Canadian Submarines

I thought I'd help the Canadian Navy by finding them an alternative source for 'pre owned' submarines, other than buying clapped-out firetraps from the Royal Navy.
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A quick search on ebay and lo! I found this
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Ebay Sub
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OK, it doesn't come equiped with any weapons systems but it's cheaper, and possibly less flammable, than the Royal Navy offerings and what does Canada want with warships anyway?

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Culture of Despair doing nicely ...

Old ...

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The UK Culture of Despair took a major step forward yesterday. The TV and newspapers were full of the story that millions of people had inadequate pension provisions and would spend the last 20-30 years of their lives living in abject poverty. Yet, somehow, without the slightest trace of irony we also heard stories on the same day about how the NHS was going to spend £30bn on a new appointment booking software, London Underground was going to drop £600m on a system that would enable it to run 350 trains per hour along every platform (wow!), or that over half of our soldiers believe that the millions, maybe billions, are wasted on overpriced, ineffective equipment.
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The pension story is depressing not least because of the lies and disinformation that accompany it.
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Not everyone has a problem. People who work in the public sector have final salary pension schemes guaranteed by the same private sector taxpayers who are looking forward to spending their autumn years visiting soup kitchens. No money has ever been put aside to fund public sector pensions, they're just paid for out of each year's taxation. Now that's what I call financial prudence. Some Fire Brigades now spend as much as a third of their annual total spend on pensions; leaving two thirds of their money to put out fires.
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Once again the Government trotted out the story that we're all living longer. We are, but not by as much as we're led to believe. Most of the increase in life span is due to statistical tricks based on reductions in infant mortality. The life expectancy of a 40 year man has barely improved over the last 50 years.
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The conclusions are that we should save more or pay more tax.
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But we are paying more tax - it has risen remorselessly in order to fund fireman's pensions, pay management consultants for unnecessary, multi-billion pound software systems, invade Iraq with defective military equipment, support 250-400,000 arrivals into the UK every year, fund the huge increase in incapacity benefit (a couple of million people have apparently been disabled over the last 4-5 years) etc etc.
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Mmmmm, save more? We could do that but we are taxed on savings interest to a point where the return doesn't cover inflation. Alternatively, we could put money into the stockmarket, which is already overvalued, and wait to lose 40% next time there's a crash. That's all academic anyway because our economy is currently only sustained by a huge explosion in customer credit. If we stopped borrowing and spending and saved instead, the whole economy would deflate and taxation would really rise seriously.
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Once you've retired you are currently obliged by the Government to use your savings buy an annuity that pays something like 6%, compared to 4.5% in a savings account. The other difference between the two is that all the money put into the annuity gets taken by the insurance company as soon as you pop your clogs, however soon that may be. Yes, the entire annuity industry is based on two principles. Firstly, that you are compelled to buy an annuity on retirement. Secondly, that you will have spent 30 years saving to buy that annuity then die a couple of years into its term. This is a very nice, and profitable, business to be into indeed. Peope in the annuity trade are not worried about how they're going to fund their own pensions.
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Another amusing quirk of the pensions system is that if you retire with savings that bring you up to £30pw (say £50,000) you may as well blow the lot, as the Government undertakes to top up basic state pension by that much if you have no other sources of income. Yup, there's no difference on retirement between someone who has saved nothing and someone who has saved £50,000. That's the time to buy that second hand Ferrari you've always promised yourself. This situation will be particularly annoying to someone who has saved, say, £50,001.
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The funniest aspect to the whole issue of pensions is that you don't really understand what's going on; annuities, minimum income guarantees, the colossal impact of pension fund management fees, until you've actually retired and then that's about 30 years too late. How you laugh. Some people have realised that a big screw was taking place and borrowed money to buy a second house rather than investing in private pension schemes. Not as smart a move as it might seem as a) lots of people doing that have pushed the purchase price of properties past a point that made economic sense and, most importantly, b) the Government knows what you're up to, will wait for the real turkeys to lose money and sell up, then move in and tax the bejesus out of those who did it sensibly.

That's the biggest issue of the whole pensions 'crisis'. In the UK, any moderate accumulation of capital gets hammered by the Government sooner of later. If you're really rich you have the means to avoid the worst aspects of taxation, otherwise forget it, you're toast. For us mere mortals the attractions of borrowing far outweigh the virtues of saving. An environment like that does not occur by accident.
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So, the UK is the fourth richest economy in the World with private sector employees working the longest hours in Europe, yet the State pays out just about the lowest retirment pension in the Developed World and apparently can't afford that. All the technology and productivity gains of the last 50 years have somehow evaporated and all that talk of the future 'Leisure Economy' was nonsense. There's some classic Orwellian Double-Think going on here. On one hand, we are being told we live in a well-run, vibrant and modern economy, at full employment, that needs to embrace 250,000 migrants a year. On the other hand, we are being told that we cannot afford to pay pensioners seventy eight quid a week basic state pension. I smell doo-doo and lots of it.
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Yes, we are being told that, unless we work for the Government or local council, we will have to work till 70, pay a lot more tax, or save an additional 15% of our incomes. The one thing we are not being encouraged to consider is what the vast wealth of this country and our already rather large tax bills are currently being wasted on.
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Time to think out of the box. There are alternative solutions. For example, everyone between the age of 25 and 55 could be compelled to take up smoking 20 cigarettes and eating two McDonalds Big Tasty Burgers per day (1,608 calories, 3 ounces of fat). Alternatively, those of us who can, could up-stakes and bugger off to another country that doesn't take the piss out of its citizens so much. Ooops, people are doing that already. Spain, New Zealand and Australia are currently undergoing a little bit of a UK migration boom at the moment.
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All together now ...
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'Things can only get worse! Thiiiiiiiiiiings ... can only get wooo-ooorse!'

We luuurve the Tube

Isn't this fun

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A friend just sent me a link to an excellent article from the Times On Line
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It's all about the latest advances on the London Underground network. Here's a taster:
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LONDON UNDERGROUND trains will travel at 60mph and less than 300 yards apart under a revolutionary control system designed to squeeze many more trains on to the network ...
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The £600 million system will calculate the train’s position to the nearest millimetre and relay it electronically to processors at stations once every 0.7 seconds. The processors will calculate how fast the train can go without crashing into the train in front.
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Mmmmm, a quick fiddle with my calculator and ... 1760 yards in a mile / 300 yards between trains = 5.8 trains per mile @ 60mph = 352 trains per hour = 5.8 trains per per minute. So ...
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In the future, we can look forward to waiting no longer than 11 seconds for a train on the London Underground, all for less than £600m; assuming that the job wasn't costed by the people who worked on the Scottish Parliament Building, the Diana Memorial or The Dome, in which case the final cost will be something like £5.8bn. The speciality prostitutes of London must have been working double shifts, like Trojan steam trains, to land their employers that particular contract.
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Times Online Article:
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1305764,00.html
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Real-Time tube congestion map
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http://map.tfl.gov.uk/realtime.asp

Sharron Davies supports walking as part of a healthy lifestyle

A fully-clad Sharron explains the blindingly obvious

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I was sitting in the McDonalds at Kings Cross this weekend, minding Tracy's bag whilst she went off and bought us McFlurries (if I pluralise it is it still trademarked?). McDonalds thoughtfully provide reading material for such occasions, and for those times when sparkling meal time repartee eludes you across the milkshakes, in the form of the paper liners they place on their serving trays.

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My particular paper liner included an Earth shattering, Moses-esque, message ...

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'Sharron Davies supports walking as part of a healthy lifestyle'

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I had a couple of problems with that message:

1. As a former Olympic swimmer, who admittedly looked and probably still looks most excellent in a cossie, Sharron isn't exactly the most appropriate celebrity to be recommending walking.
2. What next? Is this the first of a series; with planned sequels such as 'Sharron Davies recommends ... breathing/ eating/ not French kissing mains electricity supplies ... as part of a healthy lifestyle'?

It got worse. That message was only Step 1 (Step 1, get it?) of Sharron's meticulous Three Point Plan to make McDonald's customers fitter and healthier. Step 3 was composed of the following three elements and, remember, I was reading this in the country that produced Shakespeare, Newton, Faraday and Brunel:

• I often take the stairs rather than taking the lift
• Instead of taking the car around the corner I prefer to walk !!!!!? (my exclamation marks)
• I love taking my dog for a walk. It's great exercise for me and great exercise for my dog too! (Sharron's exclamation mark)

At no point does Sharron recommend easing up on burger consumption. She did, however, offer a free pedometer. On the back of the liner McDonalds had obligingly listed nutritional information for all its products in a headache inducingly small font. I was curious to see if Pancakes and Sausage and 20 McNuggets were still the bad boys on the block (680 calories and 700 calories respectively). After much squinting I discovered that, no, there was a new force to be reckoned with and that force is the McDonald's Big Tasty burger; weighing in at a mighty 804 calories. Greatness such as this does not happen accidentally. It takes just under one and half ounces of fat, over half of which is saturated, to make the Big Tasty burger what it is today. Frankly, I was impressed.

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And no, I'm not one of those people who takes cheap shots at McDonalds. I'm a fan. When travelling in some rat-infested 3rd World bog hole; Russia, almost anywhere in Africa, Florida, those Golden Arches looking mighty fine and, at 99p, a sugar-coma inducing McFlurry is significantly cheaper than ecstacy. I was also totally unimpressed by the success of Fast Food Nation and Supersize Me; one of my planned pet projects is to film someone (not me) eating nothing but toasted tofu and carrot juice for four weeks and see how they look and feel after that. I'm expecting the results from the lavatory-cam to be the most horrific.

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No, my problem with the Sharron Davies thing, and that other poop McDonalds feels oblige to come out with, is that a) it's moronic and b) it's hyprocritical. McDonald's sell length and quality of life reducing junk. Everyone knows that by now. Who are they trying to kid? What next? Night-time driving tips and protective crash barriers for bus queues from breweries? High altitude acclimatisation holidays and breath mints from tobacco companies? Get real.

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and they didn't even print a picture of Sharron in a tight swimming costume, so I almost didn't take the liner home with me

Bottle of Diet Coke flees persecution ...

One Coke's journey to freedom and a better life

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There's one aspect of the asylum/ migration debate that has been subject to barely any discussion at all in the UK Media; the issue of foreign Coca Colas sneaking into this country.
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For several years now I have noticed that London convenience stores have taken to stocking non British born fizzy drinks, particularly Cokes. My first experience was about 6 years ago and occurred shortly after Labour's first general election win. I'm sure that this is no coincidence. The legendary Fishcotheque fish and chip shop on the Waterloo Bridge Road served me with a tin of 'Diete Coke', produced somewhere near Montreal. I didn't complain, partly because Canada is an English-speaking Commonwealth country that kindly buys our defective 2nd hand submarines off us (most recently HMS Widowmakers 1,2,3 and 4), but primarily because it was 400ml as opposed to the UK standard 330ml.
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But that was the thin end of the wedge. Since then I have been served with migrant colas from Poland, the Czech Republic and Turkey. OK, I thought, they're either current members or prospective members of the EU. If the UK population expects their citizens to clean our lavatories and change our babies' nappies, the least we could do is show some solidarity by drinking their sodas.
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Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was in a dingy convenience store in Rotherhithe. It stocked the usual range of drinks available in such places:

• individual cans labelled 'Multipack Purchase - Not to be Sold Separately',
• bottles with 'Sale Price 45p' printed on them, half-obscured by crudely printed stickers saying '85p'
• promotional cans with details of competitions that had closed 2 years before
• bottles of Diet Coke with what appeared to be Arabic lettering

I was thirsty, so I bought one of the Cokes. Closer inspection revealed its country of origin to be Georgia; which was nicely aposite given that Coke's HQ is in Atlanta. I'm guessing that, what with 911 and the War on Terror and all that, the Americans haven't started producing Arabic-friendly Cokes in their heartland, so my guess is that that particular Coke came from the former Russian republic.
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What was that bottle's story? Did it come to the UK for a better life? Was it fleeing persecution in its homeland? Were there tiny little airline-sized 200ml cans back home in Tibilisi waiting for some of the retail sale price to make its way to them so that they could go to University? Or had impoverished migrants, short of hard currency, paid people smugglers for their perilous passage with bottles of Diet Coke? What economic sense was there in transporting coloured water across the whole of Europe to the UK? Was it smuggled? If it was smuggled how easy would it be to transport less benevolent items into the UK?
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I guess I'll never know.
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Nice Try from the boys at FCKF. Kudos ...

Nice Try from the boys at FCKF, Old Street. Kudos ...

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I don't know what's funnier; the thought they're blatantly ripping KFC off or the fact that their business name looks like a rude expression with all the vowels taken out ...

Careers advice from the BBC

I just visited the BBC website to enter a competition they were hosting. Whilst there I noticed a quiz called 'What Kind of Thinker are You?'. Why not have a go I thought. The result was ...
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You are an Existential Thinker!
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Existential thinkers:

• Like to spend time thinking about philosophical issues such as "What is the meaning of life?"
• Try to see beyond the 'here and now', and understand deeper meanings
• consider moral and ethical implications of problems as well as practical solutions

Other Existential Thinkers include
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The Buddha, Gandhi, Plato, Socrates, Martin Luther King
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Careers which suit Existential Thinkers include:

Philosopher, Religious Leader, Head of state, Artist, Writer


I particularly enjoyed the line 'Other Existential Thinkers include'. So the full list should read 'Stef, The Buddha, Gandhi, Plato, Martin Luther King'
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Wow! That was so useful. I'll be popping off to Job Club tomorrow and ask them if they have any Head of State or Philosophy positions on their books.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/thinker_quiz/

Gyro Bubbley

Gyro Bubbley

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Went for a canal side stroll from Paddington Basin, through Regents Park and Camden Lock, over to King's Cross yesterday. The first half of the walk was quite pleasant until we reached Camden. In the 1980's Camden Market was the place to buy shoddy, but trendy, fashion goods. All over London the same conversion would take place in countless offices every Monday morning:
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Person A - would plonk their latest acquisition in the middle of their desk
Person B - 'That's an interesting bag/ pair of shoes/ tobacco tin/ posing pouch'
Person A - 'Yes, I got it a Camden Market. It only cost a fiver'
Person B - 'Wow! You're so cooooool'
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The market stalls are still there, and so are the hordes of 20 something tourists in search of Gothic chic, but the atmosphere isn't what it was and nothing costs as little as £5 any more. The real hardcore trendies moved over to East London; Hoxton, Shoreditch, Dalston, years ago. Like Carnaby Street, Camden Market only survives because of the countless successive waves of tourists visiting the place on the basis of long out of date information, taken largely from old Clash album sleeve notes. Camden Market is just plain sleazy now, the kind of place where sensible people constantly pat their pockets and gangs hang out looking to amuse themselves by hassling or stealing from naive Italian language students. It's only a matter of time before Camden sees its first drive-by canal barge shooting. 'It all happened so quickly officer. The barge came up next to him. Someone fired a gun then it speed off towards Holloway. It was all over before we could do anything'.
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Let's face it, canal boats are silly; as a means of transportation and most definitely as somewhere to live. Half the boats we saw in permanent moorings along the canal clearly weren't in use; the initial appeal of a Bohemian water-borne lifestyle rapidly shattered by the reality of an existence in a smelly and decrepit wheel-less caravan with a chemical toilet and a kiddie's water pistol for a shower.
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We didn't photograph very much during the day. The most interesting thing we saw was a fairly posh looking old lady sitting by the canal. She was clean and well turned out except for the fact that she was wearing men's shoes. She didn't look homeless as such just eccentric; she was sitting under a huge umbrella, even though it wasn't raining, and her bicycle was festooned with bunches of empty beer cans held together by string. What caught my eye was that, amongst the beer cans, was a handwritten label with the words 'Gyro Bubbley'. What did it mean? Did the gyro refer to the bike? Did the bubbley refer to the lager the cans once contained? I'm still pondering that one. I also grabbed a few shots of signs saying 'Canal Cruising' and will edit out the first 'C' in Photoshop at some point, when the weather gets cold and the evenings draw in.
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I'm not having much luck taking pictures in town these days. At the start of the walk, in Paddington Basin, I was taking a few snaps of some office buildings and noticed that all three of us were being stalked by a kid in a fluorescent jacket with the word SECURITY emblazoned on the back. After about five minutes of stalking he approached me and said:
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'Excuse me Sir, you can't take pictures of that buidling as it's private property'
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He was no older than 20, he had a strong South African accent, sounded retarded, was blessed with appalllingly extensive and moist acne, had just been consulting with someone on his radio and was talking nonsense. All of these things annoyed me intensely. I basically told him that he was talking cobblers and should check back with his boss and tell him someone said so. He explained he was only doing his job and moved off sideways, still keeping an eye on us and fingering his radio. I'm still kicking himself for not reminding him that the dopey security guard is ALWAYS the first person to be taken out in action movies.
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Five minutes before I had been admiring an East African traffic warden working his way through a line of parked cars outside St Mary's hospital. Serves those swine right, I thought, for having the audacity to think that they could drive over to visit their sick relatives and park their cars along a quiet sidestreet on a Sunday afternoon. Those criminal vermin deserve those £90 fines.
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I was also buoyed up by the thought that soon the whole process of paying recent migrants to hassle British citizens taking pictures in public places or visiting cancer patients will be so much enhanced once the new ID cards are forced on us. Think about it. We'll be obliged to offer up our cards on demand to all sorts of intrusive idiots dressed in ersatz uniforms who can barely speak English. Then they'll be able to swipe our cards on OCR machines and our fines will be automatically deducted from our debit or credit cards in seconds. I can't wait. The future will be marvellous.
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Some s***'s nicked me pitbull ...

Saw this outside The Oval tube station this morning (click to enlarge)

The Perils of MP3 Player Ownership

Mississippi

Today, I spent a couple of hours sorting through my MP3 collection on my early adopter's model (twice the size, 120% of the cost and none of the design flair of an iPod) Archos player today. This greatest problem with these MP3 players is how to organise the 6,000 or so tracks that they can hold. The first thing you do when you get one is to load it up with every track you can get hold of, then you spend the next six months jabbing at tiny buttons and wading through copious subdirectories trying to find something you feel like listening to. After a while you just give up and listen to any ready-made compilation albums that you had the forethought to install. Anyway, the contents of my Archos have got more than a little confused over the last year or so and I resolved to have a good clean-out.
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I couldn't help noticing just how much Bluegrass and Country and Western music had crept onto it since its last spring clean. I originally loaded all those tracks on as a joke, then I developed a strange unwholesome attraction to listening to them, the same kind of pleasure you get from sniffing your own farts, then I actually found myself liking them. And I'm not just talking about the occasional Shania Twain crossover ditty or Paris Texas-style Ry Cooder slide guitar riff. I'm talking the real Folger's gourmet stuff; the kind of wailing dirges that they play in Southern redneck dives after 11.00pm; whilst the tatooed locals stare into the necks of their Budweiser bottles and contemplate the fact that they are a) unemployed, and b) probably going to develop asbestosis from the job they've just been made unemployed from. I'm warning you this kind of listening material is addictive; ask any Leonard Cohen fan.
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Aside from the C&W, which I don't mind, a whole load of trance, rap and other junk had infested my machine. Weeding these defective tracks out of the 6,000 on my player was looking to be a monumental task, until I hit upon the following simple formula which I recommend to anybody with a large, unsorted MP3 collection. I can guarantee that, at a stroke, the quality and credibility of your music collection will be improved by anything between 100 and 6,000%. Here's the secret ...

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Delete all tracks with any of the following words in the artist name or title: 'MC', 'DJ', 'Dido', 'Simply' or 'Red'.
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Don't hesitate. Don't falter. Do it now. Once finished with your own collection, apply the same formula to any other collection you can get your hands on. Innocently ask friends or family to lend your their MP3 players then do them a favour. Once you've finished with the MP3 players move onto CD, tape and vinyl collections. If at all possible make it your life's work
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PS Stef's Most Recent Deep South Gallery here ...

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http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/zucconi/deepsouth/deepsouthgallery.htm

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PPS What's wrong with Dido?

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1. She's boring, insipid, vacuous and completely lacking in any genuine emotion, spirit or soul whatsoever (listen to Nina Simone instead)

2. She's posh

3. She was nominated as 'Best Newcomer' in the Brit Awards in two separate years - which proves that a) she was shagging or related to someone, and b) you fell for it you Muppet

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PPPS What's wrong with Simply Red?
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1. If you have to ask, ignore me, you deserve everything you get and listen to