Ethical Companies – The Blog

Despite his somewhat “fruity” language (I am not unduly offended by swearing like some people) I do regularly read the blog of Obnoxio The Clown. I mainly read it because it makes me aware of a number of political issues (that I would otherwise not be aware of) which Obo spots with relish, revealing various bits of political hypocrisy and mendacity in the process.

Anyhow, Obo is showing his age with a score of 1980’s music YouTube clips, including Gary Numan, Visage and Ultravox. So anyway, being a fan of 1980’s music myself, here comes my little selection for your delight:

Originally recorded back in 1964 (the year I was born) by Gloria Jones the track Tainted Love has been covered umpteen times, including a rockabilly version and a cover by the awful Marilyn Manson (although arguably one of his better tracks). Soft Cell was the duo that shot Tainted Love to the top back in 1981, and was number one when I left school. It’s also one of those songs that reminds me of my first serious “love” Carol, who sadly died shortly after this time.

Ahhh Frankie Goes To Hollywood, the definitive 1980’s band, what can I say ? Alas, the chances of a reunion tour are basically zilch.

Divine, not everybody’s taste, but I loved the “energy” of his music and others of the “Boystown” genre.

Ditto to the Divine comments, the “energy”.

And then there was house music. M/A/R/R/S was upon us and I disocvered house, and later techno, gabba (gabber) and even industrial. It’s not everyone’s taste …. And this set the path for my musical taste for the 1990’s.

I was also a big fan of the following: Yazoo, Feargal Sharkey, Bronski Beat, Modern Romance, Shaking Stevens, Matchbox, Meatloaf and many more. The 1980’s wasn’t a great era for me in many ways, but the music was good ….

Steve

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On the matter of Britain: 10 things NOT to like.

I spotted the above article on the Anna Raccoon blog recently, followed from a link on another blog (can’t remember which, sorry). Some of the “dislikes” are not specifically British things, whilst some are British and understandable (Jonathan Ross !) However, being in a positive mood today (must be something in the water) I wondered what my “10 things I like about Britain” list would be like, and some are purely selfish on my part, some trivial, some you will agree with and some you won’t agree with:

1. I like the way that realistically you can drive to most places in the country and home again within a day. None of this trudging across country staying at motels, catching flights and so on, like the USA. Ok it’s not perfect, a trip to John O’Groats and back is a long day but the point is it’s “doable”.
2. The weather. Don’t snigger …. We get a wide range of weather in the United Kingdom, from snow to blistering hot sunshine, and that’s what I like, the VARIETY. Ok, so I don’t like days and days of snow, or weeks of heatwave sunshine, but that’s what you get in some countries isn’t it ? No wonder the Inuits have so many different words for “snow”
3. The “benefits” service. It’s far from ideal, but the fact is for a lot of people it’s absolutely necessary to ensure they maintain a life whilst looking for employment. The fact remains that despite there being a lot of jobs on the market we still have very high levels of unemployment, and benefits provide the necessary “safety net” for those people who can’t find employment, and then there’s the disabled, the elderly and so on. Don’t listen to the hype, the vast majority of people on benefits are not “scroungers” and aren’t “milking the state” but get by, thanks to our benefits system. It’s easy to sneer when you’re working and complain your taxes pay their wages, but there “but for the grace of God goes you”, you might need that safety net yourself one day, walk a mile in their shoes ….
4. The NHS. More or less “ditto” on the above entry about benefits. Least you don’t have to sell your house or go bankrupt when you need a major operation in the UK, like you do in the USA.
5. The food. It’s far from ideal in some places, but we have a very eclectic range of food in Britain, and some of it is world class and outstanding as programs like Rick Stein’s Food Heroes have shown us. You can now get decent Chinese, Indian, Italian, Thai and French food here, as well as traditional British eateries and even great fish and chips !
6. The countryside. It’s mostly green and “pleasant”, no deserts here.
7. The history. Great Britain has stacks of it.
8. The seaside. It’s never too far away !
9. Individual freedom in speech and action. Ok, it’s far from perfect, but we have more than many countries.
10. Variable geography. Forests, fields, hills, mountains, flat bits, wet bits etc.

Not everybody will agree with me, but I think there’s a lot worse places to live than Great Britain.

Steve

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As many of you already know I am not a big fan of advertising.  I see the need for advertising and marketing BUT in my opinion it’s tedious, irritating and repetitive advertising that really grinds my goat; especially car insurance advertising (yes Meerkats I’m talking about you and that irritating GoCompare stuff).  Anyway, in a moment of internet usage this morning I came across a blog that basically deconstructs advertisements and analyses the “message” and discourse behind them.  I found it because I was contemplating Evony’s intrusive and overpowering internet advertising campaign, but it does detail a variety of ads, and may interest some of my readers.  My apologies for the “bad language” ….

Advertising B******s

Steve

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Spotted this over at Pavlov’s Cat, like him I just had to get the screenshot and put a link here

Click on the picture to get the full screenshot, make sure you read it all

Obviously it’s all been changed now

Steve

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Spotted this over at Obnoxio The Clown’s blog:

Will certainly make you think, if not laugh, or possibly even cry ….

Steve

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S.Yorks Police Farce – at it again – negiligent, abusive cowards.

I’m not going to cut and paste the whole article but here’s a “highlight”:

There are six police officers stood intimidatingly outside the club. A call comes in over the emergency radio (given to all venues in the City) from another venue. Its kicking off and they need police assistance urgently. The CCTV centre tells them that “there are no units available”. Oddly enough our lying eyes can see six “units” doing f^&* all stood outside our venue. The member of staff in the box office who looks after the radio comes out to the front and demands that the police go to assist immediately. After a bit of grumbling they p^&* off.

Ten minutes later they are back, “looking for drunk people”, Oh and holding the club responsible for what people half a mile a way are doing through being “too drunk”. Meanwhile, calls are coming in again over the emergency radio from the same venue, more desperate this time, saying that the situation is escalating and they really really need the police there. The “units” outside our place stay put, busy “looking for drunk people”.

Blimey, getting drunk in a nightclub, whatever next ?  Oh, go on have another “highlight”:

Brett Blake was stabbed to death last year in a city venue. Here’s what the news reports didn’t mention: The police were already outside the venue in force when it was kicking off inside. They refused to go in. Multiple people were hurt with knife wounds, including staff. The venue in question only had two exits, easily covered. The police could have easily nabbed the people responsible literally red handed. One of the doorstaff who had been fighting to protect customers inside from at least one knife-wielding assailant came out, covered in blood. He demanded that the police go in. They refused. He called them “a bunch of useless b^&*^&*^”. They arrested him.

Amazing isn’t it ?  The whole article (for anyone who doesn’t want to scroll back up !)  is here again:

S.Yorks Police Farce – at it again – negiligent, abusive cowards.

As a result of this I have come to a few “personal” conclusions:

1. I’m glad I don’t live in South Yorkshire.
2. I’m glad I don’t go to nightclubs.
3. I’m glad I don’t drink (well very rarely enough to get anywhere near “drunk”).

Stev

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If it is going to be the future soon, where is my flying car ?

I spotted this article by Jonathan Strickland over on the “How Stuff Works” blog. Jonathan wrote the article in response to a survey commissioned by ScoopDaily which had been reported on the Reuters’ website. Jonathan writes:

a significant number of people say we aren’t as technologically developed as they imagined we would be by 2010. Apparently, people aged 35 to 54 are most likely to feel a sense of disappointment as far as technological development goes. To these people I’d just like to ask, “What planet are you on?”

Then he goes to detail a number of technological wonders which are “truly amazing” in his eyes: Smartphones, television, video on demand, internet, broadband, GPS technology and the Large Hadron Collider.  So let’s take a look at these shall we ?

Smartphones:  Nice idea I suppose.  But let’s face it the 3G connection is often flakey or non existent, and most of us just want a phone ….  Well to make phone calls really.  Whilst installing Tomtom on your Windows Mobile phone is rather useful, the Office applications are hard to use on the fiddly keyboard (even if you have got an HTC with QWERTY layout.)  However, Tomtom is THE Satnav software of choice to my mind and it doesn’t work on Symbian and other phone operating systems.  As for Apple “there’s an app for it” the advertisements tell us.  Well whoopee, an app that tells me where the nearest Indian restaurant is does not feature high on my list of “must have apps”, and that’s one of the more useful uses for iPhone apps.  I suppose you could use your Smartphone as an MP3 player, if you want to hammer the battery life, or even watch YouTube videos (I so so need to look at Lego Matrix when I’m out and about, it’s such an essential part of my life, not ….)  So other than making phone calls (and mobile phone technology for this is impressive in my opinion) I’m not impressed particularly.

Television:  HD is nice and I do like my 42″ Plasma thingummy 1080 wotnot television but really is it that big a deal ?  My old TV is still perfectly watchable.  As for TV content, don’t start me on Virgin Digital’s 200+ channels of “miscellaneous” so called “entertainment.”

Internet: Useful, but hijacked by commerce to the extent where many sites are more advertisement than information (yeah I know I have advertisements on the blog.)  The speed of most sites leaves much to be desired as well, I could be using a 500mbit connection and eBay would probably still be slow slow slow.  Which brings us to broadband ….

Broadband: Nice but unless the sites can keep up with us what’s the point ?  Everytime you get a faster ISP eBay gets a bit more bloated and ends up being still slow.  What’s it like on dial up ?  I dread to think.  It’s not just eBay either, a lot of sites have waaaay too much bloat.

GPS: Now Satnav is useful, I love my TomTom, Jonathan can have this one.  A genuinely superb piece of technology, even if it does send you up some of the narrowest tracks in the country on occasion.

The Large Hadron Collider: Oh right we’re all genuinely impressed, you can all have a PhD for whatever it is you’ve discovered.  How is it useful to the masses right here right now ?  Hmmmm …..

I want a flying car.  That’ll impress me, or perhaps a Hoverboard in Back To The Future style.

Steve

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One Dollar Diet Project

I’ve not looked at the “One Dollar Diet Project” in a long while, but basically it’s a couple in California who decided to try living on a dollar a day for food for a month (that’s a dollar each, not a dollar for all.) It received a lot of attention back during the “month” that the project ran and it seems they are still blogging now (you have to go into their blog archive section to get back to the “month”.)

They’ve also written a book about their experiences with the project, and the book also details:

• How food companies “short size” packages so that you pay more for less food
• Why one tablespoon of salad dressing costs as much as a whole orange
• How grocery stores auction off foods past their “sell by” dates
• Why processed foods have a higher markup than fresh foods
• Why it takes so long for food prices to drop, even after fuel and shipping costs go down

You can get the book from Amazon.com but it will be on Amazon UK in February:

Steve

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The Age Of Love – Behind Blue Eyes

I’ve been reading the Behind Blue Eyes blog on and off recently and found his comments on the 1980’s interesting as I have been considering the 1980’s myself for a number of reasons.  It is often said that we look at the past through rose tinted spectacles and that our recollection of the past is tainted by only remembering the “good stuff” and forgetting the bad.  Is this true ?

Myself I left school in summer 1981 largely unsure of what I wanted to do but with some notion of becoming a star chef (God knows where I got that idea from) and immediately got a job at a local (well localish) restaurant and started attending college on day release to get City and Guilds 706/1 and 706/2 (these qualifications are considered to be somewhat “rare” now and have been replaced with NVQs.)  College was pretty good what I recall of it and the tutors Chef Oliver (not Jamie lol !) and Chef Salsano were nice people to work under.  My boss at work was, however, a different story.  An Austrian by birth he had come to the United Kingdom and started up a restaurant and was quite definitely the most irritating and obnoxious boss I have EVER had the misfortune to work for.  He was also a miser and I was very poorly paid, even by “school leaver” standards and had to work up to 55 or so hours a week with no “overtime” pay.  Whilst I don’t deny the job gave me some valuable experience this is not the way life was meant to be so my important years of 16 to 19 were essentially ruined by poor wages, a bad boss and absolutely no social life due to the working hours.

Things got largely worse work wise after some changes, and I rapidly came to the conclusion that the catering industry was not for me.  I can cook, and I consider myself to be quite a good cook but it’s not my idea of a career.  Only those who end up on the TV or set up their own premises can make big money and even now catering is still is a poorly paid and largely disregarded profession.  We’re not all Gordon Ramsey or Jamie Oliver after all.

I ended up in the transport industry next.  I’ve been a courier, a next day delivery driver (DHL style but not DHL), an HGV driver, a despatch rider and even an international air courier.  Again not much scope for a “career” but better pay than catering and it is possible to get by.  Work wise that about sums it up for the 1980’s, although there’s other bits and pieces.

What about the “Age Of Love” part ?  Well ….  Let me see, there was …. Err, not a lot of that going about.  I was never a very confident teenager and health issues (I had had a lot of health problems when I was young with asthma and recurring bronchitis etc which I fortunately “grew out of”) had left me a nervous lad with little self confidence.  I couldn’t say “boo” to a goose, as the expression goes, so “love” was largely off the menu.  My first experience was ok, but my first girlfriend was less than pleasant and her treatment of me little short of disgraceful.  Funnily though I have stuck her name into Google and Facebook once or twice, as I am convinced that she probably now has 6 children, and lives in a council sink estate, maybe that’s just wishful thinking  A little bit of “revenge” mentality ?

Not surprisingly I was uninterested in politics, but it was of course an era of major change.  The Warsaw Pact was disbanded and the Soviet Union ceased “hostilities” (if you can call them that) with the Western world, essentially ending the Cold War.  The real change though was the change in economics.  The Margaret Thatcher/Ronald Reagan era was essentially a revival of capitalism and laissez faire economics (free market economics), the downside of which we are now feeling.

So have I anything positive to recall about the 1980’s ?  Err ….  Well there’s always the music.  Like any 16 year old lad I was into music, and Top Of The Tops was something I looked forward to every week (I worked Thursday nights so used to ask my mum to record it which she didn’t always manage to do) when I got home Saturday night after a long day in the kitchen.  Tainted Love by Soft Cell was number 1 when I left school and remains a firm favourite song for me.  Then there was Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Modern Romance, Michael Jackson and the greatest of them all ….  Frankie Goes To Hollywood.  Born out of what was called “Boystown” disco (Divine was another example) genre, to me Frankie was explosive.  Relax was great, Two Tribes even better, and I even discovered a taste for ballads with The Power Of Love.  God I wanted a Frankie Says Relax t-shirt as well, but I never got one ….  To anyone who has never listened to Frankie: if you’re going to experience the 1980’s then Frankie is what it’s all about (to me at least), they are the musical symbol of the 1980’s era.  I know some will disagree with me (doubtless Russ and Richard) but I still don’t think 1980’s music comes any better.

TV and film wise I don’t recall much of the 1980’s due to the antisocial hours I was working.  I do recall finding Private Schultz and Blott On The Landscape rather humorous though.  As for the films, well this is the era that gave use Back To The Future and Indiana Jones, seriously good stuff …

The only other memorable aspect of the 1980’s was the boom in computers.  The Commodore VIC20 and 64, and miscelllaneous arcade games exploded onto the world and we were awash with Pacman, Defender in the arcades and superb computer games such as Fort Apocalypse.  So the era gave me a grounding in computers, valuable experience for the future.

So all in all a pretty naff era.  What about the 1990’s ?  Well that’s another story, and I might reflect on that at some later point.

Steve

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BloggingCat

I know it’s kind of daft but I like cats ok ?

Steve

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