Make myself a million with Morphic Fields? Pt.2

First take one looted Michelin sign, then one bottle of typist's correction fluid ...

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I've said this before
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And I'll say it again.
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Synchronicity is a marvellous thing.
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Last night I started to collate my thoughts on the subject of anomalous scientific observations with a particular end point in mind. I blogged some of my thoughts then went to bed.
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I got up this morning and the BBC news page had just published a science story that connected perfectly with what I intended to cover in my follow-up blog entry.
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The story was about homing pigeons.
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A team of scientists in New Zealand has just published a paper in Nature that proves homing pigeons navigate by means of magnetic particles in their beaks. Nature is THE journal for natural sciences. If it's not in Nature it doesn’t count. Apparently, the scientists carried out a series of experiments that involved tying bar magnets to pigeons beaks, anaesthetising pigeons beaks, then hacking away at various nerves in pigeons beaks. W*nkers.
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The only thing these guys proved is that modern science still gets a hard on from mutilating small animals in the course of pointless experiments.
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'Yes, after I removed all of his legs, Benjy the Lovable Spaniel, refused to respond to calls from his 6 year old owner. The inescapable conclusion is that Benjy is now deaf. Can I have a Phd and nice research grant now please'
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It would be awfully tempting to dump some of those Kiwi scientists in the middle of a featureless desert, strap bar magnets to their noses and tell them to walk straight towards Auckland. They might learn a thing or two; useful snippets of information, such as simply knowing the location of Magnetic North just doesn’t cut it.
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Anybody who has tried practical navigation knows that a compass, on its own, is a totally useless navigational tool. To get any real benefit out of it you have to already know where you are and where you are going. Even when the Royal Navy was fully equipped with maps, compasses, sextants and astronomical charts in the 18th century it still couldn't navigate properly because it had no accurate timepieces. Without clocks it couldn't use the sextants and charts to compute the locations of individual ships. Navigation continued to be a hit and miss art right up to the recent creation of the GPS network. Pigeons apparently manage to get by without clocks, maps, astronomical readings or handheld Garmin GPS units. They also manage in overcast skies when they can’t see the sun or stars.
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To all intents and purposes, and by any popular definition, what homing pigeons do is magic. The reason why science doesn’t blow the whole subject off is that pigeon navigation is an undeniable fact. Somehow pigeons can sense where they are on a specific point on the globe and relate that to a sense of where they should be, at another specific point on the globe. This is no trivial feat and is a clue to something rather large. Something as yet unknown.
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It's not just pigeons either; salmon, eels, migrating birds, wildebeest, the cute puppies in Disney's Fantastic Journey, all of them can apparently tap into accurate navigational data. Eels are particularly weird. Eel babies return to the same locations their parents left years before, without ever having been there themselves.
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As well as knowing where they should be located, living things also apparently have an, as yet unaccounted for, sense of what shape they should be. Sponges can, famously, be liquidised in a blender and the surviving cells will reincorporate themselves back into their original sponge shape. Separate the blended mush into two tanks and you get two, half-sized sponges. Amputees still feel their limbs long after they're been removed. Apparently this is due to 'some sort of neurological map' we all have, but that's not been proved and if such a map existed why do phantom limbs itch and ache?
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I could carry on for ages; aura photographs that show the complete outline of leaves even after they've been cut in two, unanswered questions as how to how stem cells know what to turn into, more unanswered questions as to how individual seeds 'know' how to arrange themselves to form into a plant. It's another very long list of anomalous observations.
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And I won’t even need to stray onto disputed 'paranormal' observations that suggest living things are somehow interconnected and can communicate with each other.
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There are other unexplained quirks of life that niggle me. How is it that every human being has a unique face, fingerprints, and ear lobes? What purpose is served by that? More to the point, who's keeping tabs of fingerprint and ear lobe designs that have already been spoken for? And don't give me that 'god of large numbers' nonsense. You know what? I don't believe an infinite army of monkeys could eventually recreate the works of Shakespeare. That's just science's way of saying any old bollocks is possible.

Even being equipped with a naturally sceptical, numerical mind, how is it I encounter meaningful, synchronous coincidences on a regular basis? I'm not talking about trivial, expectable coincidences like getting on a 59 bus to visit someone at house No.59. I'm talking about going to bed thinking about homing pigeons and getting up to see a news story about homing pigeons the first thing next morning. This kind of stuff happens too frequently to me to be the product of simple coincidence. I suspect that the World around us is wired in a way we don't yet understand; we're looking at the television set but we don't have the circuit diagram.
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However, dealing with these questions is no easy task. A UK academic, Rupert Sheldrake, stepped up to the challenge a few years ago and hypothesised the concept of Morphic Fields (Google will help). He lost his job as a consequence and now spends his days talking to himself and giggling randomly.
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If I can crack this baby and come up with a testable theory of interconnectivity I'd be onto a winner. Noble prizes, cult guru status and a lifetime of wealthy, self-righteous smugness beckons.
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But surely this is all nonsense? Belief in the possibility of such things is not rational.
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Actually, it's no less rational than, say, pretending we know what medium radio waves propagate through or that we understand how electricity works or human memory.
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I'm sitting here typing on my PC, perched on a blob of molten rock covered by the thinnest of crusts, that's rotating in a sub zero, gamma ray-ridden vacuum at 1,000mph, pressed down by the weight of one ton per square foot of air above my head …
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… and yet, somehow, I live in a society that tells me there's nothing particularly remarkable going on and, fundamentally, we pretty much understand why we all came to be here and why we're not boiled, frozen, irradiated, crushed or decompressed to smithereens. Where's the wonder? Where's the awe? More importantly, where's the humility?
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Over the course of my life I've met many people who believe that they are educated, rational and, above all, not confined by any silly notions like religion or any superstitious mumbo jumbo like that. Their world is 'rational' and explained away by Big Bang, evolution and a few equations that barely a handful of people on Earth are insane enough to believe they understand. Humanity is the predictable result of forces that are now almost fully identified by science. We're all just a quirk of physics.
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Yet, for some reason, these very same people will show me pictures of their babies and expect me to give a shit.
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How rational is that?
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Me, I'm going to sit down with a list of anomalous observations, a bottle of Cynar I'll pick up in Sardinia this weekend and some josh sticks. There is a mass of anomalous data out there that suggests an external field of some sort helps living things know where they are and what shape they should be. The annoying thing is that, like all good explanations and ideas, a description of what is going on probably could be written down on three or four lines, say forty words. This should be a piece of cake for a team of infinite monkeys; 26 to the power of 200 possible letter combinations. How long would that take to type?
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Make no mistake, this is the Big One and our World would change beyond recognition if anyone can crack it. Sadly, the chances of it being me are about 6,000,000,000 to 1. Neverthless, I'm game. I've got some brooding to do and maybe even some breeding. I wonder if I could fit any pigeons in my back yard.

This week's best lies from the Culture of Fear

Tracy looking completely underwhelmed by Mexican Hat, Utah

Oooh it's been a busy week for lies in the papers this week, as they bang away like Trojans keeping us as scared as they can. I don’t think I managed to keep up. My Top 3 lies of the week are:
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Lie #1

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September 11-style terror attacks on the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf were thwarted, it has emerged. Plans to crash aircraft into the three skyscrapers in London's Docklands were among four or five al Qaida strikes that security chiefs believe they have stopped. Training programmes for suicide pilots who planned a spectacular attack on the financial centre were disrupted, a senior authoritative source told the Daily Mail. Heathrow Airport was another high-profile target for a possible simultaneous strike, the newspaper also reported. There were no details of when or where the plot was uncovered, or how close the fanatics were to success. Downing Street, the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police declined to comment on the reports. The source told the newspaper that the threats were real and were not deliberately exaggerated for political purposes. "This is not about politics, it's about hard work behind the scenes to stop what is a clear threat," the source said.

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I don't think that story needs any further comment from my fairself. A top tip though, whenever a story or even an internal email includes lines like 'it has emerged …' or 'it is expected …' you can be 100% certain something crooked is taking place, as no-one is willing to take responsibility for what follows
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Lie #2

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Earlier, Iraqi Minister of State Kassim Daoud told a news conference: "Soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons. "They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax."

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What is it with Iraqis? They have this most peculiar habit of producing and stockpiling huge quantities of bioweapons then forgetting to use them. Why, oh why, do they bother?
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Lie #3
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Britain is "in the grip of a serious HIV epidemic" as the number of people suffering from the infection continues to soar, figures show. There are 53,000 adults now living with the virus, yet more than 14,000 of them are unaware of their infection.The Health Protection Agency says there were 6,606 new HIV infections diagnosed in the UK during 2003. Each HIV infection is estimated to cost up to £1m in treatment and lost productivity. The majority of new cases diagnosed in the UK are the result of people migrating from countries with the biggest HIV problem, especially Africa.

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This lie is tad more subtle than the other two. An epidemic is usually defined as an outbreak of a disease. We don’t actually have an HIV epidemic in the UK, other contries do. Even if we isolated and cured every victim currently in the UK, HIV figures would still grow because we keep shipping more victims in. Am I sounding a tad heartless on this one? Maybe so. Those 53,000 people represent a total cost to the UK taxpayer of c.£53,000,000,000. I'm not actually being xenophobic or selfish. Where's the logic, or humanity, in treating one person who was able to sneak into the UK when the same money could be spent treating 20,30, or 40 equally, if not more deserving, people back home in Africa? The money would be better spent in Africa itself where HIV drugs are much cheaper compared to expensive old Britain. But, there again, the drugs companies wouldn’t make so much profit. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to discover that the drugs companies were sneaking some of these guys into the UK.
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Strangely, the incidence rates of other sexually transitted disease are growing each year in the UK much faster than the, adjusted, increase in HIV infections. Brits are clearly indulging in ever-increasing quantities of unprotected sex but not coming down with HIV. Which leads me on to one of my favourite global lies / hidden truths of our times. (look away if you're easily offended) - The vast majority of people who contract HIV, contract it through anal, not vaginal intercourse, that is the only rational explanation for why some ethnic and sexual groups are much more susceptible to the virus than others. Working girls in the UK know what the truth is, that's why those very few who will go 'bareback' / 'AWO' / on a 'Death Ride' charge anything from 5 to 10 times over their usual rate.
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Don't fancy the idea of AIDS? Stop BF'ing loads of different people. It's that simple.
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I haven't seen that mentioned on any of the expensive awareness campaigns. Have you?
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Feast your eyes on the face of Modern Britain

copywright Melanie Einzig

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The above picture is not one of mine, though I wish it were. I've 'borrowed' it from the In-Public Street photography site where it is the very worthy photo of the month for October

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http://in-public.com/site/poms/2004/october.php

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I recommend their other photos of the month highly.

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Why have I posted this picture? Because out of the countless thousands of images I have captured or seen this year this picture, this frozen moment, conveys the very essence of life in Urban Britain today - the clothing, the posture, the cell phone, the location. If she had a visible can of lager in the other hand it would be perfect, but it's close enough as it is. I stand in awe of this photograph.

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If the United Kingdom had a website this should be on the opening page.

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The eXile Guide to the US of A

Russia - just say no to drinking shorts with your meal

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I've visited Moscow a couple of times with work.
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My old firm had a decent expenses policy that meant, within reason, we could eat pretty much where we wanted in the evenings. In the early days this involved eating in high-end, themed restaurants populated largely by Mafiosi, their bodyguards and their emaciated molls. This isn’t my kind of scene and eventually I took to dragging my coworker to the Starlite Diner on Mayakovskaya for dinner whenever possible.
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The Starlite is one of the strangest sights in Moscow. A completely authentic 1950's style extruded aluminium, diner caravan, shipped over from the US complete with fittings. Frequently cute waitresses kitted out in short skirts, starched shirts and bobby socks complete the ambience. The menu matches the décor and you can munch away on hamburgers, meatloaf and $8 milkshakes, safe in the knowledge that you're eating in environment largely free of sadistic gangland killers. Moderately priced by Western standards it would take the average Russian a fortnight to pay for a meal there.
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Whilst chomping on my waffles and fruit sundaes I got into the habit of reading the local US expat newspaper, The Exile. Written by a team of extremely broad minded and outspoken expat Americans it makes a most interesting read. Naturally, most of the news relates to Russia and the FSU but they occasionally drift onto wider topics. Even as a piece of sheer entertainment, rather than a source of relevant news items, I recommend it strongly. The night-club reviews alone are worth the price of admission.
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Anyway, The Exile has an on-line version which, even though I haven’t visited Russia for a couple of years now, I still read regularly.
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This month's edition is a blinder and I thought I'd post a couple of links here.
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The first recommended article is entitled 'The eXile solution to Middle America'

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http://www.exile.ru/2004-November-13/moscow_babylon.html

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It's long and deranged. The thrust is that the rational response to the Bush re-election is to obliterate much of what currently lies between the East and West coasts of the United States. I'm all for a free speech and thinking but even I paused midway through and thought to myself 'hey, that's a bit strong'
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The second recommended article is written by a fat geek in Fresno who writes under the name 'War Nerd' in which he discusses the current quagmire in Iraq, why the Americans are failing and what they should do about it

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http://exile.ru/2004-November-13/war_nerd.html

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This piece is marginally less demented and comes recommended because it offers an intelligent insight into why the current American approach in Iraq is so flawed. Given that our media is so totally controlled by the power groups behind the war, fringe publications like the eXile, oh and my blog, are the only places where you're going to find the counter view as to what's really happening.
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Make myself a million with Morphic Fields? Pt.1

The Goodness Family, New Zealand

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OK, this is only a half-thought through posting but for reasons that will become clear there's not much point in waiting till it's a fully thought through posting.
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There I was, in the front room last night, ruminating over the plot of The Da Vinci Code. No, I'm not going to write for a third time why I hate that book so much. Anyway, the core of the book relates to some hidden secret that our hero must unravel; presumably I'll find out what that awesome secret is if I can fight my way to the end of the book. Maybe it will leave me breathless. Maybe not.
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I'm guessing not. History and the affairs of mankind are littered with secrets, most of which relate in some way to my patented Unified Conspiracy Theory. The Unified Conspiracy Theory includes such Earth-shattering secrets as:

• Jesus didn’t die
• The World is controlled by a Dark Brotherhood
• All civilisation is descended from a long-forgotten elder race
• The truth of mankind's origin and its purpose is known by the adepts of an ancient, long hidden religion

Etc etc. Yah di yah di yah da.
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And, yes, a lot of strange stuff goes on but, to be honest, none of it stuff would surprise me if it ever turned out to have substance. I'm suffering from GHSF - Great Hidden Secret Fatigue.
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So, I'm in my front room, pondering upon just what it would take to revive my jaded conspiratorial and sceptical palate. Maybe there'd be a book in it. Whatever this great unsuspected secret is, it would have to lie somewhere between the existence of a Creator, which I acknowledge as being highly probable, and all that Masonic, Ancient Egyptian material. My new secret would have to relate to how God interfaces with his Creation, the stuff of existence itself.
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And then I remembered something.
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Rupert Sheldrake and his Morphic Fields
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I'll get onto what that's all about later on but, first, a word or two about science.
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I did a geology degree. One of the most important things I learned from that degree was the way science works. An understanding of the concept of plate tectonics and continental drift is now arguably the cornerstone of geology. This was not always so. Right up to the 1960s, mainstream geology did not accept the idea that continents moved. Which was strange given that there was lots of evidence to support the notion, for example:

• South America and Africa fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces
• Identical rocks and fossils were found on opposite continents, separated by plain ocean floor
• Sea floor rocks get younger as you head towards ocean ridges
• Oceans ridges are volcanically active and new sea floor spreads out from them

And so on.
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For years, the majority of geologists simply discarded the above facts because they didn’t fit in with their view of the World. Eventually, a breakthrough in thinking took place and the new theory was confirmed by and accounted for all the discarded, apparently anomalous data as well as the non anomalous data. No new work was really needed to confirm the theory. The new idea enabled geologists to look at what had been discovered to date with completely fresh eyes. As it happens, plate tectonics doesn’t actually work but it will do for now until someone else comes up with a better idea.
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So, there I am on my South London sofa, postulating three pretty certain statements:

1. We don’t truly understand how anything works and probably never will. There's always a better explanation out there.
2. There will be a huge number of anomalous facts and findings out there that have been discarded because they don’t fit in with existing scientific models
3. A rapidly ageing, unemployed bullpoo artist such as myself could potentially contemplate a grouping of related anomalous facts and come up with a new scientific paradigm that accounts for them all, without access to any research resources or academic credentials whatsoever.

Exciting stuff. The trick is to find those discarded facts in the targeted scientific discipline, many of which are never published, and sort out which are truly anomalous from experimental errors, delusions or plain lies. If I could do that I'd be ready to rock and roll. All I would need was my filtered list of reliable anamalous facts and a few cans of lager or some dried banana skins or, at a pinch, a willingness to hold my breath for longer than would ordinarilly be sensible.
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But first, a nap …
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Life with London Italians Pt.2

Mmmmm, the rich, beguiling, artichoke taste of Cynar, yummm

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So, we're off to Sardinia for a few days in a few days. Barring a day trip to the seaside in August this will be my first trip out of London, since April and I haven't visited Italy since last August. For a man who rates pointless travel in his Top 3 list of things to do this has been a hard few months. It's the old paradox. I have the time but, until I know what I'll be doing for a living, I'm loath to spend what money I have saved. When I'm earning the money I don’t have the time. Variations on this theme crop up in most people's lives most of the time. In itself, money can’t buy you happiness but it can certainly clear a few of the obstacles out of the way. Right now, at this point in my life and the life of those around me ALL, absolutely ALL of their problems could be solved by the application of money. We all like and care for the people around us, want things to stay that way and we're not so foolish as to believe money is more important than health. If any rich people out there are living unhappy, loveless, pointless and drug-assisted lives as the result of being rich we would be more than happy to share some of the cause of their misery.
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Anyway, off to Italy. My own attitude to Italy and its people is complex. I have an Italian name. To the initiated I look Italian. I say to the initiated because very many non-Italians have a highly skewed image of what to expect. At no point in my life did I sport dark black, curly permed hair or a horizontally striped T-shirt. The region of Italy where my family come from is hard, rough country. The summers are parched and the winters freezing and flooded. The people are dour and often taciturn. Their traditional diet is cornmeal and potatoes. Let's be honest here. If Italy was such a crash-hot country, packed with an abundance of yummy foods and cheerful, singing peasantry why did so many people leave the country in the first place?
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In a similar fashion to Ireland and the Irish, or Jews and Israel, a lot of looking back at the home country with rose-tinted specs has taken place over the years. How I laughed when Tracy first saw where my family came from. Fully charged with a lifetime of pizza ads and pasta sauce labels, I think it's fair to say that she was unpleasantly surprised. Actually, some parts of Italy do conform to the romantic stereotype. They're in Tuscany and I can point at both of them on a map. I'd need an awfully thin pin and an awfully large map though.
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In fairness, Italy, like Ireland, has become much more prosperous since the migration years. Both have transformed into comfortable, and frequently expensive, places to live in or visit.
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But there's my problem. Whenever I visit Italy, on holiday or work, many of the people I meet consider me to be a queer fish indeed. As mentioned previously, I look Italian and I boast an exceptionally Italian, if embarrassing, name; kind of like the Italian equivalent of an English 'Arkwright' or 'Worthington' but a little ruder. For the life of them they can't understand why I choose to continue living in rubbish old England with its terrible food, weather, housing, crime levels, collapse in family life, football hooligans, curry fetish, lager louts and all the other things that make the UK what it is today. Isn’t it about time I moved back to my roots and re-established contact with the land of my forefathers? They view me as a sort of defector from the national team who isn’t quite past the point of redemption. All I have to do is acknowledge that Italy is better than the UK, all those embarrassing factors that caused past diasporas have long been erased and, yes, the boy's coming home.
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And they're right. By any material standard; food, education, health, overall quality of life, Italy has long overtaken the UK. That's a 100% certainty. However, I could never imagine living in Italy.
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Italians are so bloody annoying.

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Their vanity. Their superficial obsession with clothes and bathroom tiles. Their four hour long game-shows. Their constant prattle. Their sheer all-encompassing smugness. God no.
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Fifty years of deficit-funded social welfare has turned Italy into a nation of pampered lady boys. The State pays for their every need. The notion of working any longer than 20 hours a week or for more than two straight hours without lunch or a nap is an alien concept. The situation is not as bad as in Spain, but it's close. Italians generally acccept that sometime tomorrow their whole economic system will collapse but, hey, tomorrow never comes does it? And, anyway, they're in the EU now so likes of the UK with its relatively tight-fisted welfare system can subsidise the merry japes taking place further South, can't it.
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There's one massive fly in the ointment though. Like other culturally homogenous nations, Italians are profoundly suspicious of other races and cultures. Their existing welfare system will start to look at lot less peachy to Italians once a large number of people perceived as not being 'Italian' start to draw from it. It's starting to happen now and the Eyeties don't like it.
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Like a pale imitation of France, Italians like to convince themselves they have an important role in the World. Late night television in Italy consists entirely of extended talk shows that discuss World events along the lines of 'if we were in charge this is what we would do'. People not watching this stuff are consuming copious quantities of cable pornography, including my uncle who, to my undying admiration, has hacked his cable box such that he doesn’t have to pay for adult TV; limited only by the fact that he can only receive the sound and no picture. He still watches it though.
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The twisted sexuality of Italians should not be understated. For reasons I do not fully comprehend, what would be considered specialist tastes in the UK are much more mainstream in Italy. I remember a work visit to Italy a few years ago with a colleague. We were travelling on a late night train and Andy found a comic book in the luggage rack above his head. Only it was like no other comic book he'd ever seen back home in Blighty. It featured an intricately drawn alien, with a trifurcated member, gang-banging a series of voluptuous Earth women all on his own. To complete Andy's education in the twisted psyche of Italian society, I took him for a walk the following night and pointed out a few of the legions of fur-clad, hard-working, East European transsexual prostitutes that make a very decent living in every major Italian city. I then bought him a few glasses of Cynar, brewed from fermented artichokes, and he returned home to England a very confused man indeed. To my certain knowledge, no pizza ads or pasta sauce bottles feature pictures of cheerful Italian men with a Bulgarian shemale on one arm and a keg of artichoke hooch under the other.
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OK, so Italy does have its limitations when it comes to settling down there, but what about a visit? Of course it's a great place for a holiday. Its food and culture are second to none. But I still have a couple of problems, more of that another time
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The philosophical implications of best-selling tripe

Herbie the Hedgehog on a fag break whilst moonlighting as a West End theatre usher

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Is there such a thing as Good and Evil?
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This question that has plagued philosophers for centuries. Unless we postulate the existence of a Creator, who has defined these terms for us, can they really mean anything? For example, consider the act of a lion killing a baby gazelle. Is it evil? Is it good? Surely such concepts are a human invention with no basis in the natural World.
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By the same token it is fair to ask is there such a thing as good art and bad art? What natural rules can be applied to judging whether a painting is good or bad? Surely such opinions will differ between observers; each with their own individual aesthetic, arising from their own personal life experience and background culture? Is their such a thing as absolute bad?
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Yes, yes there is.
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Yup, it's Day Two of reading The Davinci Code. Normally, I'll finish a book in one or two sessions, selectively speed reading along the way. If it's any good I'll go through a second time at a slower pace. So, far I haven’t been able to spend more than 15 minutes at a time with my current read before collapsing into hysterical laughter.
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On my last attempt I was making so much noise I had to get out of bed so that Tracy could get enough sleep before work tomorrow. Like a hysterical hostage in an action film, I couldn’t control myself and thought it best to move to another room before Tracy administered a calming slap in the face.
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It all started after reading through a particular page that included such corking dialogue as …

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'Sophie Neveu was one of DCPJ's biggest mistakes. A young Parisian déchiffreuse who had studied cryptography in England at the Royal Holloway … Her eager espousal of Britain's new cryptologic methodology continually exasperated the veteran French cryptographers above her … She was moving down the corridor towards them with long, fluid strokes … a haunting certainty to her gait … her eyes were olive-green - incisive and clear … her words curved richly around her muted Anglo-French accent'
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Coming so shortly after …

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'The delicate art of the cajoler was a lost skill in modern law enforcement, one that required exceptional poise under pressure. Few men possessed the necessary sangfroid for this kind of operation, but Fache seemed born for it. His restraint and patience bordered on the robotic.'

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… I lost it completely and started giggling and repeatedly muttering to myself 'This man's a multi-millionaire' off the back of this crap. This man's a multi-millionaire' off the back of this crap'
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Yes, the same God who designed testosterone in a way that it increases your sex drive and makes your hair fall out at the same time was laughing in my face once more. 'Look at my World' says he 'and gasp at its sheer absurdity - if you dare. I am a pesky, prankster God and I'm having a right old giggle'.
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I'm a generally well read kind of chap and particularly well read on the subjects central to this book. If I'm obliged to reach for a dictionary (English and French), thesaurus, trusty occult encyclopaedia and copy of The Necronomicron every second line what hope does the average reader have? Presumably most people who bought this book never finished it or learned to live with the knowledge that large chunks of it would be utterly incomprehensible to them for all time.
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So far, I'm barely 10% of my way through and already I can tell that this is a meticulously researched piece of work. Most of the meticulous research consisted of blatantly rewriting whole chapters of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail but there's a perceptive understanding of technology in there as well. So far, we've had characters …

• Using their cell phones in planes flying at 35,000ft (I blame the US Government for making people believe that one is possible)
• People being tracked with GPS units in the basement of the Louvre
• Cell phones that double as walkie talkies (necessary because the plot calls for a character to be not contactable in one sentence then fully contactable a little later on. Explained away with the line 'It was an expensive model equipped with a two-way radio feature' that worked even when the phone was turned off. Kool!!! I's just gotta get me one-a those babies!)

OK, I'm a little late arriving at the party. The book has already sold gazillions of copies and presumably a film version is being made somewhere. I didn’t buy a copy when it came out because it gave off an unpleasant, vaguely sulphurous odour even then. Now I'm sure. Somehow word has yet to get out but let me let you into a secret …

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The Davinci Code is appallingly written, plagiaristic tripe. The only genuine entertainment to be had out of reading it is the insight it gives into the patent absurdity of The Universe in which we live.

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Even though I have yet to finish it, this book already takes a front row seat in my personal Pantheon of Very Nasty Things Indeed, along with every Chevy Chase movie ever made and Eyes Wide Shut (can anyone blame Kubrick for having the decency to die after making it?)

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And yes, there is such a thing as universal, and absolute, bad. I'm reading through it right now. By logical extension there must therefore also be such a thing as True Evil. QED. Nietzsche eat your heart out and leave the corridor light on when you go to bed tonight - there are monsters out there.

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Life with London Italians Pt.1

Cosa Nostra

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And so my mind turns, as it does at this time of year, to my Italian ancestry.
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A close friend of my father died last week and there's service for him on Friday night at St Peter's, the Italian Church in Clerkenwell. My parents were married there, I was christened there, my brother was christened there. He got married there. Pretty much everyone we know goes to this same church to mark births, marriages and deaths.
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It's been there for over a hundred years and you’d scarcely notice the place. Later building has almost completely obscured its outline to a point where all you can see are the entrance doors, flanked by a row of tall buildings and shops on either side. The design of the main entrance gives away its London-Italian origin. Unlike 98% of all other churches, mosques and temples on Earth the entrance is located immediately next to the altar. Anyone entering the church late strides into full view of the congregation who, bored with the proceedings on stage, invariably turn their attention to how the latecomers are dressed and whether their choice of shoes and jewellery is appropriate for the occasion. Being an Italian church, lots of people turn up late.
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Anyway, attending the Italian Church, is one of the few occasions when I have any contact with the London Italian community these days. I'm also thinking about my Italian background for a couple of other reasons. I'm off with Tracy to Sardinia for a few cheapo days this weekend plus the annual Christmas Day negotiations are underway.
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Every year, the thorny subject of where the extended family takes its Christmas meal is a matter of intense discussion and speculation. It's never an easy thing. Over the previous months people will have died, been born, married or fallen out with each other over some trivial dispute about who owns a couple of square metres of rock back in the Home Country. Depending on how unwell key individuals may be or the decisions of a notary back in Piacenza, there are times when I'm unsure where I will be eating Christmas lunch, or what presents to take, well into Christmas day itself. The usual routine is to get up, shave, put on something clean, arm yourself with several generic wrapped presents, complete with blank name tags, and wait, Delta Force style, for a phone call.
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The meal itself, wherever it takes place, is almost always spectacular but usually marred by the brain numbing levels of shouting that take place across the food. It’s all rather reminiscent of trying to partake of a top flight dinner, whilst sitting at an immaculately laid-out table, placed in the middle of the Chicago Futures Exchange, just after a hurricane has hit Guatemala.
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Then, after the meal, there's the regifting. The thrill of watching a high stakes poker game is but nothing compared to my Mum working her magic with her basket of last year's presents. Looking into her eyes you couldn’t possibly tell that she is feverishly working out who gave her what last Christmas, lest she give it back to them 12 months later. I don’t want to sound harsh. She grew up poor. Ever since I can remember I was encouraged to open my Christmas presents with a craft knife and leave the wrapping and ribbons in a neat pile to one side. And you can be sure that any formal meal or wedding reception my mother attends over the course of a year is systematically ransacked and looted of any recyclable centre pieces and napkin holders. What she can’t take she burns. Yes, Genghis Khan and his boys could have picked up a few new moves watching my mother at the annual Festa di Fungho dinner dance.
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Every Christmas we return home with an armful of cut-glass Bohemian paperweights, letter openers and crappy toiletry gift sets which didn’t have our names on five minutes before we arrived. After many soul-destroying years of actually buying thoughtful presents with particular people in mind, I think Tracy has got the idea this year and has already started stocking up on characterless, mass-produced junk from local chemists.
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I've already decided what to buy her this year. A pair of ear defenders.
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Who's says there's no romance in my life?

Love note from Tracy

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Just popped upstairs to do the washing up and found a little note from my other 1/2 secreted amongst the crockery in the draining rack ...
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I guess I should look on the bright side - at least I didn't find the message tattooed on my arse.
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Can't write. Can't rinse properly. What kind of man am I?
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Adventures in pretentious plagiaristic piffle

Herbie the Hedgehog Phd giving a lecture on sedimentary petrology, whilst perched on a mound of oolitic limestone, with the able assistance of Ian Fairchild and Carol Bamsey

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Yesterday I promised Tracy that I really would start producing photographs and written work suitable for submission to 3rd parties at some point in the nearish future. Or else look for a proper job. Given that I spent a few weeks pacing around London earlier in the year in search of its hidden geometry (there's something going on here I promise you) she suggested that I take the style and genre of something like the incredibly successful Da Vinci Code as a starting point.
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I acquired an ebook version of the Da Vinci Code and started reading it under the duvet on my palm pilot last night.
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It’s not very well written is it?
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One particular segment struck me as being especially excruciating …

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'He could taste the familiar tang of museum air - an arid, deionised essence that carried a faint hint of carbon - the product of industrial coal-filter dehumidifiers than ran around the clock to counter the corrosive carbon dioxide exhaled by the visitors.'

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Ouch! They don’t write entertaining prose like that any more, no sireeee Jimbob.
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Throughout the book characters are described as 'sallow' or possessing 'an arrow-like widow's peak that divided his jutting brow and preceded him like the prow of a battleship'. Every time characters approach a building you are treated to a description of its height, number of window panes and year of construction. This particular author's writing technique is laid bare for all to see in every paragraph; write a sentence, chuck in two lines of gratuitous, pompous adjectives then four sentences stolen from a guide book or the Internet. Send to your publishers, who will hype up your tosh with great skill, then sit back and count the royalties.
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I'm probably infringing copyright by quoting chunks of this schlock but the entire book itself is a flagrant rip off of other, much better written books.
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Sallow? Sallow? Who describes people as sallow these days? Does anyone out there still think its clever to use words just because they sound literary? We should all amandate such cynicocratical crocitation and cagastric aporrhea. It's not big and it's not clever.
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But, as Tracy would point out, the book sold by the warehouseful. Quite literally. I've seen piles of copies of the Da Vinci Code on sale next to the latest issues of 'What Big Red Truck?' and 'Practical Lynching' in centres of literary erudition such as Walmarts in Mississippi and Alabama and The Warehouse in New Zealand. This book sold big.
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If that's what the public wants, or at least is told it wants, who am I to disagree?
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So, it was practice time for old Stef. 'I know' I thought 'I'll take a children's nursery rhyme at random and rewrite it in the style of the Da Vinci Code' …

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A tremulous and ashen face Jack turned to Jill, her long, thin flamingo legs looked pale in the cool of the evening breeze. He picked up the bucket; its rigid exoskeleton injection moulded in translucent, ruby red, high impact plastic. The galvanised handle rose in an arc from its rim catching the rays of the dying sun which glinted off its iridescent exterior. Together they stood side by side and stared up the hill. It was an ancient hill. Extruded from the womb of Mother Earth 400 million years ago in the Carboniferous era, it was composed of a grey, nodular oolitic limestone. Jack smiled, a crooked sardonic smile. Did the countless millions of creatures that died to form the fabric of this mound realise that their lifeless shells would one day aggregate to become the stage upon which one of the great secrets of mankind be finally revealed. There, upon the crest of the hill, squat and weather-beaten like a brooding, old and arthritic Albanian fisherman with a pipe, sat the well. Built in the early 1800's in Georgian style from 550 hard-glazed concave bricks by somebody called Eric it waited for them. In the wind Jack was sure he could hear it laughing.
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… at which point I gave up, bored, before they even started up the hill. One thought that did strike me whilst writing this is what were Jack and Jill doing going up a hill to fetch a pail of water anyway? You don't drill wells on top of hills. Water flows down. If the water table lay above Jack and Jill's heads there would be a spring somewhere nearby. Looking back, I think I may have been subconsciously searching for displacement thoughts to take my mind off the fact that if I want to write for a living I'm going to have to write toss and then come up with a cynical scheme to publicise that toss regardless of its merits.
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I'm in despair. What am I going to do?
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Trial by Tosspot

Don't Dump

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I woke up today thinking that if I was going to write a blog entry I'd write something brief and upbeat. I've drifted into the habit of knocking out quite long polemics lately and really, really wanted to spend my time collating my thoughts on the lighter side of things. I really did. A friend has just become a Dad for the first time. Maybe I would come up with something that celebrated the innate bittersweet beauty of life (and death, Stefs will be Stefs). Then, foolishly, I turned the radio on.
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Big mistake.
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Today was the day the Queen opened the next session of Parliament. As part of the ceremony she reads out a prepared speech detailing what new laws are to be run through Parliament over the next year. I listened to the speech.
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My second big mistake of the day.
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The project to turn the UK into a police state is gaining momentum. Has it only been three years since 9/11? Since then we have been subject to, or will be subject to:

• hundreds of heavily armed police on our streets
• a massive increase in the number of surveillance cameras everywhere
• introduction of compulsory identity cards
• legislation that permits indefinite detention without charge or trial
• neutralisation of our 2nd Chamber through the Parliament Act
• aggressive wars made in our name justified by outright lies
• abolition of the right to a jury trial in 'special circumstances'

The screw is tightened with each passing day and the majority of my countrymen don’t seem to realise what's being taken from them. It's frightening to see how freedoms that took centuries to establish can be eroded in a couple of years.
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It looks like even the Queen herself may be reading my blog. One day I write about the insane proliferation of security agencies in the US, the next day she's announcing creation of a new 'Serious Organised Crime Agency' in the UK. Presumably, the creation of a Half-Hearted Organised Crime Agency is being held back for another day.
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SOCA? Not much of an acronym is it. There are much better ones out there. A spokesman from the Greater Manchester Police was on TV a couple of days ago standing in front of a huge sign with the letters GMP written on it. It was all I could do to stop myself reaching over to the screen with a marker pen and drawing a little 'i' on it. That was a good story. He was warning us about a dangerous felon who'd been accidentally discharged from jail just before his trial. Apparently, he was being tried for six cases of attempted murder with a handgun. Six? That's the plot of a Marx Brothers film, not real life. Welcome to the UK in the 21st Century where the forces of GiMP chase after the World's most incompetent murderer, who's just been cheerfully waved out of prison with a packed lunch and a daily bus pass.
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Even though it wasn't in the Queen's speech today our Home Secretary has been floating the idea of doing away with jury trials again. The original reason for contemplating this was for complicated fraud trials where the average jury was not equipped to understand the details of the case. That reason seems to have been dumped now and the new reason is that, in some cases, confidential intelligence sources cannot be revealed to a jury of ordinary people in terrorist cases. Mmmmm, sounds to me like our government just wants to do away with juries and will grasp or manufacture any reason they can to do it. For 30 years captured IRA terrorists were put on trial before juries without the slightest suggestion that things should be done any other way. Now, all of a sudden, we're told we'll have to dump our existing system in the face of the Terror Threat.
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I've only done jury service once. Before serving I didn’t have a particularly strong opinion on the need for juries. After doing it I was certain we need them. It was a child molestation case. The accused was a married father of three daughters of apparently unblemished reputation. The accusation was made three years after the alleged event, apparently by the 'victim's' estranged father as part of a custody battle with the mother. There was little or no evidence to support the charge and lots of reasons to disbelieve it. Throughout the trial we, the jury, would chat in the breaks and the conversation normally went along the lines of 'Surely, they'll bring some clinching evidence in at some point. Nobody, could be arrested and tried on the basis of the stuff we've seen so far'. Wrong. The case was junk and we eventually found the guy not guilty. Not all of us though. We went in and out three times because one of us wanted to convict, regardless of the weakness of the evidence. He refused to discuss his reasons with us but we got the impression that he believed that a suspicion, however vague, was reason enough to convict. At one point he said 'Why would anyone accuse someone of something if they didn't do it!' He was a dick.

I came out of the experience having many learned many useful things:

• In a trial you really don’t want you fate decided by one person, he might be a dick
• Watching court room dramas does actually equip you to do jury service. In fact, given our lack of a briefing it was a good job all of us had seen court room dramas
• Several jurors were deeply troubled by the responsibility. One middle-aged West Indian woman at one point said something like 'I know there's no evidence but maybe he did do it. I have no way of telling. I don't know what to do. I'm a cleaner it's not right I should have to make decisions like this'. Which pretty much confirmed to me that she was exactly the right kind of person to make decisions like that.
• In our modern culture of fear an ordinary person can be arrested by four policemen in two cars outside their front door on a Saturday morning, in full view of their neighbours, on the basis of the slimmest of accusations; there, but for the Grace of God, go I …I still think about that trial every time I play with friends' kids
• Clearly, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service thought there was enough evidence to convict, given that they are only supposed to forward cases to trial that they think will get a conviction. The case was junk. What chances would the accused have had if the same kind of people were acting as the jury? I'm mindful of the case of the unemployed London chef I blogged a few days earlier, whose only crime was to start a website called 'Ultimate Jihad Challenge'. The media was full of stories of him having £30m in the bank and having sent hundreds of terrorists to Afghan training camps. This was all utter nonsense. His case was taken all the way to a jury trial, at which point 12 ordinary people finally put an end to the stupidity.

The same lies and nonsense applies to introduction of compulsory ID cards. We were originally told they would help fight fraudulent benefit claims, then we were told they were necessary to stop illegal immigration, now we are told they are necessary to counter terrorism. All reminiscent of a bad liar repeatedly changing his story to suit his ends.
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We don’t need compulsory ID cards. They won’t work; even if the Government managed to implement the necessary software which, based on every single recent major Government IT roll-out, I doubt very strongly.
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The only people whose lives will be restricted by ID cards are law abiding citizens. Ditto for the vast majority of new laws and fines imposed by that tosspot and his mates in No.10. This may come as a surprise to Tiny Blair and Co. but criminals have the most irritating habit of breaking the law and finding ways around restrictions. That's what they do. That's why they are called c-r-i-m-i-n-a-l-s.
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The total abolition of handguns in the UK is an excellent example. Our government imposed a complete ban on all handguns in 1997 and, lo!, gun crime has increased rapidly since then. Now they're talking about outlawing replica firearms. Yup, people are being cut down on the streets of London, Birmingham and Nottingham with fully functional, non replica Tec 9s and we're going to put a stop to that by banning novelty cigarette lighters. Welcome once again to the parallel universe that is Blair's Britain.
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The traditional and most reliable means of dealing with criminals is to catch them, prove they have done naughty things to a jury of ordinary, objective people, then put the bad people in jail. It also helps if you don’t let them out by mistake afterwards. OK, drafting new bullshit laws and eroding civil liberties are an excellent means of oppressing law-abiding citizens but no democratic government would do something like that. Would it?

Deepish thoughts from shallowish movies

Andy and Friends (yes, I know my pictures are increasingly less to do with my posts. What are you going to do about it?)

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Tracy wasn't feeling too well this weekend and the weather was grotty. So, I sat back in the sofa and spent the weekend absorbing fine cinematographic entertainment. When not talking to Jesus on The Great White Porcelain Telephone, Tracy would join me occasionally.
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We watched a lot of films this weekend but three in particular caused me vexious thoughts and the need to scribble …
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The 6th Day.
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In many ways this film is just the rehashed left-overs from Blade Runner, Total Recall and a few other paranoid Philip K. Dick short stories but it did have its moments.
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The premise of the film is that, in the near future, our minds can be backed up onto disk and our bodies cloned. Throughout the movie, characters who are killed or die from disease are recreated at the drop of the hat. The film did touch on some interesting thoughts, such as what does it mean to be human, but, in true Hollywood style, flipped straight into explosive chase scenes whenever there was any risk of the audience thinking about something. The moral of the movie was that, if it were ever possible, cloning people would be wrong and that we should all live within the span we are given. The implication of that moral is that there will come a time in the future when we would have to deliberately limit the effectiveness of medicine which seems a little strange. But, there again, if we didn’t limit the effectiveness of medicine we'd have to limit new births and what kind of World would that be? Anyway, the film dealt with these weighty issues by exploding buildings.
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In truth, I'm not too bothered about the 6th Day scenario as I believe in the concept of something like a soul and can’t envisage a future where such a thing could be backed up onto an ipod, with or without an expensive adapter. Plus, like the Olympic Flame, Life only comes from Life. No scientist has ever created a living thing from inanimate components. They tinker unknowingly with living things but, in spite of what we're told, that's not the same as creation. Ditto for artificial intelligence. There's a lot more to true sentience than simply programming a machine with millions of answers to millions of questions. Looking at the World the way they do scientists will never get it, but that's another post altogether.
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After watching the 6th Day I felt inspired to check out www.amendforarnold.com. Yes, the campaign to alter the American constitution, so that foreign born candidates can be elected President, has started. I spent a few minutes perusing the Amend for Arnold site and a reasoned explanation for amending the constitution is conspicuous by its absence. For the sponsors of the site, the need to open the way for Arnold as President is just a 'given'
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What is it with Austrians and the Triumph of Will thing? It's been widely known for years that Arnold planned to become the World Body Building Champion, the most successful movie star on Earth, Governor of California, then President of the United States, in that order. These things are becoming so, largely because Arnold wills them to be so. I really must practice my focused, demonic stares into the bathroom mirror.
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I also watched two screenings of For a Few Dollars More last night which also provoked a series of profound thoughts. I appreciate that love for the operatic genius of Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns is a minority thing but I was struck for the first time by several questions relating to the chronology of these movies.
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Even though The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was the last of the three to be made, it presumably is a prequel, given that Clint Eastwood picks up his cigars and his trademark poncho only at the end of the movie. So that means the true chronological order of the films should be:
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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
For a Fistful of Dollars
For a Few Dollars More
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But that raises more questions than it answers. Clint has found a fortune in gold at the end of TGTBTU yet is flat-broke by the start of the next film. Where did the money go? TGTBTU is set towards the end of the Civil War, yet in For a Few Dollars More the notes stolen from the Bank of El Paso are clearly Confederate Dollars which were withdrawn at the end of the war. Does this mean all three films are set in a narrow range of time between 1864 and 1865. And what is it with the Lee van Cleef thing? He's in two of the films as two different characters. Was there some 6th Day style cloning going on in the Old West. This all may sound very trivial indeed but Star Trek buffs would understand.
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And then the last, and easily the strangest, of the trilogy of films that bothered me this weekend; The Siege. Made in 1997 the plot is based on a group of Al Qaeda style terror cells operating in New York. Trained in the Art of Terror by the CIA they are subsequently abandoned by the US Administration and exact their vengeance by killing hundreds of New Yorkers in a series of suicide bomb attacks. Martial law is declared and the US Army controls the streets of New York. One scene features a totally naked, shamed and vulnerable looking Iraqi being questioned by a woman then tortured to death in a men's toilet. At the end of the film the FBI's Denzil Washington arrests General Bruce Willis saying things like 'You have the right to remain silent. You have the right not to be tortured or murdered'. Throughout the movie I was struck by an almost documentary-like quality to parts of the movie. It certainly didn’t feel like entertainment. Which is strange in that Hollywood movies are characterised by the liberties they take with real events to make them more entertaining on screen.
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This film easily scores a 9.5 on my own personal bizarreness scale and raises all sorts of questions.
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Combined with the plot of Executive Decision, made about the same time, the plot of The Siege pretty much anticipates the whole 9/11 thing and its aftermath. Somehow, Hollywood was making astonishing predictions of future events seen by millions, yet at the same time the US Government claims that it had no reason to be concerned about Islamic suicide bombers on home soil. What on Earth is going on here? Are Hollywood screenwriters better at intelligence analysis than the NSA/CIA? Are they psychic? Do Islamic terrorists use old Kurt Russell movies as training videos? Were the events of 9/11 based on a recycled screenplay?
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Make no mistake, we live in a very strange World.
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I don’t pretend to know what happened on 9/11. There are dozens of compelling reasons to disbelieve what the US and UK governments claimed happened. Admittedly, any alternative scenarios suffer from an equally crippling lack of evidence; but they would, wouldn’t they. I do know that whenever the claims of the likes of Blair and Bush have been subject to scrutiny they have been found to be untrue. 9/11 has never been properly investigated and never will be. The events of that day have been used to justify wars, hundreds of millions have bought the story as told. Too much has happened now. That story can never be changed.
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http://www.biscuitgame.com/world/911/911.htm

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One sub-theme in The Siege is the competition between different US security and law enforcement agencies. Off the top of my head I can think of the following US security agencies:
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CIA
NSA
FBI (usually portrayed as the Good Guys)
Secret Service
Military Intelligence / US Army
National Guard
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (Beer, Fags and Guns)
US Treasury
US Marshals
DEA
State Police
County Police
And, of course, ChiPs
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That's why at situations like the Waco siege hundreds of agents from numerous organisations were literally tripping over each other, each with their own sure-fire scheme for breaking the deadlock.
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In the UK we have:

The Police
The Military
MI5 / MI6
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In the New Zealand they have:
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A bloke called Barry, wearing a nylon supermarket security guard's uniform, sitting in a 2nd hand Nissan just outside Dunedin
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That's one of the many reasons why UK movies are less interesting than US ones. There's a whole genre of films featuring the likes of Julia Roberts fleeing from one agency eventually being saved by another, usually the ever-image conscious FBI. No such joy in the UK; 'Nowhere to run to baby. Nowhere to hide'.
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Why so many agencies in the US? Several reasons probably, but one rises to the top. Control.
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Hitler was a master of this kind of organised chaos. He quite deliberately allowed for the creation of numerous police and government departments with overlapping and poorly defined areas of responsibility. Then he sat back, confident in the knowledge that no one organisation would ever become too powerful and that eventually all needed to refer back to him as final arbiter in matters of disagreement. His own population, baffled as to who was really in charge, were dazed and confused in all their dealings with state organisations. In the early days it worked a treat. The flaws only started to become evident midway through the War, when the lack of co-ordination between organisations meant that essential war supplies were not being produced, produced badly or in the wrong quantities.
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At present, UK security services don’t suffer from this malaise but most other government functions do. There are literally thousands of NGOs (non government organisations) covering Health, Education and Local Government. We don’t elect them. We don’t know what each of them does. We don’t know what they spend. Many have overlapping responsibilities. That's the future for all societies; divide, rule, confound and, wherever possible, keep us scared.
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Confused? We're supposed to be.

My first Black man

Eastbourne

My parents ran a small grocers shop in the centre of London in the late 1960's. We lived above the shop. One day, when I was a little short of four years old, a West Indian man came in to buy a sandwich. Having spent my life to date growing up above a grocers surrounded by an extended Italian immigrant family I hadn't seen any Black people before.
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I ran upstairs, surprised out of my wits.

It wasn't that he was Black as such, he could equally have been green, purple or stripy.

Mum called me back downstairs and the Black man, obligingly, let me check him over, close up. After a couple of minutes of inspection, including a fair bit of nose-tugging, I established that he wasn't at all scary and, relieved, started laughing.

At which point my family and every one else in the shop joined in laughing, like some kind of cheesy, heart-warming, Brady-bunch style family comedy.

That was in 1968, about the same time that American marines were fighting Vietnamese insurgents in the city of Hue during the Tet Offensive. My, how times have changed since then.

The Black guy's name was Adolf and, yes, he had a moustache.

For some reason, Adolf, was tickled by the experience and made a point of buying me a small Christmas present each year, even after his work took him away from our area. Every Christmas he would turn up with a wrapped present for me, a snakes and ladder set or similar, and a bottle of rum for my Dad. I think Dad used to give him a bottle of halfway decent brandy and they'd chat about cricket. This carried on well into my teens until one year he didn’t turn up. That made me more than a little sad but he was getting on by then. Presumably, he's passed on. He'd be well into his eighties by now. I'd like to look him or his resting place up but wouldn’t know where to start.

Adolf was part of the generation of Caribbeans who migrated to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. Like later generation of immigrants they did manual jobs, worked on the buses or the Health Service. Many of them saw themselves as Children of the British Empire and had high expectations of life in the UK. Even though they faced what I would describe as low level, but ever present, racism and were largely restricted to menial work, they largely bought into the system they were living in. My own family also consciously decided to migrate into the UK and embraced their adopted country, for all its faults, whilst still buying Fiats and chomping on pasta behind their front doors.

Even before the rise of the Discrimination Industry, I grew up pretty much aware that you should judge people as individuals even if they make you wet your pants the first time you see them. Admittedly, I was brought up to be scared of curries but this is understandable. Even after 20 years of intense curry consumption I would say that it is common-sense to treat curries with respect, particularly vindaloos and phals. Italians don't do spicy food and, even today, the surest way to crush an Italian's will to live is to feed him a mild madras and four pints of super-cold, fizzy lager over the course of an evening. Whenever I've done that to visiting Italians it has taken them literally days to recover.

Where am I going with this?

The point is that early on, in spite of being a little scared at first, I learned to look past a person's skin colour. Clearly, Adolf was wise to that as well. That was about 35 years ago, before people started making a living out of playing up the race issue. You can't legislate for understanding between races. That comes from working or learning side by side with people, eating their food, watching them play for your national team or listening to their music. Most cultures have something they can offer other cultures. Fortunately for Italians for example, even though their pop music sucks, they're halfway decent cooks.

The knack of successful integration is to adopt as much of you host country's culture as possible, whilst still sticking true to culture of your parents and grandparents. After a couple of generations it doesn’t matter much but it's key for the first 20 or 30 years.

Well, that's how The Game was played in the UK until relatively recently anyway.

I think things are changing.

Unlike previous waves of immigrants, a significant proportion of recent arrivals don't seem to like the UK very much. I'm not guessing here, people have told me.

If you’re moving to a country purely to take advantage of economic opportunities, but largely reject the host culture, that isn’t going to work out very well for anybody in the long run.

There are at least a couple of factors at work here; it's partly a result of political correctness and partly because British culture is turning to sh*t.

Racked by white middle-class guilt for the sins of their forefathers, many of our politicians, civil servants and teachers play up on the negative side of Britain's past; The Empire, The Class System, a history of exploitation. White children are encouraged to be ashamed of their country, ethnic children encouraged to be resentful. Bad things undoubtedly did happen in Britain's past but that's not why people moved here. People came to Britain because of its tradition of fairness, equality for all in the face of the law, toleration, and understanding; all that stuff. No other nation on earth, not even America, has a culture derived from as many influences as ours. That didn't happen because the British were rank and narrow-minded, quite the opposite.

Fear of race is all about culture not people. I am living proof that Italian ancestry does not somehow make you fatally susceptible to the dangers of hot curries. Pretty much every Indian I've ever known is afflicted with a need to barter in every transaction they undertake in their daily life. Yes Raj, I'm talking about you in particular. It's culture, not genetics, that forces Indians to haggle at petrol stations and supermarkets; 'Is that your best deal? OK, what's the cash price? I'd love to give you my business my friend but I'm sure the petrol station across the road would happily give me an introductory discount'. I worry about my girlfriend walking home at night in South London because of the consequences Black urban street culture, not because I believe Black teenagers are any more prone to violence than other teenagers.

The situation is a little murkier these days. Only a few years ago I would have encouraged all migrants to this country to adopt British core values, whilst retaining links with the home culture, as migrants to the UK have been doing for years. Today, I'm not so sure. Trying not to sound too much like a reactionary old pensioner, how can I honestly say to a Muslim migrant, for example, that British core values are worth adopting? OK, against them they have issues like female inequality which isn’t exactly a brilliant thing. But should they ditch that and exchange it for godless materialism? A society populated by dysfunctional families, shagging at 12, consuming brain death media, manipulated by corporations; their role and purpose restricted merely to being consumers of mass produced crap made in 3rd world sweat shops? Come to Britain or the US and take that on board? I for one wouldn’t recommend it. I honestly don’t know what my country stands for anymore and agree less with the way my society is developing with each passing day, and at an accelerating rate.

But, hey, if people don’t decide to migrate to the US and UK we'll shove our bankrupt culture down their throats at the point of a gun anyway; whilst claiming that we're doing them a favour. We haven't played games like that since the 12th century. The much maligned British Empire of the 19th century imposed principles like the basic rule of law and threw in the occasional road. Local cultures and belief systems were pretty much, though admittedly not always, left alone. Nowadays, we declare war on entire religions and cultures without even any compensatory road building (US military bases don't count). Just in case there's any doubt on this one George Bush has makes his aims crystal clear by frequent use of the term 'Crusade', with all the baggage that goes with it. Then we have the cheek to talk about good (US/UK) versus evil (everyone else). Could anyone doubt that if the US aims were achieved in Iraq, for example, that in 30 years time the country would be afflicted with drug dependency, a collapse of family life, social exclusion and a people gulping anti-depressants as morality and purpose seeps out of their lives. I can just picture new TV shows like 'Ali Springer' featuring puffy, overweight tent trash violently confronting each other over issues like 'My daughter dates an infidel' or 'I covet my neighbour's ass?'. Great, get stuck into those 'free and fair elections' right now.

Suck on it, either as migrants or at rifle point in your own countries; your choice.

Anyway, that's enough of this kind of stuff for now; back to psychic helmets for a few days methinks.

Racist Humming

Mmmmmm ...

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I've just returned home after checking out a rally in the park at the end of the street.
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It wasn't much of a rally.
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Billed as 'The New Britain: Diverse, Multiracial and United - the only road to progress' the intention was apparently to mark a new chapter in the struggle for Civil Rights in the UK. A second objective was to 'Reinstate Alex Owoldae - End the Institutional Racism of Lambeth Borough Council'. They'd spelled his name wrong on the hundreds of posters put up to publicise the event.
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Alex Owolade worked in a Lambeth Council Homeless unit. Lambeth says it sacked him because he was being abusive to other employees who could no longer work with him. Mr Owolade says he was complaining about racism. I don't know what the truth is. I do know that after a riot in Brixton in July 2001, when about 100 kids smashed and looted shop fronts, Owolade said that he was 'proud' of what they did.

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"What happened last night was the youth and the community rebelled against years of racist repression, and years of racist injustice at the hands of the police"
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When a lot of the rest of us thought they were just stealing stereos.
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In fairness, the riot was sparked off by the police shooting a Black man carrying an imitation gun the night before but smashing up a Dixons and nicking a few CD players is a mighty peculiar way to fight for your civil rights. Does Dixons not sell stereos to Black people? Does it refuse to employ Black people?
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It's cold and wet outside today. Not many turned up to the rally, maybe 40-50 people. I intended to stick around and hear what was being said but after a couple of minutes realised that I couldn’t keep myself from scowling and that I was likely to end up with trouble. So I came home.
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In the few seconds I was there I was treated to snippets like:
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'Outlaw Lambeth Council'
'Civil Rights now'
'End racism in UK society today'
'Jail police murderers' (open to two interpretations that one)
'Black people are being tortured by the police every day'
'Black people must demand their civil rights. The new civil rights movement starts today'
'We demand repatriation!'
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Actually, I think it was supposed to be reparations but the guy just had a little trouble with his pronunciation.
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My head was spinning. Not because the speakers were saying anything new. I was just amazed that they were blasting out the same old rhetoric in the context of what was supposed to be a rally advocating multiculturalism. There was only one culture represented today. That's no surprise to me. This country is home to very significant ethnic communities from all over the World. Their only common cultural meeting point is that of their adopted country. So, when there's a big Latino festival in South London there are a lot of Latinos, a fair few white Brits but virtually no Black or Asians attending. At the Brick Lane festival there are loads of Pakistanis and Bangladeshi's, a fair few white Brits but virtually no Blacks or Latinos. The small march today was Black with a fair few white Brits. There's only ever one common denominator; 'racist' whitey.
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Yet, time after time, we are bombarded with the message that 'Britain is a racist country'. I've lost count of how many times I've been subjected to that phrase. The implication is that other countries are not. I would dearly love to know which countries aren't; Spain? France? India? Rwanda? The Sudan?
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Right now, something like 300,000 - 350,000 people are managing to beg, borrow or steal their way into the UK every year. They lash themselves to the underside of trains. They sail across stormy oceans in orange crates. These kiddies are keen. My history is a little flaky on this subject but I am unaware of similar migration patterns into South Africa in the 1960s or Louisiana in the 1850s. I don't think many people are fighting their way into Darfur right now.
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One of the speakers today was using language of Civil Rights activists in Alabama in the 1960s. What? Are Blacks or any minorities denied the vote? Have blazing crosses been lit in Kennington Park? If so, that's all passed me by. Drawing parallels withn the struggles in the American Deep South is deceitful, as well as pathetic. To my knowledge, the last public lynching to take place in SW9 was an unfortunate German bomber pilot who bailed out over here in 1940. He was white. Generally, we try to pretend that didn't happen, though I like to point out the offending lamp post to any visitors.
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I've visited the Deep South on numerous occasions, witnessed a fair amount of Black despair, poverty, and genuine and horrific exclusion, yet been subject to nothing like the hostility I get from some Blacks on the streets on London every single day. Given the recent history of the Black experience in the Southern States this amazes me. On numerous occasions, we have felt embarrassed in places like Alabama because, accustomed to life in South London, we were suspicious of Black people approaching us. On every single occasion they were just looking to chat, exchange greetings or offer assistance; leaving both Tracy and myself feeling about 2 inches tall. I can't recall the last time I experienced anything similiar in Lambeth.
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It's a different World.
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Back in my World, there's real hate out there on the streets of London and other UK cities. It's not just a Black thing. The same anger is present is run-down White areas, the difference is that Blacks are presented with a ready-made focus for their rage that poor Whites don’t have; except Irish people of course.
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I heard talk of reparations today, presumably for the slave trade. To its significant cost, Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 and used its navy to suppress slavery around the World. That was 197 years ago. I was watching a 'comedy' show last night that included an Irish comedian farting on about the Potato Famine. Apparently the British Government developed potato eating fungus as part of its genocide of the Irish people. That was in 1847, 157 years ago. At the same time in history, the vast bulk of the white British population was living in cramped, disease-infested conditions, their babies dying like flies and the adults dying in their 40s from TB and industrial illnesses. Maybe, the descendants of exploited Victorian mill and factory workers should start claiming reparations. My own family, white as they were, were scratching a subsistence peasant existence in the most godforsaken part of Italy. Why I, or the bulk of the indigenous UK population should assume the guilt or the responsibility for the actions of a bunch of white toffs who died 150 years ago is fucking beyond me. Pee on their graves and tear down their statues by all means but leave me and people like me out of it. Or is our crime the fact that we were born white? It certainly feels like it.
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This reparation thing often verges on farce. The last time I was in New Zealand, a year ago, I picked up on a story that Maoris, quite seriously, were claiming their ancestral rights to radio airwaves and offshore drilling licences.
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It's good business though isn’t it. During a trip to Canada, the only country I've ever visited that is less racist than the UK, a few years ago I got chatting with a group of French Canadians working in a warehouse outside Montreal. The subject of proposed separation of French and English Canada came up. It was a hot topic at the time. The guys all gave the same opinion; that it wasn't a real issue in daily life but a small group of political people were stirring up trouble so that they could benefit from it. I've heard that story before.
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So, anyway, at the rally today. The speakers were complaining about how racist Lambeth Council is. Anyone who has had dealings with London Councils clearly knows that this is nonsense. London Councils are extensively staffed by people from ethnic minorities and Council literature is so multilingual it takes a whole side of A4 just to say 'Good Morning'. Long ago, I worked for a London Council and was once hauled up on a racism charge. My sin? Humming 'Rasputin' by Boney M. Yes, really, no more than that. Dixie I would understand but Ra Ra Rasputin?
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The bizarre thing was that I was a temporary employee and they could have dispensed with my services at the drop of hat. In a way I would have been grateful. As a temporary employee I was not subject to their disciplinary procedures but they went ahead with the process anyway. Partly, because they were pussies and partly because they were afraid that I would make a counter claim. Anyway, at the end we resolved the issue by having me apologise for any unintended offence to the person who was offended. She was a star. One time, I sat next to her for six weeks as she did absolutely no work whatsoever. The day before her report was due, she cried out 'The computer has lost all my data' and got a six week extension. I then made the fatal error of giggling when she claimed her data had been lost and compounded my mistake by going through the motions of trying to recover the non-existent lost data. My card was marked. That was 10 years ago; presumably the working environment is even more demented in Local Government today.
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In fact, the advances that have been made to ensure equality are now arguably becoming counterproductive. There are now powerful disincentives to employing ethnic minorities, derived from a fear of the law rather than any racial prejudice. My last company employed about 190 staff in its London office. Out of the 190 only a couple were Black. This patently isn’t right. I'm not about to defend that firm, Lordie no, but there is a case to be made that if you employ a white person who turns out to be rubbish you can sack them. If you employee a Black person who turns out to be rubbish you cannot. That's not to say a higher proportion of Blacks are rubbish than Whites but if they are Black you are stuck with them; unless your firm has the stomach for a long drawn out legal procedure. Why bother?
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Stef's solution? Per a Warren Beatty quote 'Let's all just **** each other until we're all the same ****ing colour …'. I'll do my bit, starting with Japan.

What have you done today to make me feel unclean?

Ian surveying the proposed location of new Olympian Paradise

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Well, the London Bid for the 2012 Olympics went public today, as did the promotional video.
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The swine behind the bid surprised me just as I had finished eating my breakfast. It took ages to wipe the chunder off my TV screen.
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It was less of a promotional video and more a crime against humanity.
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Set in that non-existent London populated by the likes of Hugh Grant and Andie McDowell it featured a cast of the most appalling theatrical luvvies including Joseph Fiennes, Helen Mirren and global megastar Martine McCutcheon. I'm sure I saw Jeremy Irons at one point though he isn’t credited in the press release. Naturally, in keeping with the exceptionally dated inspirational Cool Britannia theme, Heather Small was doing her anthem thing and singing 'Proud' in the background. Ken Livingstone also featured, but he would wouldn’t he. Bravely eschewing cliché, the video included hordes of bowler hatted men with umbrellas, including a couple of Black guys, wandering around the City just like what really happens every single day.
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I'm sure they all gave their time for free.
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We were also treated to views of classic red London routemaster buses. You know, the ones that are being phased out because of the rise of compensation culture and the £50m pa claimed by people stupid enough to fall off them. There were some old style telephone boxes too. Yes, the ones that are being phased out because of vandalism, people using them as toilets and as bulletin boards for East European call-girl rings.
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There's also a scene where, former James Bond actor, Roger Moore opens a briefcase to find that it contains a packed lunch. I remember laughing at that joke, about five years ago when Robbie Williams used it in the video for Millennium.
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Total running time of the video 4.31. Total time given to scenes set in the actual main proposed Olympic sites in Hackney and Greenwich, about 4 seconds.
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I feel unclean, almost violated, after having watched it.
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Yes, I feel inspired now to walk out of my front door, approach some of the legions of multi-ethnic paraolympians who apparently cheerfully practice on the streets of London and sing in my best pop anthem voice:

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'What have you done todaaaaaaay to make me feel prooooooooud!!!!'

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I'd get twatted in less than 3 seconds.
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Side-splitting funny man Griff Rhys Jones currently has a spot on the front of the Official London Bid Web Page. Oh how I laughed at his humorous repartee; it was all I could do to drag my mirth-shattered frame to the telephone and order some replacement spare ribs from the local Chinese take-away.
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And then there was the text of the bid itself. Apparently, we're going to get new schools, hospitals, bullet trains and, above all, a new sense of purpose in our lives. And this will cost each of us less than 5 pence each. Personally, Seb Coe lost me about a nanosecond after he referred to 'London's excellent public transport infrastructure'.
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Part of the thrust of the bid seems to be a claim that we need a successful bid so that we can build the new accommodation and transport links that this city so desperately needs. Mmmm, capital city of 4th richest economy in the world, just about the most expensive place to live on Earth, yet we apparently need to attract a 17 day sporting event here in 8 years time so that we might get some trains that work.
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Come on, everyone knows Olympic bids are corrupt and deceitful. According to the Auditor-General of New South Wales, Sydney ended up costing over twice the pre-bid figures. In Athens total costs will be at least four times as high as the bid committee's initial budget. The extent of spending on infrastructure for the Athens Olympics is so huge it's hard to establish an exact figure, but the majority of the famous "Olympic Legacy" of Athens is in fact being largely borne by EU taxpayers under the unaudited and colossally wasteful Community Support Funds. The guys at Athens were smart, they got the EU to underwrite the games. Here in London it looks like we're to bear to total cost locally. The last City to do that was Montreal which, I understand, is still bankrupt from the 1976 games. Now that's a legacy to aim for.
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The Olympics are all about corrupt, unaccountable officials gorging themselves senseless on public money; then rubbing our noses in it by handing over tickets to all the popular events to other corrupt officials and the corporate hospitality industry. I note from the London Olympic bid document that the IOC members are to be housed in Park Lane, Mayfair; not particularly handy for the proposed main Olympic sites in East London but exceptionally close to West End shopping, Mayfair casinos and upmarket whoring.
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But if you're going to lie about the costs and the benefits of the Olympics why feel limited? If none of it is true why not up the stakes a little? Offer everyone in London a free DVD player and crate of lager in the event of a successful bid. Paint a picture of London in 2012 where everyone is dressed in tinfoil tunics and flying around in personal jetpacks; a London where disease and poverty have been abolished. It's all cobblers anyway, so why hold back?
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Touch wood, if we're lucky the London Bid team will do a Paula Radcliffe; realise that they won't win a few days before the result is announced and start crying at the side of a road, complaining of heat exhaustion.
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Disgraceful LondonOlympic video here ….

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London Olympic Tosh

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I haven’t finished with this at all. Not by a long chalk. Those people will rue the day they made me lose my breakfast.