Without doubt The Maccabees are my favourite band at the moment. This is a cool clip of a great live set.
Saturday 30 October 2010
I'm feeling a bit porky since doing my half marathon a few weeks ago. Basically I let loose a bit on the diet and had a few drinks to celebrate. I've decided to start back on the regime to rid myself of the love handles. To motivate myself I've been looking at the pictures from when I was massive. I actually burst out laughing at them sometimes, especially the thumbs up one, I bloody love it.
Note that, in these pictures which were taken on separate occasions (but unsurprisingly both in restaurants), I'm wearing exactly the same clothes because they were the most flattering ones I had. Sexy.
Friday 29 October 2010
The Truth of Motherhood by Lucy Sweet
THE TRUE COST OF MOTHERHOOD
Freddo bars- £15
Emergency coffee - £50
Food (from a carefully budgeted list) £80
Food (too busy to make a fucking boring list) add £50 extra
Soft play entrance fees - £10
Informal compensation payment to the parents of the child your kid injured with a large padded rectangle - £100
Haircut after child glues his own head to the table - £10
Unnecessary nursery trip to Bollocks Country Park - £20
Birthday present for some kid you've never heard of - £10
Emergency dash to the pub to talk to friends about useless husband - £20
Wine for Mummy - £40
Pornography for Daddy - £4.99
TOTAL: £500.99
A lot, isn't it? Now I know you could say that your child doesn't need to go on that nursery trip or have their hair cut (it's only a bit of glue, after all). But the rest is so essential that I don't think even the sharpest axe could find room to make cuts. Over to you George - but remember - if you touch my Freddo bar, I will hunt you down and destroy you.
Freddo bars- £15
Emergency coffee - £50
Food (from a carefully budgeted list) £80
Food (too busy to make a fucking boring list) add £50 extra
Soft play entrance fees - £10
Informal compensation payment to the parents of the child your kid injured with a large padded rectangle - £100
Haircut after child glues his own head to the table - £10
Unnecessary nursery trip to Bollocks Country Park - £20
Birthday present for some kid you've never heard of - £10
Emergency dash to the pub to talk to friends about useless husband - £20
Wine for Mummy - £40
Pornography for Daddy - £4.99
TOTAL: £500.99
A lot, isn't it? Now I know you could say that your child doesn't need to go on that nursery trip or have their hair cut (it's only a bit of glue, after all). But the rest is so essential that I don't think even the sharpest axe could find room to make cuts. Over to you George - but remember - if you touch my Freddo bar, I will hunt you down and destroy you.
Saturday 23 October 2010
"Pop up guerrilla shops, flashy flagship stores, massive shopping malls- they’re all lost on us. The average British person staggers around open mouthed holding a piece of paper with ‘BUY TROUSERS’ written on it, and ends up sitting comatose in Nandos with 10 Yankee candles and a subscription to Sky"
Wednesday 20 October 2010
Tuesday 19 October 2010
The Broken Generation
The challenges facing 20-somethings these days are considerable. It is, let’s not forget, the generation who have seen little benefit from the generosity of previous decades. A generosity seen through unregulated booming house price growth, universal further education grants and the last scrapings of the projected state pension pot gifted to elder generations.
It is, debatably, the price of liberal thinking and universal equality causing a clash of the age-old titans: economics and ideology. Unfortunately, the credit afforded ideology has dried, with the menacing bailiffs knocking on the doors of No.11 Downing Street for collection. It seems the cupboards are bare of silverware, as the words of the outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne to his successor resonate; “I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left”. These words, no doubt penned in the spirit of Westminster wit and black humour, are nonetheless ill thought through. They only remind people of the fact that a Labour Chancellor nearly always runs out of money, and as a result takes the country to the brink of bankruptcy in a giddy joy ride of ideological spending.
This is the time when regardless of what the elder sibling was given as a child, there are no hand-me-downs for the youngsters. There is no right of passage and any concept of precedent has disappeared. It’s the greed of the previous overspending generations that have made it virtually impossible for young people to get onto the property ladder. It’s a sorry state of affairs that the average age of the first time buyer in the UK, unaided by their parents, is now 39. How can you expect the youth of today to save for the future against no security? How can there be any social mobility when the disparity between the landlord and the worker is widening so easily? The rich stay rich and the young stay poor.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually believe in universal handouts. I think the role of government should be to set the correct environment to support those who want to work hard and achieve. I know we have a steep hill to climb to claw our way out of the deficit, but stacking the odds so greatly against the workforce of tomorrow is dangerous.
The state of British universities and education policy is something that interests me considerably, as I’ve blogged previously. Lord Browne’s recent report on UK further education actually fell more or less in line with my views and expectations I set out a couple of months ago, specifically regarding the need to open further education up to the free market (to a certain extent – I wouldn’t advocate the US model). However, on top of the poisonous environment facing the youth of today, it appears the failings of historic education policy has not been addressed; too many people attending too many universities. It spreads the cash out very thin, meaning the quality reduces to a detrimental extent, certainly at the ex-polytechnic institutions who lack the commercial options that the Oxford’s and Cambridge’s have built up over 800 years. What’s created is a two-tier system, whereby the poor can’t afford to go to university and the rich will
As a result, what’s facing this broken generation when the music stops and the house lights come on, is a post-graduation hangover of £20,000 debt, with narrowing prospects of a decent job. You know you won’t get a pension to support you in your later years but you can’t get on the property ladder to save any equity to compensate that. Your future has been mortgaged to save the generation who sold the family silver.
Tomorrow’s Spending Review will be delivered with the deliberately standard lines; that the Government has inherited this situation and the cuts will be tough but fair. What, I ask, is fair about stuffing the youth of today and tomorrow by suffocating any flickering flame of aspiration? When opening such a Pandoras box of pain to tackle this frightening economic situation, those at the helm should at least follow suit and leave hope firmly locked inside.
It is, debatably, the price of liberal thinking and universal equality causing a clash of the age-old titans: economics and ideology. Unfortunately, the credit afforded ideology has dried, with the menacing bailiffs knocking on the doors of No.11 Downing Street for collection. It seems the cupboards are bare of silverware, as the words of the outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne to his successor resonate; “I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left”. These words, no doubt penned in the spirit of Westminster wit and black humour, are nonetheless ill thought through. They only remind people of the fact that a Labour Chancellor nearly always runs out of money, and as a result takes the country to the brink of bankruptcy in a giddy joy ride of ideological spending.
This is the time when regardless of what the elder sibling was given as a child, there are no hand-me-downs for the youngsters. There is no right of passage and any concept of precedent has disappeared. It’s the greed of the previous overspending generations that have made it virtually impossible for young people to get onto the property ladder. It’s a sorry state of affairs that the average age of the first time buyer in the UK, unaided by their parents, is now 39. How can you expect the youth of today to save for the future against no security? How can there be any social mobility when the disparity between the landlord and the worker is widening so easily? The rich stay rich and the young stay poor.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually believe in universal handouts. I think the role of government should be to set the correct environment to support those who want to work hard and achieve. I know we have a steep hill to climb to claw our way out of the deficit, but stacking the odds so greatly against the workforce of tomorrow is dangerous.
The state of British universities and education policy is something that interests me considerably, as I’ve blogged previously. Lord Browne’s recent report on UK further education actually fell more or less in line with my views and expectations I set out a couple of months ago, specifically regarding the need to open further education up to the free market (to a certain extent – I wouldn’t advocate the US model). However, on top of the poisonous environment facing the youth of today, it appears the failings of historic education policy has not been addressed; too many people attending too many universities. It spreads the cash out very thin, meaning the quality reduces to a detrimental extent, certainly at the ex-polytechnic institutions who lack the commercial options that the Oxford’s and Cambridge’s have built up over 800 years. What’s created is a two-tier system, whereby the poor can’t afford to go to university and the rich will
As a result, what’s facing this broken generation when the music stops and the house lights come on, is a post-graduation hangover of £20,000 debt, with narrowing prospects of a decent job. You know you won’t get a pension to support you in your later years but you can’t get on the property ladder to save any equity to compensate that. Your future has been mortgaged to save the generation who sold the family silver.
Tomorrow’s Spending Review will be delivered with the deliberately standard lines; that the Government has inherited this situation and the cuts will be tough but fair. What, I ask, is fair about stuffing the youth of today and tomorrow by suffocating any flickering flame of aspiration? When opening such a Pandoras box of pain to tackle this frightening economic situation, those at the helm should at least follow suit and leave hope firmly locked inside.
Sunday 17 October 2010
Merkel says German multicultural society has failed
Bit of deja vu here, although joking aside is a very brave speech to make.
Thursday 14 October 2010
"There’s a horrible inevitability to the Apprentice. It just happens without you really wanting it to, like Christmas, or a smear test. Every year, every single braying arse wipe you’ve ever overheard on the train yelling ‘Look Geoff, it’s a no brainer’ applies for the show. Every Autumn, Sir Alan finishes shaving his forehead, puts down his copy of Razzle, adjusts his tie and welcomes them all into his boardroom. In a Nuremberg rally of black Burton suits and grey jackets from Mango, they shuffle in, plopping pellets of misplaced self-confidence all over his shiny floor."
- Lucy Sweet on The Apprentice
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