts to be read by WinterMe, 6 months later. I really like this idea. Couldn't be more self-loving than that, can you?

**
Dear SummerMe,

My eyes and soul and heart yearn to stand on a beach before the sea, in a warm breeze, the heat of sunshine falling on my naked skin. Blue, in a cloudless sky. Blue on a stretching sea. Flanked on the left and right by protective headlands, green. Trees behind me. Sand on my left. Sand on my right.

I yearn so much I've managed to cry just thinking about it. Tsunamis cannot stop that desire. I will be back to Thailand, one day. Or some such.

**

I have walls, I have lights, I even have enough heat, and now I have somewhere to go from Mondays to Fridays. But it is nothing like the Freedom of Summer. Colin reminded me of the bike ride to Brighton I did last August . It is so long buried by our Season of Darkness, that it is hard for me to imagine how I even got as far as Eltham. The most beautiful thing I remember most, I summarized into one sentence: "I was looking at Ashdown Forest and marvelling at the beautiful Pine trees". How terse I was. No mention that dusk was settling over me. Nor that I had the smooth tarmaced road entirely to myself, even without cars. Nor that the gorse and pine left a crystal sweet scent in the air, the smell of which is heaven to think of, more so now when my sinuses still will not let me breathe clearly. Nor that there was the pristine solitude I felt, of at last getting away from the hell of human population, at last free and unencumbered, even if for just a few hours, at the mercy of Nature's bosom.

**

But in the morning I will be back to my magnolia painted walls, in my battery human farm, under my fluorescent light, faced by the radiant smile of my computer screen. It pays me money. That's civilization. Bring back my God.

Expensive, overpriced, London and its Transport

London tube, train and bus fares went up in the New Year, by much more than inflation. I was furious, because Ken Livingstone, the Mayor (NightMare) of London, is a major self-serving hypocrite.

Everything went up in price. For a simple return (round-trip) journey into Central London, from where I live (which is in Zone 3 of the six concentric fare zones of London), my cheapest option is a one-day off-peak Travelcard costing £5.20. This is up 11% on the previous fare of £4.70. (NOTE, foreigners that this is "off-peak", which means you cannot even use it before 9.30 a.m on Mondays to Fridays). Also:

1. He's gotten rid of the Weekend Travelcard, which used to save 25% on buying two single one-day travelcards.
   
2. Bus Saver tickets, for a single journey on a bus, are up 57% from £0.70 pence to £1.00 each now.
   
3. A one-day bus pass is now £3.00, up 25% from £2.40
   
4. The cheapest adult Tube ticket for any kind of Underground (aka subway) trip is now £1.30, and that is outside zone 1 and within a single one of the other ring zones. In other words, it is only good for about 2 or 3 stops in the suburbs.
   

Ken Livingstone's ability to charm people is undoubted. The trouble with Ken is that he needs to throw around money in order to achieve change. And the people who are charmed by him are lemmings who need a Pied Piper.

Ken Livingstone is just like Napoleon the Pig from Orwell's Animal Farm. He's doing very well himself now, but he's done nothing for the Londoners who are paying their own way and earning low wages of £4.50 to £6.00 an hour. For part-time employees, the Transportation costs in London are particularly painful, since they cannot justify buying 7-day Travelcards, and have to buy expensive daily ones.

**

These annual above-inflation increases in London Transport fares are typical of how skewed is the British economy. Calculations of the Inflation Rate in this country are misleading, because Economists are unimaginative, unchallenged, and self-preserving. The inflation rate which they report takes into account basic commodities mostly. So remember that China and the Far East have allowed us to import piles of goods and commodities at prices cheaper than 10 years ago. Even more importantly, their monetary economic strategy is to keep their currencies near-to-worthless, which makes Western currencies fatly-overvalued. Our "low" inflation is substantially imported. There will be a massive price to pay for this, and it's not far off.

**

So why come to London, unless you're rich, or a package tourist just stopping over for a few days? At least you can leave, and go home. Pity the bastards who are born here, not rich, and don't have anywhere to go back to!

Imagine you work full-time in a shop in Central London, and you're getting £6.00 an hour (for which they expect you to be grateful and smiling, because some jobs only pay £4.50 an hour). You take home about £200 a week after taxes. You can only afford to live in Zone 3 in London, where you have struggled to find a reasonable room in a houseshare at £80 a week, even though it's in the poor part of London. Now your 7-Day Travelcard to travel to work costs you £25 a week, a whopping 12.5% of your take-home pay.

You're left with £95 a week, to eat, clothe yourself, and pay for your Mobile phone bills. When you consider that this is only £40 more than the Job Seeker's Allowance of £55 a week that the Established unemployed are getting on top of housing benefit and council tax benefit (by the way, if you can't speak English, it's a sure way of staying on the dole forever).

And this calculation doesn't even factor in what happens if you have children.

The most deprived class of person in London today is in fact the low-waged single, childless, male without family/community connections. Sadly, there are many more such men indigenous and born in this country who have no Social Network to help them out. Their better bet is the prison system. Even new immigrants fare better than the estranged low-waged, English-born single childless male. This is simply because most immigrants who arrive in London are following in the footsteps of friends and relatives, who are eager to offer them support. Many indigenous, English-born men are spurned as trash by their own countrymen. (And I hasten to add, once again, that even Lefties who read the Guardian will always heap scorn upon their compatriots who buy the Sun/Star newspaper, even though the Tabloid reader does so out of desperation and illiteracy that is sometimes psychiatrically beyond correction).

No, no, no. It would really have been a proper Boxing Day if the Tsunami had killed 150,000 dogs and cats. Then you would have seen England at its most ridiculous: fucked up and celebrating its piety.

Freedom of Information Act

Tsunamis are distracting people who are wasting time feeling over-sentimental, when sentimentality is less productive than genital masturbation.

The Freedom of Information Act is now fully alive. So far the media has used it to feed us silly tidbits about "what happened 30 years ago". Big deal. The power now is the right of anyone to find out where money is being spent in every public institution up and down the land.

Here's a summary of features:
1. The public should not have things hidden from them. Information should be released unless there is a strong justification for withholding it.
2. Any person, who makes a request for information, must be informed whether the information is held and, if so, that information must be supplied. People making requests do not have to be British citizens, nor do they do have to prove their identity. The person making the request does not have to state why they want the information.
3. Requests must be in writing, and can be on paper, email or fax. The person making the request must give their name and address, and describe the information they want.
4. You must be provided with as much information as is available. A publication scheme may list all documents and publications that are available to the public, which are free or not, and how they may be obtained. You can ask for any recorded information held.
5. The exemptions are set out in the Acts. At local government level, it will be unusual for all the information in a document to be exempt, so while some part may be removed because of an exemption, the rest will be released.
Some information is exempt from provision under Freedom of Information, but is available under other legislation. The Data Protection Act 1998 controls the release of personal information. The Environmental Information Regulations 1992 gives the public access to information held by us relating to the state of water, soil or land, air, animals or plants.
6. On the state of water, soil or land, air, animals or plants, response must be within two months. For any other non-personal information, in general, response must be within 20 working days.
7. If a charge applies, you should be told before you are provided the information and also what the charge is likely to be.
8. If someone is not happy with the response to their request, they can complain to the Information Commissioner, who can instruct the government agency to give them the information they asked for.

%^&*

Moderately irritable, unable to just veg out, can't smell properly, taste properly, or think properly, and yearning to feel just a bit of fun, any kind at all! And this isn't even a bad cold, just one that is stuck in my sinuses! At lunchtime I was wandering inside Marks & Spencers, feeling so lightheaded that I thought I was been ghost-partnered in a Nutcracker Suite dance.
AARRGGGGHHHH!!!!!

I really want to get blasted drunk when it's gone! Sudafed gave me about 3 hours of feeling nearly normal, but that pseudoephedrine hydrochloride stuff has never served me well whenever I've used it for a regular dose.

But it was such a delight when I got into the office this morning, and a female colleague remarked with concern, as soon as I opened my mouth, "was I all right, I sounded all nasal!". Well, I can surely tell you, all the partners I have had in the past ever did fail to notice anything wrong with me until I was screaming blue murder that I was ill. So really, to be true, I'm not missing anything more by being single, than if I had someone around. Sad, but true.

I guess I'll just have to wait for it to blow over. But perversely, in the meantime, I wouldn't mind a rough scrap right now. When no pleasure seems to counter an inner physical pain, only an external pain (well, a gentle version thereof: I'm no Mike Tyson) can distract it and charge the body with adrenalin and testosterone, (the deficit of which, leaves you feeling half dead anyway). No, that sentence is not as long as one of Darwin's.

Blogs in the UK versus USA versus Canada

Tao of Poker

I came across the gambling poker-playing subculture of blogging here, and the foreign language so amazed me. It reminded me how puzzled I am about the differences between the blogging worlds in the USA, Canada and the UK. The Internet might be global, but its peoples are still very, very different.

They cut down Five of Them this Weekend

The London Shakespeare Workout Homepage

He said, "They cut down Five of them this Weekend". In the Prison.

I asked, "What do you mean they 'cut them down'?"

Well, one of them did commit suicide, and the others tried. Apparently in this prison of 800, there were 5 attempted suicides by self-hanging over the Christmas weekend.

Little bits of information from the horse's mouth, which frankly, do depress me. It's bad enough that the world is so imperfect. I'm the kind of person who wants things fixed, instead of the kind of person who just walks around with gossamer wings, saying "..it's so sad, isn't it..", with eyelids fluttering.

One and a half hours on the phone. Performing Arts types all bear the same hallmarks. Barrels of self-faith that run deeper than the Mariana Trench, and then the self-hyping garrulous effusiveness that is essential to survive in the profession. But at the end of it all, what did I gain from the encounter, except the opportunity to pick up off the floor piles of names that were dropped in front of me. In a society with too much celebrity culture already, should I really give a damn? Shall I use the names as a substitute for a vocabulary? Will they maybe fill out a soup for my dinner?

Anyway, although I commend the activity of taking Shakespeare into prisons to bring hope and opportunity to the inmates, I like to take a broader view. Who is making efforts to deter people from making the mistakes that lead them to become criminals, then caught and imprisoned? The Guardian? You can't even get people to buy a newspaper, let alone read Shakespeare. Not until they're stuck in a prison with nowhere else to go.

**

Ok, so I've got a sinus headache, and although it's sunny, I'm in a bad mood. Only a sauna will work on this, and I've got to drag my sorry old ass over to one, self-will or not, and cough up the mini-mortgage along with the rest of this semi-dormant cold virus. Times like this, a big raging rant is more relieving than all the money earned by Vodaphone's executives from the brainless kids who blow fortunes on mobile phones.

Ilford is no pleasure. The Boxing Day Sales there did not entice me to spend fifty pence today. Hard to believe it used to be a posh place to live, over ten years ago. It has been vitally apparent for a while, that the English have deserted it, the way they abandoned Newham. But still it depresses me, because I remember how it used to be, and because it is my nearest substantial shopping centre. Curiously enough, you don't even see any bespectacled, frowning, studied political science at University types. They're very eager to defend censorship of free speech in places like East London, but they don't actually live anywhere near here. No, I suspect they're all in Camden, Clerkenwell, Notting Hill and Brixton or even holidaying in their second homes in Cyprus and Bulgaria?

On the Second Day of Christmas

,,, I ate a Partridge and bought Two Pears....

Recipe Partridge Soup Casserole:

Take an Oven Ready Partridge bought from your local branch of Global Supermarket Plc. Pluck the rest of the feathers out, because the electric-feather-zapper that they use in the abattoir doesn't get them all out. Wash the partridge inside and out, and shake lightly to get all the water off.

Cut up the partridge with a pair of kitchen scissors. Don't sweat over it - the partridge is very dead already. A snip across the middle to separate the front end from the back end. Then a snip down the middle of the breast to split it so you can flatten it.

Season the partridge with a sprinkling of allspice, generous Millings of Black Pepper, and grindings of sea salt. Leave for half an hour.

Meanwhile, wash and take out any nasty bits from some new potates, but don't peel them. Then Cut them up into chunks about an inch across. Don't cube them, just chunk them! Take some organic carrots, and after washing them, chop them up into a similar size. Take half the leafy stalks from a head of celery, and slice them up into quarter inch lengths.

Take a ten-inch saucepan and douse the base with two tablespoons of sunflower oil, (it's lighter than olive, corn or peanut oil, which would make a partridge far too overbearing). When the oil is seasoned, chuck the partridge in, and flatten it against the bottom of the pan. Do each side of the meat until it starts to turn brown, but not too much longer. Then throw 2 pints of water into the pan, add the potatoes and carrots, and bring to the boil. Turn down and Simmer for five minutes, then throw in the celery, and Love and the City's XXX Secret Ingredient.

XXX secret ingredient, consists of a bit of beetroot juice, a bit of vinegar, a bit of garlic, and a few coins of celeriac that have been marinading in it for 2 weeks. If you haven't been so prepared, then just peel and chop a clove of garlic, and add two slices of pickled beetroot out of a store-bought jar! Alternatively, Love ant the City's XXX Secret Ingredient will soon be available in your local branch of Global Supermarket PLc, on the shelf with the profitable secretions of Jamie Oliver, Lloyd Grossman, Gordon Ramsay etcetera, etcetera.

Cook for another 15 minutes and then enjoy it in this order. Remove the partridge, and devour it with carnivorous lust, relishing it and gratefully noting its gamey smell and taste. Then say a short prayer to thank the Planet, and any Gods that might really Exist, that it's not KFC, or WORSE, McDonalds, Burger King, or some Shitty-coloured Vindaloo.

Ladle the soup and vegetables into a deep bowl, and slurp it with guttural grunts and satisfaction, and compare your efforts with Campbell's, Heinz, Baxters, or Supermarket-Name Brand.

Then check the Pears you bought, and imagine a proper full-sized Thirty-foot high pear tree, not just some Garden-Centre Nursery-bred dwarf that was bred to ooze pears out of its scrawny 7 foot high frame.

There you go, the perfect way to have a Second Day of Christmas, described in elementary detail, but not to the painful reduction that Delia Smith would subject it to. Because it just might be, dear Reader, that you aren't a total Brainless SheepPerson.

Tsunamis in Escapist Pleasuregrounds

Earthquake in South East Asia, Tsunami in Phuket. Well, sometimes it pays to be out of the Middle-class Economy, doesn't it? I mean, I could so easily be there, in Phuket, escaping Christmas and the British winter, on a beach, soaking up the sun, lamenting at dreadful Blighty, admiring the sexy Thais, taking the Pound for granted, but I'm not. So the New Wave generation has met their Tsunami.

Here it's a gloriously sunny blue sky day from horizon to horizon, and only 2 degrees C. No Tsunami here, yet!

On the First Day of Christmas, I gave to me True Love

What a lovely evening I'm having. The radio is playing blissful choral works, the Xmas lights are up and flashing. The Christmas meal was done at Simon's, and my body has already retaliated against the over-richness by going to the toilet THREE times. Outside, London is quiet, and not the scary mad aggressive nuthouse that gets your hackles up. And there is no Xmas peer pressure around me, and I can just love me. Gosh, it's so much fun and so much easier when you know you've got a job, even a temporary unglamorous one.

Colin had dropped by yesterday evening, entirely by surprise, to drop off a Xmas gift and a card. I left the gift under my Jade plant, which I've strung with tinsel to be my Xmas tree. This year, I have made no concessions to the materialistic consumptive travesty of mis-interpreted Christmas that British Sheep-People are expected to obey. Honestly, except for splashing out yesterday on a £10.50 box of Thornton's chocolates, as my contribution to today's Christmas meal, I have spent scarcely a penny on Christmas. So cards have been kept to less than 6 sent out, and I have bought no presents for anyone.

With monastic anti-materialism, I left Colin's gift unopened, in my spirit of Xmas, expecting it to be nothing more than a blank diary or notebook. (Come to think of it, I really think I feel monastic spirituality!)

So while chatting with Richard this evening, he was just telling me about a hilarious book that chronicles jobs from hell. After I hung up, I opened my little gift from Colin, and with delighted surprise, found that he had got me "The Idler book of Crapjobs - 100 Tales of Workplace Hell". The very book that Richard was speaking of! What and extremely thoughtful and apt choice. The book is a joy to browse, for me, after career-change hell that I'm still pulling out of.

Back to having fun, and off the Blogger....

Happy Christmas

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE WHO READS THIS BLOG, and those of you in the Blogosphere with whom I have connected over the past year. May you all have a Happy New Year.

. .

It opened with a blue sky beautiful morning, and we might get some snow here this afternoon/evening.

The Spectator, The Observer, The Insulated Voyeur

The Eva Hart is the Wetherspoons pub in Chadwell Heath. I really, really like it. If you're from, for example, Fulham, and/or for example, only settled in Rotherhithe, and/or for example, only arrived in Tower Hamlets in the last ten years, then:

You won't understand why, so try moving to for example, Hampshire, and/or for example, back to Birmingham.

Given the choice of putting up Christmas lights, or going to the pub tonight, I picked the right choice. My life is worth living after all. Amen.

This morning I almost died of shock, or rather, from choking on my own vomit, when on Nick Ferrari's morning slot on LBC Radio, I heard advertisements, in the voice of Boris Johnson (?) for the Spectator magazine. "The Spectator.... Unashamedly elite".

I hope the current ownership of the Spectator is not related to LBC radio. How could LBC sully themselves by carrying such a naffly inappropriately targeted ad?

Spectators, Observers, journalists, are all dangerously voyeuristic. Myself as a Blogger,I hope I shall kill this blog before I stoop to their level, for I already see it happening. Relativity, without having to involve yourself into Einstein's spaced-out mathematics, means voyeurism is worthless and even destructive.

Woman: Simon, you like watching, don't you?
Simon: Yes, Kimberley, you KNOW that....
Woman: Would you like to watch me doing it with another man?
Simon: Yes, wow! I've always wanted to do that! But how? They wouldn't like me watching!
Woman: Aaaaah! But what if I did it with a blind man? Then you could be standing right there, and watching, and he wouldn't know!
Simon: Ooooh! That's disgusting! But you witchy bitch, exciting! It would work, you know, but I'd have to be careful about not wearing aftershave or smelly shampoo scents, I think! Where would you find someone like that?
Woman: HA HAhaha! Don't worry... They don't call me Network Southeast for nothing! I'm American, and you poor English sods are so, so, so naive.
Simon: Who ARE you thinking of?
Woman: Well, a certain man by the name of Blunkett????... (titter)
Simon: WHAT! NO! REALLY! Wow, I'm getting excited just thinking about it!
Woman: Just think of the stories you could tell the little Hoggarts, or better yet, your faithful, brainless Guardian readers
Simon: Ok, I WANT to do this.....Kimberley, you know I LOVE you!
Woman: I love you TOO, Simon, and I want to have your babies!


X left a message on my machine tonight. Fine. Just stay away a little (or maybe a lot) longer, please. I'm alive. You're alive. That's enough to know, and I want no more ....

Back to important things. The Solstice is here. Tomorrow is a celebration. Then comes the Twelve days of Christmas. Christmas shall start on Christmas day, but in my weakness, shall include Christmas Eve. And this one, shall be the most special Christmas ever, because it will entirely be within my soul....

A Good day on a Monday is as rare as a Red Squirrel

Well hallelujah, having had a good day at the office! Everything just seemed to settle for me at a level that I felt comfortable in. As if, with the conscious blogging self-analysis, and a weekend of rotting, my subconscious arrived at a medium place that accommodated my conflicting parts.
So let me list the things that I should be glad of:

1. My fourth day of earnings! Having seen no cash come in for so long, every day of earnings seems to be a bonus.
   
2. Because I had to get out to go to work, I got to witness the first morning of hard frost we've had so far this season, and the Flats were covered in icy mist, while the rising sun was a glowing orange in a fairly clear sky. The sun was further south-east than I've ever seen (it's normally hidden behind clouds at this time of year!) At last, it seemed obvious how primitive peoples could accurately identify the solstices, and equinoxes, and thereby a calendar.
   
3. It was cold and crisp, but everybody seemed happier and chirpier today. Any weather is better than gray clouds, and rain, when you've had more of it than you can bear.
   
4. My ucky feeling of illness over the weekend seems to be receding, with sure tell-tale signs of energetic sneezing showing that my immune system is kicking back properly at last.
   
5. Brentwood is not in London. Hooray! As I wandered about during my lunch-break, I felt as gleeful as a prisoner escaped. Even a road leading towards the Travis Perkins seemed to be an exciting adventure!
   
6. The people at work are nice, and it's coming up to Christmas, so they're probably even more cheerful than I could expect them to be.
   

The weekend was a struggle, though. While the stomach cramps were subsiding, the ucky feeling of something half way between a cold and a flu marinated in my bones. On Saturday, a bike ride to Stratford to stock up on beer from Morrison's, and then a night time march about in the neighbourhood, just about made me feel alive. Picked up Iain Sinclair's book, Thameside, and from first flippings, I don't know when I'll feel able to get into it.

Then Sunday opened up to be a beautiful sunny blue skied cold day, and I wished I had a conservatory with a ceiling high enough for a patio heater, and a sunlounger. Nonetheless, in the middle of the day, I almost dozed off while sitting and staring at, feeling unable to get out the front door. Here I must congratulate myself, for I willed myself to get out on the bicycle, and had a very useful trip to Waitrose in Woodford.

Now what can I say, except that with my demanding standards in food, I would shop at Waitrose all the time, if money were no object. And on a Sunday afternoon, their clientele were a universe away from the mish-mash grubby-fingering nouveaux emigres at the Leyton Asda. The joy of entering into sophisticated civilized shopping circles was not lost on me, nor was the new freedom to pick up things that I would normally have denied myself. And people actually spoke English there! And they had high-minded values such as expecting quality, variety, and traceability of their food!

The trouble with being me, is I can be a complete chav peasant, or a complete bourgeois snob, but I can't just be one or the other. I have to satisfy both aspects of me, and the Waitrose aspect has been too long denied.

But the best part was that I parked my bike at exactly the same time as someone else, and then came out of the supermarket to find him packing his shopping onto his bike. Although I still felt at a relatively low and ucky ebb, I thought I must engage him in conversation. I've never met any other guy at any supermarket who was crazy enough to pack their piles of weekly shopping onto their bike. And so ensued a half-hour long chat outside the supermarket. He was a very nice fellow, and I really regret that I did not have the wherewithal to steer our conversation into a friendly pub, because it is so, so difficult to find friendly people in London that you can enjoy a chat with. Of course, I sussed out that he was a Geordie, because his accent so reminded me of one Terry that I met years ago at a university course. And of course, this explains why he was so friendly. Geordies are verbally approachable and are friendly and sociable with it, for they are brought up with the imprint of this responsibility. This means they are really good at making connections with strangers, but they can be a bit shy about taking that connection to a higher level of intensity when they desire it.

Well, I hope I bump into him again, and since he lives in Wanstead, that might be not so strange. He's even greener than I ever used to be, which without being a Swampy-style eco-warrior, is difficult. A man who owns a car by virtue of it having been given to him, but only manages to do 1000 miles a year in it. I know people who do 1000 miles a week, easily, and gave up despairing at them! I might be a very disillusioned Greenie, but I felt very comfortable around him because of his values.

The Drowning of Male Sexuality

The sun is in a swathe of blue sky flanked by grey clouds, very low down although it's near midday, for this is winter. Its beautiful, beautiful light is swooping down to brighten a patch of my small lawn, and green, green, green in spring shades bounces into my head. My eyes are seized by the clarity and content, and gratefully, almost worshipfully, my brain picks out each blade of grass, following and tracing their detailled lines.

Towards the open ground on the Flats, there is enough blue that the bare London Plane trees stand their magnificence against it, their pale upright limbs reaching upwards with obvious grace. Again, my brain launches forth, like a hawk released, seeking out visual sustenance in the distance, and the flush running into my body tells me that I am at last being resuscitated.

Love myself, I had said. Don't wait. Find yourself a cure. Perhaps some sophisticated classical music, instead of the usual XFM, Virgin, or Magic? Radio 3 even? So Maracas accompanied me to the windows.

Seventeen hours I was prostrated on the sofa, with a TV as my only nursemaid, and many forages into the kitchen in unsuccessful attempts to push life back into myself, but few trips to the bathroom to push the death out. And my stomach all the time feeling mildly cramped, as though it were stuffed with garlic-flavoured lead and strangled by cling-film. I felt somewhat ill, but this does not yet count as being sick. This was not caused by food, I don't think. It may have been the bug that was hovering in me all week, augmented by ones met in my forced occupation of public transportation and workplace. Or it may have been true neurosis, or psychosomatic magnification of a genuine pathogenic disease by being a working person now.

For Day Three happened so quickly, that I fully reverted to the Life of the Office Worker that I used to live, accommodating it with habituated mechanisms learned over many years. Ones which came into operation without any opportunity for me to understand them or to consider their relevance. Prevention, is better than Cure, but they all clicked in before I could see which undesirable ones I might prevent. By the end of the day, familiar manifestations of the effects of how I habitually suffer working in an office, had appeared.

On the train home, opportunities for wandering off at intermediate stations are drowned by a desire to get home without any further ado. My face is in a mask of battery-chicken contentment, while my eyes cast about desperately for something to consume. It is dark already outside, of course, but thankfully there are a few handsome heads to admire. These are normal going-home times for working people, and these people still exist beyond Seven Kings. You see few of these handsome people in East London, especially if you're living in the world of the unemployed (the broader sense, e.g. including the sick and the elderly). And it's hard to believe that I ever had any heterosexual inclinations earlier in the year. These men I view today, as it ever was when I worked in an office, are the only visions that I can cling to until I get home. The women only seem to get in the way.

This is why I said it was a gay job. By the end of the day, I feel that I have so resoundingly repressed my sexual, physical animal self, that to rescue me from the human spiritual suffocation, I have no alternative but to BE GAY. To seek out the images of men who are stronger, and appear to be freely expressing their manly, masculine selves. Today's office culture is even more enforcedly unisexual than it was 20 years ago, whence sexual liberation was already de facto. But outside, today's social culture, I hate to say it, is a never-before-seen perversion where men and women are expected to deny their sexual differences. For men, this means drowning every molecular trace of their chest-beating, thrusting, warring, dominating, lustful selves. For women, it means the opposite.

Also, it's an office culture which has seen the full invasion and assimilation of computers. So you're more likely to spend the day staring at a computer screen, than by interacting with your colleagues to hunt down the goals of your socio-economic work tribe.

It's all draining to my soul, and I have to find a way to keep it all in perspective. The simplest ideal is to reduce the entire experience to the exchange of my time, for money - necessary money. In the meantime, I am now savouring the memory of me, working as a gardener in the height of summer, shirt off, sweaty and dirty, my brain in tune with every muscle in my body, driving around in a Transit tipper with the windows down and the radio blaring, and in the last redoubt of others who even more blatantly have refused the prissy pussification of our world. If only we could have more summer, and less winter.....

And aptly for my topic, those BBC/Guardian/Labour intellectuals have this week been wondering why binge-drinking has taken over British society. And for the time being, their solution is to stick more police in the boozy troublespots all over the country, especially for the Christmas drinking season. They never seem to think about basic human instincts, and the need to provide sustenance for them. How else can young people today come to terms with their animal selves, if they refuse to be contained in a cage of Xbox Playstation virtuality?

Day Two and I am quickly slipping into the other Universe

I must blog before I forget. Already, I see myself slipping back into the same rut that always dragged me down in office jobs. Walking home from the station like a zombie already! Grabbing something to munch on as soon as I've walked in through the front door, just to remind my animal self that I have a sensory existence! Wondering how to get more money, how to get more challenge, how to get more out of life, and how to find some joy.

*
So there I was, sitting alone in my office all morning. No computer ID yet, because hey, that's the efficiency of outsourced I.T.! And rather than be bored, I just sit peacefully, with only a shadowy view of a grey cloudy sky, under flourescent lighting, surrounded by old-painted magnolia walls. I'm studying the files that I'm supposed to file, even though the subject matter is alien to me, and although I feel no passion for it, I am still able to maintain enough interest to absorb the facts.

And it occurs to me, why couldn't I just get on with business like this when I was at home with so much time on my hands? I couldn't. I tried. I found I could never ever be a self-employed person, because I just could not bring myself to do it. Was it lack of motivation? No, because I needed an occupation, but that was not enough. Was it lack of interest? Well I'm not interested in Social Services either, but that doesn't stop me in my new office job.

It really must be just that I'm getting paid, or that I KNOW I'm getting paid. I know it's enough to live, even if it's not enough to live well. That security is enough, that in my own time, I feel I can apply myself to seek a task and aim to achieve something productive from it. At home, unpaid, no enormous carrot held in front of me can be my guaranteed reward even if I should struggle towards it. I can expend effort, but in the uncertainty of risky outcomes, I know that I might have nothing, absolutely nothing to show for it at the end. Is this the true essence of the chains that hobble a Wage Slave? I am surely a wage slave, then. Much as I may despise my condition, I am the quintessential wage slave.

I wonder how much of this is childhood upbringing, and adult habituated conditioning, or how much is inherently genetic? Centuries of civilization based on wage slaves must surely have an effect on the evolutionary selection and success and numbers of my kind! I blog this question for my future consideration, and any hope of finding a way to break my chains. I have admired self-employed people, particularly your work-a-day tradesman, for a very long time, and I must know why I find it so difficult to do what they do.

*
By the afternoon, signs of future despair were already showing. I had saturated my brain already with governmental systems that I found to be predictably bureaucratic and wasteful. Eager to find something concrete to do, I was relieved to finally get my User ID. Soon after, my usually absentee boss, who dropped in, found me a tedious job which will easily last me a few days.

The key word here is tedious. I've only gone into this temp job to experience the novelty of earning money again, and to benefit from the external social contact, and the external discipline it puts on my life. Yet instantly, the job she has dumped on me becomes clearly and obviously tedious.

Never mind the fact that I'm supposed to be intelligent, educated and above all this kind of work, blah, blah, blah. That's a simplistic and trite analysis, and not correct anyway. I judge a task to be tedious if it takes more time than is warranted by the benefit it brings to the world.

The question to be asked is, "At what point in time did my mercenary professionalism become superceded by my altruistic idealism?" Whatever I do, what ever task I should undertake, why should I concern myself with its permanence, and its beneficial effect to the world around me? I am supposed to only concern myself with taking my wages home.

This altruistic idealism is the characteristic that conflicts seriously with my wage slave dependency. Without it, I could surely have spent 20 years in the same job/company, like people I've met who I used to think were insane, moronic, or space aliens. Without it, I might have had the patience to reach a cushy little fatcat executive level, and sit there, and be the kind of person that the Talking Heads hated. A person who would finding myself at the wheel of a large automobile, with a beautiful wife, and a beautiful house, but not asking myself, "How did I get here?"

The very opposite type of person to me, and you've met many of them too, I'm sure, is entirely mercenary. They can be completely oblivious to whether their actions precipitated the destruction of the entire human race, the planet and all its plants and animals.

Could I be a little more in the middle? I'm not sure that the altruistic idealism is entirely caused by a fundamental Catholic belief that Good must always guard against Evil. I think some of it comes from an analytical and systematic perception of order. Where everything is eventually reduced to a mass of black boxes each with only input and output. A belief in Utilitarianism, brought down to Boolean principles of logic. Spock.

And I blog this, that I should remember to guard myself against it, for I need to be more mercenary.

Day One of Living like a Normal Person

And I like it so much. There's a part of me that cries with relief.

Imagine that you go to your first office job in almost two years. In that time, you've taken a working class, manual outdoor job as a council contractors' gardener working only one rung up the social ladder from your neighbourhood street sweeper. You've broken up with your lover of nine years, because he just didn't have the vision to give you a life, or the understanding to put himself in yours shoes. And your dad has advancing prostate cancer.

Then you're scared shitless by the low self-esteem and the futureless conditions that today's minority who do low-paid working class jobs have to endure. But you're not even aware of it yet. And you give up on that job, because physically, you can't cope with the winter conditions and the physical exertion that leaves you with nothing at the weekend, because you just weren't born with athletic stamina. And then your Dad starts dying, slowly, and your family and siblings are little more grown up than yourself to be able to cope with it. And all this time, the hope that carried you from childhood, that Love would come to the rescue, proves itself feeble and useless. And you wonder if you're ever going to be allowed to earn a living again, and how?

There was a rude awakening by the alarm, and despite the significance of the day, my love of sleep almost won. But forced to face external discipline, I had to wake. Which allowed me to remember my dream, one so much more extravagant and imaginative than I expected. In a modern tall palace set high in the hills, I was staying as a guest with someone who looked like Ruth's sister. Life was easy, carefree, and privileged. She decided to go "skiing" down to the village, but it was not on snow. The hills were covered in white paper, and she went sliding down on it all the way to the picturesque buildings. (How sickeningly Freudian, on contemplation during editing this!).

Off to the train, and as in olden times forced to chase time, I am only just able to jump on my train as the doors are closing. Going out of London there is plenty of seating spare, but with enough diverse passengers to offer interest. Even seeing the Roding Valley golf course seems a pleasure. Passing Ilford, I become aware of the vast industrial site along the railway line, that is the Bombardier Train Workshop. So this is the site from which they will lose 600 jobs, presumably resulting in total closure of the facility. Another manufacturing industry departs from London, leaving this city to become nothing more than a parasitic vessel of consumerism. But in the global economy, its host is not so much the rest of Britain, as it is China and South East Asia.

Leaving Romford, I am surprised at how Harold Wood sprawls into the green belt, with housing that is mostly Thirties, Forties and Fifties. London's suburban sprawl was completed even before I was born.

At Brentwood, strolling up Rose Valley, I get one of those Life Coincidences that verifies my life is moving. I bump into OJ, whom I haven't seen for over 5 years. He used to be a lodger at East Ham when I was happily partnered there, a long time ago. He looks amazing for his age, still very attractive although his nose is more hooked than before. He always radiated sexual animalism, and it never was more apparent than back in the time when he had a Spanish boyfriend. The sounds coming from their bedroom used to stir my envy, and made me know that I had sexual horizons that were not being fulfilled. Today, he still fires my imagination and desire.

What a coincidence, my first day on the job, in a town I barely know, and he happens to be not yet at work because of a dental appointment. And he has moved home only recently, to Brentwood. Quite apart from the fact that I always found him very sexually attractive, there is nothing so reassuring as meeting someone from your past, when you are new to a place.

The office has Asbestos Warning signs here, there, and everywhere! On some ceiling tiles, floor tiles, and even on the window sills. Damned government buildings. Mine must have been a doctor's office, because a panel over the door has two alert lamps, labelled Surgery 1 and Surgery 2.

The day soon slips into my familiar experience. How many strange offices have I entered into and accommodated. It is just another. The people are moderate, reasonable, and amicably civilized.

At last I come across a Windows 2000 Pro workstation. So what was the big deal, when it was just NT5? Why did the entire industry make such a fuss over MCSE certification, for something that was just one step up from NT4? And the wastefully expensive and mindless Nineties fashion for outsourcing I.T., means that BT Syntegra looks after everything. Happily for their fat cat executives, I'm sure. If there is one type of entity that mows down the humanity of life, it is again proven to be the Corporation.

On the way home, relieved at the thought of having at last earned a day's pay, I stop in Romford to treat myself. Such a luxury, to be able to act spontaneously on a whim. I spot a noodle bar, called Coco. On South Street, not far from the train station. There are so many noodle bars in London these days, (not counting the proper Chinese restaurants in Chinatown), that they seem easier to find than a good chip shop. The prawn ramen is ok, a score of 6 or maybe 7 out of 10. It's 25% too salty, though, and the noodles seem to be of neither Chinese nor Japanese quality. Why are the waiting staff so hopeless at English?! They barely understand anything, yet this is not an "ethnic experience" restaurant: it's a Wagamama's-style Californian mutation. Even the dishwashers in the roughest restaurants in Chinatown can understand more English. So the servers are young, and they look clean and smart, but is that the only qualification necessary? This bunch don't even seem to be on Student Visas, because Lord knows that foreign students need a modicum of English in order to warrant the cost of an education here. Once again, you have to wonder why they're allowed to have these jobs, legally or otherwise, when outside, the street-sweepers working are 50-something year old guys who have no other choice in the employment market. This country tolerates cheap labour the same way it tolerates hunger and genocide in Africa.

So oh Yes, oh Yes, even an unglamorous temp job can be better than sex or love, when you haven't got anywhere else to go, and you still have to fund a lot of living years before you are too old to care about any excitement at all. Really, sex and love are luxuries and extravagances, and if you can't afford them, you could fool yourself that you have them by enjoying them on Credit, but one day, you'll see a mountain of Debt. And the Debt isn't just necessarily in Money. It can be in any of the currencies of human expense.

Oh Dancers, from the Dance, who ignore prophets, and scorn profits. Entertain losses, and you may be lost.

More diary

Friday night. Bussed into town. On the bus, a bunch of teenagers lipping each other as "bluds" gathered around me because of my chav dress and mood, perhaps? I thought the one was boasting about his drug dealing, but it turned out to be knock-off Prada garbage that had fallen off the back of a lorry.

The West End was full of dreadful office parties getting drunk and then going on to queue desperately for the small clubs, eg. on Oxford Street. Gave up trying to find a gay bar to buy a drink in, as it was getting late and they were all charging door cover. Was feeling very freaked after a week of prostituting myself to office temp agencies.

Saturday, helped get the Belkin 802.11g wireless LAN working on the Broadband at S's place. Cal had been trying all week, but he didn't have my background in networking knowledge, or my skill at attacking a problem using both methodical and intuitive approaches. It does seem to be coming back. But those idiot I.T. managers people always think I.T. people can only be measured by the latest gadget that they've played with, or worse, some ridiculous Certification Scheme.

Ridiculous how much you get for the money. A 4-port ethernet hub with an ADSL modem, wireless 54 Mbps LAN and 2 access points for £90? You couldn't get all that for £5,000 ten years ago! Technology is a cancer, and grows as quickly as one.

Met up with Del at 79CXR, he flew in, from the Gay Sex Desert call Dublin, for his birthday weekend. Got very chatty with some new meets, and (social intelligence-wise) crossed a new barrier on "what to do with a stranger when you've suddenly exposed their horizons of being fearful". Ignore the topic on discussion and just let them ride on it. It tells you more about them than they want you to know, which is another reason why they get defensive. And move on. There are 6 billion people on the world, and really, many people in the West all live in their own cosseted little fantasies, assiduously ignoring what they do not want to face. Why should I be any more responsible for unwittingly lifting the wool from their eyes, than say, a mother who drags her son away from some wretched computer fantasy game?

Got very drunk on 4 pints, and being social gave me a buzz, which with the expectation of a temp job, made me feel alive again. So on Sunday, I got a shag, for the first time in over 3 months. (New readers, note, I'm the kind of person who could not go without it for long, but these last three middle-aged years have been a trial from hell).

On Monday, I got word that I've got that Temp job, and the thought of money was more relieving even than the experience of real sex for the first time in over 3 months.

So I start in the morning. Everytime the dread thought pops up in my head, that I have had to sink to taking what I call a gay job, I shall just think of the pounds and pence per hour I'm clocking up. I don't think I've ever felt so coldly professional about taking a job.

So for the Winter Solstice, i.e. Christmas, I should be getting my first paycheque all year. I've never asked Santa for much, have I? Probably because I never get anything I need, and I only get the junk that nobody else seems to want.

How to recover IE, which is slided and partially hidden, in full screen mode

How to recover IE, which is slided and partially hidden, in full screen mode
It's amazing that anybody would dare to offer a machine translation from Japanese to English, especially a slightly abstract techie explanation of how to repair stuck maximized IE windows.

Fortunately, I re-discovered myself that minimizing the taskbar restores the IE maximization. I used to do this kind of I.T. support in my job? Blimey, I must have been one totally mentally burnt out baby 3 years ago. I couldn't even bear the thought of this crap back then, yet I can do it again.

Only Twelve Days to the Solstice

Not quite in my usual blogging mood, but thought I'd go on here to see how professional I might be! So I'll start in a mood of cloudy, grey winter and write positively, as an experiment.

There's only 12 days left before the days start getting longer again! Yippee! Looks like I might live to see another summer then. So far, although we have had bits of cold weather, and plenty of grey, there hasn't been much frost. In fact, I am STILL eating fresh raspberries off the crazy raspberry cane in my back garden. They're still ripening and turning red, although without much sunshine, they taste very watery.

Went to Brentwood by bus and train today. Took the bus to Romford, then caught the train. Same day train tickets vary in cost depending on your direction (into or out of London) and not just on the peak traffic cut-off time of 9.30A.M.

On the bus, I was amazed to see the Recorder Series' (local newspapers) premises on the road between Ilford and Seven Kings. Very smart building: almost could be in the Docklands. I wonder how long they've been there. Maybe they're expecting a general drift away from boring National newspapers, to well-reported local newspapers.

As the train moved out of London, passing Harold Wood, it entered the green belt, and although I was not expecting much, within a minute my brain was easing. Green nature. How much I must hate London, when just a minute of rural escape gives me ease.

So Brentwood still looks reasonably affluent, and even trudging up the hill looking at the gardens made a pleasant change from dear old Manor Park. (I went to interview a potential temp job, more for my sake than anything else, because it was in an area of the public services that I dread. ) Leaving that topic quickly...

The rest of today was winter hibernation. What a contrast to yesterday, when the SUN CAME OUT A LITTLE BIT. Oh, everybody was chirpier in the streets. It wasn't just me firing on all cylinders. In fact, I went into super-communicative mode and found an agency in Ilford that was willing to properly register me on their temp books. Which is why I ended up in Brentwood today, at my own expense. (I think I'll rename this blog, Money & the City, to reflect plain necessity. It's not as though it hasn't been heading that way. I'm already dreaming of paycheques, salivate, salivate. ) Of course, it was a big help that the recruitment agent is currently herself coping with her Dad dying in slow rollercoaster fashion. But I don't think the Brentwood temp job is for me, as their business area really is dreadful.

Wednesday was recovery mode from Monday and Tuesday. Monday I was trawling the Oxford Circus to Bond Street area, in search of temp agencies that might register me. Only one was willing, and several clearly admitted that they haven't enough jobs for the temps already on their books.

There were plenty of tourists around, but the kind of tourist on New Bond Street, nowadays! This used to be one of the most expensive shopping areas in London, but now the average shopper looks like they just stepped off a Ryanair flight.

One little touristy thing jogged my memory. It's St. Christopher Place. This is opposite Bond Street station, and is easily missed because there is only an alleyway called Gee Court between two shops by which you reach it. Why is it notable? Because even ten years ago, Oxford Street had lousy Christmas decorations. This year, I can't even remember noticing any! But St Christopher Place was back then the most beautifully decorated Christmassy place I could find in Central London. This year, it still looks quite nice, but is nothing now compared to what it used to be, and the place is mostly restaurants now. Sofra, the Turkish restaurant is still there. It's many, many moons since the one time I ate there.

So on Tuesday I went back to the area to register at that one temp agency. 70 wpm and expert Word and Excel. Yes, of course, they were more impressed with my typing speed than my university degree. And the fact that I spoke English as a mother tongue. Quite unusual, judging from the few other people that walked in while I was there.

That was my week. Who's to say that it was any more useful than one spent lying on a beach in Thailand? Crazy world, full of crazy work ethics. Now back to my money fantasies.....