Category Archive

However disillusioned we get with Gordon Brown and the Labour Party (and there’s no way I’ll vote for them again - though I Blame that on Blair, not Brown), we should never forget just how horrible and slimey Tories are.

Recess Monkey - I feel your pain.

The whole fascination for charvas/chavs, it wasn’t always like this, was it?

Didn’t we used to be more politically correct than this? 

Because, when we say “charva” do we really just mean poor people?  When did we get so snobbish? 

Is this the effect of nearly three decades of Thachterism?  Is the gap now so wide that “we” have nothing in common with “them”.

Swtich on the TV and comedians do chav impressions.  People even justify overcharging at events because it keeps the “Chavs away”.  When did it become okay to ridicule and exclude them?

Sometimes it feels that whatever class system we have left is now reduced to simply the haves and the have nots.  And maybe we don’t like being around the have nots because it reminds us of this. 

Have we failed them?

I’m not entirely sure why but the whole thing makes me feel a little ashamed.

In the bad old days of only a few months ago, I used to have to queue 15 minutes every time I visited Abbey National. It drove me nuts.

Now some genius has installed a new system.  The Cheese Counter System.  We take a ticket and we wait to be called.

In the meantime a screen keeps us up to date with our estimated waiting time.

The result? 

They’ve actually managed to increase waiting time.  The pic above shows 18 minutes and counting.  It was up to over 20 by the time they served me.

Unfortunately for the poor bastards behind me, by the time I left it was up to 23.  The reason being that it takse a while to empty and close your account.

Because there’s no way I’m using up 20 minutes of another lunch hour to deal with them ever again.

* NB Went straight into Nat West and payed my savings in there instead.  Waiting time: zero minutes.

I hate graffiti.

Whether it’s some scumbag “tagging” anything that doesn’t move or some baseball capped hipster trying to make the Toon’s Metro looks like a New York subway.

I don’t care if they have talent. Even “good” graffiti is still horrible America-derived wannabe awfulness. The kind of thing that “wacky” people working in youth marketing think is cool

I don’t care if it fecking Banksy. What, it’s okay if it’s clever and middle class folks like it? Who draws that line?

So I really hate this.

Most of all I hate that fact that in this instance my usual instincts to rally against the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade deserts me. F*ck the little f*ckers.

I don’t believe this stuff is a cry for attention or a display from a frustrated artist looking for a break. I don’t believe it is any kind of protest at all.

Unfortunately, It’s just another moron.

* Kudos to new boys/girls Newcastlecentric who broke the story. Expect the local papers to catch up soon.

Some of us complain about regional stereotypes.  Others just reaffirm them.

From today’s Sunderland Echo:

Pizza, chips, kebab, pasty - YOU DECIDE!

You’ve been to the match, you’ve had a couple of beers and you’re on your way home…

But what do you stuff your face with before you stagger through the door and get told off by the missus?

That’s the subject of our web poll today, inspired by news that Greggs plans to open a late-night bakery in Sunderland.

Use the panel on the bottom right of this page to have your say now.

* Just in case you didn’t know what a stottie is.

…but I’m in a foul mood and if I wrote anything it’d only be negative.

I’m tired of being negative.

It looks like it’s time for a rethink.

In the meantime, here’s a relaxing pic of a tree from a (just about) dry day last summer.

I went along to the Evolution Festival yesterday. Specifically the Baltic stage area.

All very good. Lots of very very young people in skinny jeans that made me feel old. But anyway…

What struck me most were the row of tents alongside the stages.

In order, this is what they sold: doughnuts, beer and spirits, burgers and cigarettes.

Now don’t get me wrong I had both a beer and a burger so there is no moral high ground here. But really, that was the entire choice. Nothing healthy. Nothing ethnic. Nothing veggie. Nothing spicy. No water fountain if you preferred to save your liver and your pennies.

And a cigarette counter? At an event where the average age seemed about 14? Whose idea was that?

I don’t want to be the aging grouch on this one and I know you can lead a kid to cous cous but you can’t make him eat.

But…

I hereby pledge that I, Our Man in Newcastle, will never post to my blog/Twitter/Facebook etc from an airport/coffeehouse/conference to comment on the availability, or quality of, WIFI.

I understand that the rest of the world does not care about the WIFI. Nor does it care what machine I am using to access the WIFI - however shiny, new, or expensive it may be.

If you’re reading this - please take the pledge too.

It’s time we put a stop to this.

* Sidenote: The words “wifi” and “airport” in Tweetscan.  Here.

…is having to pretend that things aren’t getting worse because if you say they are then you sound like the worst kind of anicent old gimmer.  Not to mention a miserable, dreary old cynic.

But some times they are getting worse.  That’s not just because I’m no longer 21.  It’s because, well, they ARE getting worse.

We’ve had 30 years now of under investment in everything in this country and it’s hardly surprising that all isn’t what we’d like it to be.  Also there’s been 30 years of the gap between rich and poor widening. 

The worst of it all is that those driven by hate are blaming the cracks in our services and societies on those least able to defend themselves.

That’s what’s wrong here.  Isn’t it?  Not just me getting old?  Right?

I’ve been having an ongoing email conversation/row with Stagecoach about Heaton’s Number One bus.

To cut a long story very short, the bus which is supposed to come every 7-9 minutes was cut drastically without announcement.  In fact, during correspondance they have admitted that they simply did not have enough buses to meet their advertised service. 

I don’t know exactly how drastically it was cut but I waited 35 minutes for a bus - which would mean they were running a service at around only a quarter of its promised capacity.  To compound this, they chose this time to put up bus fares yet again.  They did this without prior warning or explanation.

Those of us who try to do the decent thing and leave our cars at home, are not being helped by woeful service.  It took me an hour to get from Heaton to the City Centre yesterday. It takes ten minutes to drive it myself and 40 minutes to walk. 

The Chronicle recently reported a Number One bus gone mad.  I feel for the poor driver.  Stagecoach make me go nuts too.  I can imagine the crap the poor guy has to take from irate customers.

Anyway, therir Operations Director has offered to meet me to talk through my concerns.  I know from friends living in Heaton how much the Number One bus annoys them all. 

Is anyone reading this on the Number One bus route and uses it (or doesn’t use it for reasons you can relate)?  Anyway want to add anything that I could bring up? 

*Sidenote I’m actually moving out of Heaton in just over a month. I’ve always had something of a tie to this suburb so I am feeling quite nostalgic about it. It was the first place I lived in Newcastle 17 years ago (I’m from up the Tyne Valley originally). Anyway, good to see the Flickr Heaton photoset is swimmingly healthy at a very nearly impressive 101 photos.

* Update:  I received this note which will also be added to the”moan list”

Its entirely shabby that a private company can get away with such a dismal service in what is essentially a pulic service. For what its worth xxx and I both wrote letters of complaint in around mid October, xxx’s concerned some quite wreckless driving, mine was for having to wait for over 40 minutes when they should be running at 8 an hour.  We received letters saying how these issues would be looked at. Clearly nothing was done.  

Okay just one quick grump.

I am hopefully going to attend Thinking Digital at the Sage Gateshead. It looks quite interesting.

But why, whenever I come across events that are all a bit web2.0, are their event blogs so awful? Okay, so do they look nice and the writing and content is fine.

But virtually no comments. Isn’t that the whole point of web2.0? I have commented here but, as I write, the day after I posted it, my comment is yet to be moderated. Crap by even the most average blogging standards.

Surely it would be worthwhile for an event like this, that charges several hundred pounds a ticket, to have a full time blogger. They should be getting local bloggers on board and be building a community around this event. If you had done all the work to get these pages up, wouldn’t you be twisting arms to get the interaction happening?

Right now the host is passing out the drinks and things on sticks and none of the guests are saying a word. This place is dead anyway.

Likewise their Flickr page is just going through the motions and ticking boxes. Look, they’ll be saying, we have a Flickr page! I’m not sure why the bothered.

If you’re going to tell us about blogging then, at the very least, can you learn to do it yourselves first. I know these sites are set up by techies and it all looks just lovely. But can’t someone actually just give the whole “conversation” thing a kick start?

Web2.0 is conversation - it isn’t just pretty stuff. If you don’t understand this then what is it you can teach me?

Or put it another way, how come your average one-man-and-a-laptop-blog is nearly always vastly superior to corporate effort? A quick hint - it’s not what it looks like, it’s what you do with it.

Side note: My comment was a quick protest at the advertised Mac Humour of the Fake Steve Jobs who is to appear (he makes jokes about Microsoft..ooh no stop it). Further Mac grumblings here.

Update: I signed up. Hope it’s worth it. In my sign-up email I got the link to the Facebook group. Okay. Good. Ticking all the boxes etc. We got this. We got that. Call me old fashioned though, but if I was the Conference Producer I’m not sure I’d want all potential delegates having access to my holiday photos. Web2.0 can go too far. Think privacy settings people and maybe Flickr for Business and Facebook for Pleasure. You gotta have a system. Make the divide.

Update 2: Unless I am mistaken my stats point to an email being opened and a link being clicked for this post. It was sent to the conference big cheese with the title: “Slightly dodgy comments on blog”. Ah well. I think we made our point.

Okay okay, so in Britain we build people up and knock them down (as opposed to America that builds people up, builds them up some more, then some more and then documents their breakdowns.)

Every so often there’s someone who just everybody has to love and then later we all have to pretend we always thought they were overrated.

For the record, I always did greatly dislike Robbie Williams and Be Here Now is still my favourite Oasis album.

However, I do apologise if I’m ahead of the wave on this one. I have a feeling that I am about to upset people here but…

Please. Enough Stephen Fry. A national treasure? Sure. But enough.

I actually started to Google him in order to give a linked list of his omnipresence but it’s too vast a task to start to detail.

I believe his podcast is currently “most downloaded” too. It’s like he wants to be loved by the world and he’s doing everything he can to reach out to everyone.

Just to be absolutely clear on this. I really really don’t dislike the guy.

But it’s time for a break.

I can’t work out whether I think there is something seriously wrong with modern living or whether modern living is fine and it’s only the people, who really think there is something seriously wrong, that are the real problem.

Record 4,000 LP classical music donation leaves Oxfam spinning

The above story in today’s Guardian prompted me once more to consider what to do with my CDs.

I haven’t counted them but I reckon there’s somewhere in the region of 400.  Previously I had a similary large collection of tapes.  When I did the big clear out, pre my move overseas, I took them to a car boot sale and, heartbreakingly, they only sold when I moved the price down to about five for a pound.

My CD collection was kept.  It stayed in a big trunk which cluttered my parents’ house.  I’m back and I’ve relcaimed them but now they just sit there.  Bagged up and unused.  I no longer even have a CD player and everything is on MP3.  CDs seem cumbersome now and buying new ones a waste of natural resources.  I download instead.

Now, I could sell them.  But for the money it hardly seems worth it.  I’d give them to charity if I thought they really wanted them.  Certainly, when I go on my travels next time I’ve decided that my sparse worldly goods will go to centres that assist assylum seekers, but I don’t think they’d want Aztec Camera’s Greatest Hits.

I’ve thought of having a “Take a CD” party but that seems sort of patronising and a bit naff.  But I do want rid of them before the move to the new flat in a month’s time.

What to do?

And yes, my MP3 collection is backed up. 

Full time PR, part time cheerleader, Beth Kay, writes on Wolfstar Consultancy website:

Companies like Herbal Essences and CoverGirl have been giving out free samples at national cheerleading competitions and Gatorade sponsored ‘hydration breaks’ at cheerleading camps across the US. And it doesn’t stop there. Old Spice have been targeting high school football players and department store giant Macy’s Inc. sent templates of T-shirts to elementary schools encouraging students to design shirts and enter their designs in a contest.

The idea is that these teens are people that other students admire and look up to and are therefore ‘mavens’ in their own rights. And we all know that teenagers LOVE to talk. Nearly half of teens talk about personal care and beauty products, compared with just 29% of the general public, according to a study by research firm Keller Fay Group.

I personally hope that the trend catches on, most of all because I am a cheerleader myself. Anyone want to give me some stuff to talk about?…Anyone?… Prada?

I thought after the first paragraph she was going say how awful it was but she’s actually in favour.

Later, in the comments, she says:

Being only two years out of my teens I know that I for one would have no problem with people giving me free stuff when I was at school.

For the record, I don’t agree. And my comments are there too. 

Also it is worth pointing out that while the examples are American this is an English Leeds-based consultancy suggesting, it appears, that such tactics are fair game for UK schools.

Anyone else any thoughts? 

…when did people stop walking on down esculators?

People used to stand going up and walk going down?  Right?

What happened?

Did anyone ever expect to see Enoch Powell on top of a BBC website as the face of a series of TV programs, seemingly politically rehabilitated and looking all visionary?

It’s feels like a really dangerous move – I mean dangerous in a violent sense. This is not a man we should be championing. I don’t want his views recalled and then used and quoted by others as an excuse for hatred. I don’t want the BBC to enable this re-invention.

It seems to me that the difference between the racism now and that of ten years ago is that our media not only practices it but also openly condones it. Statements such as British Jobs for British People, which a decade ago would only have graced BNP literature are now political and media staples.

If someone had told me that the BBC was going to do a series called White (aimed specifically as white people) I wouldn’t have believed them, even taking into account the BBC’s dramatic lurch to the right on migration issues.

As Chicken Yoghurt says:

If you ask me, a venture that advertises itself using tasteful, epic photos of Enoch Powell and promotes wife-beating drunk George Best as a ‘working class hero’ is automatically suspect. Even the name ‘White’ is gratuitously provocative, gratuitously divisive.

Enemies of Reason adds:

Let me say what I think first. Why call the bloody programme ‘white’ if not to be inflammatory? If you’re going to give a damn about working-class people, why not all working-class people? Is this going to be a genuine investigation exploring why some white folk feel on the shitty end of the stick, or just BBC HYS on film? Yes, the working-class have been screwed over, particularly betrayed by New Labour - yet, as I’ve said before, there are people who’ll vote Labour no matter what, as displayed by the fact they have, despite being totally ignored and despised.

More good stuff on this topic from Bob Piper and Lenin’s Tomb.

The BBC is (famously) hideously white but also hideously southern, middle class and increasingly right wing. Its programming follows this patterns exactly.

That’s leaves whole races, regions and classes unrepresented. There are better ways to improve this than spend the licence fee than on this deliberately provocative crap.

Side Note: In a recent trailer I could have sworn I heard Billy Bragg doing a voice over which suggest he is involved. Please, say it ain’t so Billy.

One of the things I have long admired about BB is that he consistently gets it right politically. His involvement would suggest that this does have some redeeming features. So maybe its just its provocative presentation and marketing that is rubbing us all up the wrong way.

I’ll be away this weekend and, in all honesty, can’t face watching it – but if anyone does I’d welcome their views and will be following the blogs on this subject.

When I lived in Vietnam it was always a source of severe irritation that I never read one international news report about the country that didn’t mention the war.

Even the ones that tried to highlight the new ‘nam would ultimately have to compare it with its war torn past.

Now back in Newcastle the same can be said.  In today’s Guardian Stuart Jeffries pens a piece that is obviously supposed to reflect the new Tyneside.  In his standfirst he talks of  the area as a a “heartland of culture and science”.  So far so good.

Scan through the article and we get to culture in the 15th paragraph and science in the 21st.  In the meantime we get:

Shearer’s sports bar, Kevin Keegan, collapse of Northern Rock, ham and pease pudding stotties and the over consumption of alcohol. 

In addition he’s done that awful thing of writing Geordie quote in, well, Geordie.  No one ever quoted the Queen as saying “mey hesband and ey.  You’re only ever written up in your own accent if you’re from North of London.

Funny, as I write this, a colleague has come in with a written version of the piece.  It’s a nice spread - slightly ruined by the fact that, although the article references the wider Tyneside, it is about Newcastle - but the cover shot is…Gateshead.

Maybe the designers didn’t know the difference, but I guess we should be pleased that it’s not Newcastle Under Lyme.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

Another point to dwell on:

In the above piece it states:

Not many Toon faithful are prepared to bare their wounds or rehearse their fears before a journalist from London. The representatives of the Toon Army have not responded to my emailed overtures, while Biffa (aka Mike Bolam), who runs the nufc.com fan site and is the author of an excellent book, The Newcastle United Miscellany, declines to be interviewed. He writes: “I’m afraid that I’m still quietly fuming about the recent written antics of the enemy within the Grauniad.”

It’s fair to say that the Guardian is not Newcastle’s favourite paper.  On Tuesday their Fiver mailout started with an (honestly) 70 line pointedly nasty pisstake.  The scornful abuse is daily - and the suggestion is that with at least two of its staffers, Louise Taylor and Barry Glendenning, being committed Sunderland fans there is a genuine bias.

I also receive their Northerner mailer.  It always feels a little sneery and aloof - like way too much of the Guardian’s content when it deals with the North East.  You get the  impression it’s written by Londoners who think that the best way to please is to write as many patronising “northern” stories as possible.  You find yourself looking for the whippet breeding pieces and the fashion spot on flat caps.

As a blogger I can only applaud their website and commitment to all things web 2.0.  But the attitude of their writers to the North East stinks.  If the heartland of the Daily Mail is the Home Counties, the Guardian’s, whatever they might claim about Northern public servants, is London media land luvviedom and they don’t seem to like us much.

As I have said before, the fact that Guantanamo is allowed to exist shames us all. 

More guilty than most are our journalists.

After six years of illegal detention and torture does anyone believe that the whole Guantanamo affair will end with a fair trial?  Is this really as angry as we get about this?  Surely this demands media outrage on a level never seen before.

Surely, but no.

If you expected better from the BBC then you’ll be disappointed.

Not for the first time, I found myself nodding my head in agreement after reading the Enemies of Reason blog.

It’s take on the BBC coverage: 

See, that’s writing a balanced story at the sopping-wet ‘liberal-left BBC’. Put the military US source first, give them primacy in the story, imply that his words are more important and more honest than anyone else’s, don’t question anything and shove in a tiny bit of what the man who’s been tortured and is going to be executed has to say about his impending doom down the bottom.

Just as nations get the governments they deserve, perhaps they also get the media their apathy warrants. 

And the atrocities.

Since returning home I’ve been once more amazed at the quite obvious hatred the Southern-based media has for the North - and, in particular, the North East. 

If it has always been bad, you might expect it would slowly improve as we pushed back the boundaries of ignorance,  but it is getting worse and I don’t know why.

Below is from www.nufc.com and refers to football but it also applies to so many other topics.

North and South divide?  It’s just London, it’s media and its government I have an issue with.  I, like most other Geordies I have spoken too, would quite honestly prefer to chuck our lot in with the Scots. Expect more rants.

 Now that the transfer window has closed… 

…we’re out of the FA Cup, have no more trips to the Emirates or Old Trafford, have got rid of one boss, brought in another and made various other appointments of a non-Gosforth nature, can we just say:

Enough patronising bollocks from every man and his dog masquerading as news or comment on events in this region, this city and this club - you simply haven’t got a f**king clue what you’re on about.

Try reporting the facts instead of what you or your London masters would like to hear.

Try getting past the KK “Messiah”, “Second Coming”, “impatient fans” - all cliches invented by the media, not the supporters.

Try seeing past brain dead Vox Pops or meaningless online polls as spurious evidence that the lies you pen have any basis in local opinion.

Try hiding the regional prejudice that would see you branded as racist, were it to be presented as news about other nationalities.

For a club that isn’t “big” (whatever that means), it doesn’t half get a lot of coverage….

To anyone still paying money for The Mirror, The Sun, The News of The World, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Mail, why not just read their continual anti-Toon tirades online instead of shelling out for the privilege of being insulted and/or patronised?

Exhibit A: The scandalous Sun and Mirror front pages this week with Keegan / £100m / Wise concoctions.

Exhibit B: The Mail’s allegedly funny Dennis Wise diary stumbles to day 3 here. Somebody is getting paid for writing that.

Exhibit C: Victoria Derbyshire, Nicky Campbell, Alan Green, Eamonn Holmes, Clem, Terry Butcher, Steve Claridge - you’re the shite, you’re the shite of Radio 5. Bigots all.

A truly fabulous post (here) by Kate Belgrave at Liberal Conspiracy.

It includes such marvellously spiky rantings as this:

Why do followers of God still get airtime in politics and press? In all other (normal) forums like parties and pub nights, they’re laughed out of the room and never invited back. The person who brought them is usually expelled forever as well. If you see a Christian preaching on the street, you cough the word ‘loser’ and cross the road. But there they are in Brown’s cabinet. Go figure.

It may make you grimace but Kate has a point.

I also liked this from Anton Vowl in a very lengthy comments section:

I agree entirely about religious figures being granted undue significance. Why, simply because someone believes in Jesus (or Allah, or the flying spaghetti monster) should that person’s views be considered more weighty than any other non-expert source?

Couldn’t one argue that their weird belief in some mystic deity, contrary to all scientific evidence, is a reason to take them +less+ seriously than a non-believer? It’s anachronistic nonsense that the modern media can’t shake off even in an increasingly secular society where church attendances are falling off a cliff almost as fast as newspaper readerships.

As the comments here show, even otherwise intelligent people blithely assume ‘facts’ about Jesus Christ’s life and existence (look at the annual outcry about children not being taught the Nativity story)

It’s not ‘intolerant’ to point this out, and I’d say it’s fair enough to be mocking about people who frequently think you’re going to hell and suffer for all eternity just for not believing what they do.

Of course everyone has the right to believe and worship. But that doesn’t make them more important, more spiritual, more intelligent or more worthy to give an opinion on subjects like abortion than anyone else.

It’s worth noting that amongst all these comments, on a political, rather than religious blog, there are only a couple of dissenting voice despite the tone of the language.  Like the Americans coming out of their post 9/11 closetsand admitting, now that there is a fashionable option, that they never really liked Bush - people are realising it is okay not just to be un-religious but also to speak out against religion.

In addition, perhaps, while people should be respected (unless they prove unworthy of it), religion is now no longer being afforded respect by default.  I believe it is okay to question - and it is okay to ridicule the ridiculous.

Update: Paul Linford reacts (from a more Christian point of view).

How much better would the internet and media be in general if we could just, at a stroke, cut out everything related to Mac, Apple, Steve Jobs etc?

Is it really just me that finds it so incredibly dull?  It’s all so “Me Too”.  So embarrassingly corporate and people are falling for it in their millions. Adults wanting new toys because “all my friends have one”.  Are you so insecure?

I find myself reading blogs that, without obviously intending to, write exclusively on what Apple product they have just bought, how it works, what they’ll buy next.   Every other Twitter feeds is the same.

People leave messages on blogs and websites saying: your site looks great on my new Apple iDick.   It’s as excruciating as saying: your haircut looks fabulous through my new Armani shades.

I don’t care what people buy, but don’t they have more self respect than to turn themselves into viral marketing fodder for Apple?  Apple is a business - that’s all.  You’re doing what they want you to do.  Don’t you feel used? 

You’re as duped as the idiots I used to work with who all ate a KitKat one Friday because Rowntree had informed them it was National KitKat day. Suckers. 

Jemima Kiss at the Guardian includes links to the advertisement for the latest MacBook. Free advertising again.  Imagine all the non-Apple organisations that could better use that free plug. Viral video charts are fun but can we please keep the corporate stuff out of it?  After all we don’t run “favourite ads on TV” sections?  Or how about Today’s Top Training Video.  Utter tosh.

Just the other day I saw an on-line request from someone who was due to visit Paris on holiday and they were asking if anyone knew if there was an Apple store locally. 

ARRRRGGGHHH.  Can’t you people leave it alone for a second?

I’ve said this before, but the single main reason that I stick with my PC rather than investing in a Mac, is that I would hate to become yet another Apple disciple who bungs up their blog with their awful gushing.

It is not important who made the tools you use.  It is what you use it for.  You can change the world and what are you doing?

You are writing about the tool itself that’s what. 

When they invented the printing press did they then use it to produce books about fecking printing presses?

For the love of God.  Please, please please stop.

Okay.  I said it. Nothing to see here.  Move along.

Following Noodlepie’s unearthing of the worst restaurant review ever (via Pittstop Works), today I read what surely the most awful,  most laboured, match report I have ever seen.

The match was good though.  Big smiles today.

…using the phrase: “ticks all the boxes”.

It’s getting right on my nerves.

Football as a metaphor for life once more.

Apologies that only football fans will follow this, but…

It’s all to do with this, the sacking of Sam Allardyce, Newcastle United’s manager.

It’s all so strange. It’s strange that me and my friends, who pay money each week to go and see Newcastle are pretty much, to a man, delighted with the news, yet…

It’s strange that the Southern-based media, who don’t live locally, don’t pay to see matches, and let’s face it, don’t even watch our games are against the move.

It’s strange that those of us who go to watch the football are told we can’t expect to be entertained while we thought that was the whole point.

It’s laughably strange that Joey Barton describes ME as vicious. Ha!

It’s strange that Newcastle fans are seen as fickle despite the fact that we still regularly fill a 52,000 seater stadium even though we’ve won nowt in most of our life times.

It’s strange that sacking managers is seen as a result of unfair pressure from fans as opposed to clueless club suits appointing dickheads in the first place.

It’s strange that I hear that we demand exciting football rather than winning football, when in reality we’re seeing neither.

In short…

The prejudiced southern media have their platform and their chance to voice their ill-informed opinions without fear of condemnation.

The managers get to spend millions on rubbish, get to fail and get to walk away with a cheque for millions and the sympathies of the above.

Meanwhile, those of us who pay for them all - who put in the hours, who queue for tickets, who buy our satellite dishes and read their papers, are disregarded.

We’re unimportant, ripped off and labelled as fickle, ignorant and ungrateful.

No wonder we’re angry.

Following on from the post below.  Paul Linford explains why he’d prefer to vote for a Christian.

Via Bob Piper, I read Paul Linford’s take on new Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg’s admission that he doesn’t believe in God.

Paul writes: 

(it’s) certainly concerning for me as a Christian..

And Bob posts:

Why on earth do Christians like Paul Linford have to be concerned about someone’s private religious beliefs, or lack of them? Should I be concerned if Clegg is a meat eater? I just don’t get it.

If Clegg had just been elected Pope and declared he didn’t believe in God then Christians might have cause for concern, but is Clegg’s crime of being a non-believer going to influence his opinions on the Single European currency, devolution, or the war in Afghanistan? I don’t think so.

No matter how many times people tell me Blair’s Iraq adventure was inspired by his religious faith, I don’t believe a word of it.

I couldn’t agree more.  My own comments on Linford’s blog are as follows:

I wrote:

“concerning for me as a Christian”

Why? As a non Christian I have had to suffer Christian leaders and for the most part put up with it with relatively decent grace.What is there to be concerned about?

You worried that without religion to guide him Clegg might…well the mind boggles.

Then again when Blair, with God as his co-pilot, uses religion as an excuse to bomb the third world - well, not sure I’d ever vote Lib Dem but I just got a whole lot closer

.Good on the guy. It’s about time a politician had the guts to the truthful in this area. Good to see that politics can grow up and shed religion. Can’t we leave that to the Americans?

In all honesty I don’t know a single person who goes to church. It’s about time that majority got represented.I ask you, Clegg not being a Christian - how does that make him a lesser politician, or person for that matter.

Paul has promised another post where he deals exclusively with this matter.

In the meantime I have added, in reference to Clegg’s non believing making him, in Paul’s eyes, a “lesser politician“:

Looking forward to the post Paul, perhaps you can also include whether you consider other none Christians ie Muslims, Buddhists are lesser politicians too.

Are none Christians, lesser people too?

And if being a Christian really does makes you a better politician - what the hell happened with Bush and Blair? Or will you point at their longevity rather than their death tolls.

Perhaps we can talk about why Christian politicians tend to be such hypocrites. Thou shalt not kill. Remember that one? Then there’s 9/11 - perhaps they could have turned the other cheek?

Perhaps you would have preferred Clegg to lie. But there’s another commandment gone right there.Okay, apologies, as a lifelong none believer I get steamed up about this but I await your post with interest. 

From an article in today’s Guardian discussing predictions for 2008.

Another solid basis for futurological speculation is to follow the flow of people. Paul Saffo, a respected California-based forecaster, argues that the next few years will see the beginnings of a “reverse knowledge migration” in which, as well as bright and well-educated workers coming from the developing world to the west, people will start to move in the opposite direction.

This new global class of “cyber-gypsies”, says Saffo, will not only include American and European Asians returning “home”, but also highly educated, non-Asian Americans and Europeans going off to make their fortunes in places such as China.

The trend, he argues, will soon move from a source of sociological curiosity to a source of alarm for governments and businesses. Companies, universities and thinktanks in Europe and America, he warns, who often smugly assumed that they would be a magnet for the world’s talent, are going to discover that this is no longer the case.

Predictions for 2008?  Ha.  It’s already happening, maan.  I’ve been meeting these people for the past three years.

Asians returning home, seen them.  Europeans and Americans looking for new horizons, uh huh.

Much more than this.  Try these: Brits, Australians and Americans shamed by their countries’ actions in Iraq (the shame drain).   Individuals who no longer want to be part of the bullying first world, people who are fed up with just how complicated it is to live in the west and just how horrifically expensive it is too.  Those of us who recognise the waste, on every level, of living in a developed country.

When you can plug in your computer anywhere, is it not increasingly likely that we’ll choose to be online somewhere cheaper, more colourful, and where our high streets aren’t just an identikit jumble of Starbucks and McDonald’s?

All this shock horror crap about migrants into the UK.  Hey, we’re all migrants now.

So sick of the phrase: “business model”.

In the last few days I have heard it applied to everything from dot com start-ups to Radiohead’s last album:

“That’s not a business model that works. I open a store and say ‘Come on in and pay whatever you want.’ Are you on fucking crack? Do you really believe that’s a business model that works?”, Gene Simmonds, Kiss.

Type it into Google and you get 881,000 results.

Click here for 22 business model examples including the Gillette-favoured razor and blades model.

Even Flickr has 111 Business Model photos.

Enough.

Yes, cold has turned into flu and I’m surfing the web from my sickbed while continuing to be generally cranky.

Business Model Triangle

Originally uploaded by Alex Osterwalder

Stuck indoors with a cold.

Have amused myself with trying to prove that Louise Taylor, North East football correspondent for the Guardian, is in love with Sunderland football manager Roy Keane.

In my mind, if no one else’s, that is why she continues to write such glowing reports of Roy (transfer spend this summer £35m, league position: third from bottom).

Conversely, because if you love the red and whites, you hate the black and whites (and vice versa) it might also explain whey she write so negatively about my team, Newcastle United.

Anyway, you be the judge. After literally five minutes Googling here are assorted comments on Roy Keane by Ms Taylor.

Personally I think she’s in lurrrve. But that might just be because I’m childish like that.

(Roy is) immaculately turned out but never flashy (link here)

(Roy is) generous to a fault towards those within his inner circle (link here)

Keane is simply refreshingly honest. (link here)

(Roy’s) Touchline style (is) glowering, prowling, brooding, jaw-clenching - but always immaculately turned out (link here)

Sunderland’s manager (Roy Keane) - fast proving almost as snappy a dresser as the Portuguese (refers to Jose Mourinho) (link here)

One of Roy Keane’s most attractive qualities is his honesty (link here)

Sunderland’s eloquent manager (Roy Keane) (link here)

his (Roy Keane’s) invariably cliche- and platitude-free musings are always worth hearing and delivered in flowing, eloquent sentences that never seem to descend into grammatical black holes. (link here)

Now call me childish but: Louise loves Roy, Louise loves Roy, Louise loves Roy.

Oh and for that matter so does, not-as-funny-as-he-thinks-he-is, Barry Glendenning.

Grrrr. Bloody Sunderland loving Guardian hacks.

UPDATE: On going collection of Louise’s love notes to Roy kept here.

It shames us all that we sit by as a nation and as individuals and do so very little to stop this.

Just back from shopping for Christmas deccies.

For the umpteenth time I find myself wondering why you can’t buy miniature Angel of the Norths for the top of your tree.

I can’t imagine anyone up here not buying one.

Whether you are a member of the FA, a pundit, or you’re just a moron who rings phone-in shows, remember that whoever is appointed as the new England football manager there is still the traditional scapegoat should everything go wrong.

Should an Englishman fail then you can blame it on “too many foreigners” playing and/or managing in the Premiership.

If a foreigner takes the job then he can likewise be blamed for simply being, well, foreign and “not understanding” or “having enough passion”.

As an added bonus, this: “if in doubt, blame foreigners” approach can pretty much work in any scenario from dole queues to housing issues. From a faltering health service to over crowded classrooms.

Blaming foreigners – it means never having to say you cocked it up and is fully accepted as a genuine excuse and an unquestionable truth by Her Majesty’s Press.

Oh and it was the Russian Mafia who took those disks.  Probably.

Post inspired by Bob P.

From Sam Brook’s Twitter  feed:

34 people in queue for coffee at St Pancras

Something tells me we’re starting to go a little over the top with the coffee thing.  I love coffee.  I buy takeaway.  I even buy beans and grind them.

But if there is a phrase that really bugs me it’s:

“Oh I just can’t start my day unless I’ve had a coffee.”

Come on.  It’s a relatively small amout of caffeine.  That’s all. It’s not alcohol.  It’s not nicotine.  It’s not cocaine.  It’s not heroin.

But, I guess that’s the significance of that Twitter quote, obviously if people are willing to queue that long then they really do HAVE TO HAVE A COFFEE. 

Or maybe its just the whole British loving to queue thing.   For some reason, in the three years since I’ve been away, queue dynamics have hit a whole new level with line pens popping up everywhere from M & S to Greggs. 

Coffee, queues, etc.   Man, we’re such suckers.

Green is the New Red 

Hat tip to Bob Piper for the link.

I never thought I would see the day when a UK goverment would launch an initiative called anything as crass as British Jobs for British People.

I can’t believe that it’s the Labour Party which has reduced itself to parroting a British National Party slogan.  I am not sure what Brown is up to but I reckon even Blair wouldn’t have been quite this moronic in his panderings to the Daily Mail brigade.

While I count myself as a Labour voter at heart, this is one more “never” to add to never, never, never, never again.

I was lucky enough to secure employment relatively quickly after returning home.

But I am also aware, reading the blogs of other VSO returnees, that not everyone has been so lucky.

I said it while I was initially floundering, but it is a shame that the experience of working overseas and volunteering isn’t more highly valued by employers.  It says a great deal, I believe, about our little island mindset.

But without exception, the biggest complaint of all of us, is that HR departments no longer reply to unsuccesful applicants. 

Apply for a job and you can find yourself waiting around for weeks before it eventually sinks in that you haven’t made the short list.  This is not an on-spec request for employment I am talking about - this is an application for an advertised post.

Just when did this become common practice? Every business now, it appears, behaves this way.

Surely the least an organisation can do is to let people know that they won’t be called for interview.  Sure, it’s good to save paperwork but that is what email is for, isn’t it?

Either way, it sucks.  If there is any worse feeling than a rejection letter it’s the slow creeping feeling that you didn’t make the grade (but the desperate hope that perhaps there’s just been a delay).

It is a horrible situation and an awful way to treat anyone.

I recently came across Liberal Conspiracy.

Left, but not Labour Park aligned, hmmm. I was tempted.

You see though I count myself as left leaning, post Iraq it’s never again as far as the Labour Party are concerned.  Gordon Brown might have kept his head down when that whole war nastiness kicked off but he still didn’t have the bollocks to speak out.

While many of the rest of us were marching,  he had the perfect platform to offer his support and he instead chose a low profile.  We were thinking about what was right.  He was thinking about his career.

Which means I don’t want him to be our next Prime Minister.  Nor anyone else on the Labour Party side who did nothing to prevent Shock and Awe and everything that followed.

Besides with puppy dog Blair out the way, Murdoch and the media have once again resorted to Labour-bashing.  Not sure Brown knows what hit him. Maybe the next government is already decided - before we’ve even had the chance to vote.

For me, the only people I’d want in power, less than I want Labour, is any single member of the Conservative Party.  Whatever populist noises the posh lad out front makes, he knows he can only get his own rank and file behind him by pandering to the racists and homophobes.  And let’s face it, when it comes to the Iraq question they fail miserably too.

The Lib Dems?  Maybe.  Iraqwise they get a tick.  But let’s face it, I’d just be voting for them by default.   It doesn’t seem enough.

So who gets my vote?  Well for the now and the foreseeable, its the comparative extremists.  Probably it’s going to be mostly environmentalists.  Then again if someone wants to knock on my door and tell me that they are in favour of equality and providing support to migrants and asylum seekers then I’d probably sign up to their party right after I’d finished hugging them.

Sometimes you just want to feel there are nice people out there who go with their beliefs rather than their focus groups made up of of Daily Mail and Daily Star readers.

But what of the political blogs? Well they reflect their parties, but not in the way you might expect.

The right wing blogs are all about power at any price.  Everyone behind the badge regardless.  There appears no real ideology - other than the pursuit of power (and ultimately cash for your friends).  Just promise the earth and jump on every bandwagon going . Strangely it all seems just too Blairite.

The blogs of the left meanwhile are principaled enough to criticise the Labour Party (as well as, of course, as the Tory Party) but it does mean more knives are out for Gordon and Co than for the opposition. Dale and his mates may pretend to be genuine political commentators but, it appears, they’re little more than cheerleaders.

By virtue of simply shouting louder, Tory blogs are claiming victory except what are they winning?  With their comment box cheating, their dodgy moderating and the old fall backs of crowd pleasing racism and homophobia,  Nasty Partyness abounds.

In truth, if they achieve anything its only winding up the socialist blogs to the point that many have forgotten to actually write about what they believe in.

The worst sin of blogs - writing only about blogs.  It seems to miss the point.  There is still a war going on you know.

So anyway, I thought the non-aligned Liberal Conspiracy would be the political blog for me.  I even subscribed to their RSS feed.

But a couple of days in and I’ve lost heart.  The angle might be new and their hearts might be in the right place.  But it’s still the same old political parties.

So now I have become one of that growing band of people.  The kind of people I always used to argue with.  The people who have given up on politics.  Sad really.

Big party politics - it’s just brand names.  I’m out.

When I was overseas and looking to move back to Tyneside, where exactly I would live was an easy choice.

Although it had been 10 years since I had been part of the Heaton community it was still where most of my friends lived.

It has a mix of people that, for the most part, works. The students are neither crusties nor chinless. The long (long long) term residents are friendly.

Then there are people like me and the people I count as friends who have moved there. Teachers, social workers, public sector types etc. I like to think we’re an easy going bunch.

When I first lived in Heaton there was single spot to go and get a bacon butty on a weekend morning. It wasn’t great so I won’t name it – but it’s still there. Now Heaton is something of a fast food centre but there is only one real hang out. Belle & Herbs.

In its early days it was a Godsend. Sundays you met your mates there. You read the papers and sipped your latte while you waited for your humongous, fabulous breakfast.

The décor was eclectic – junk shop in the best possible way. You even got proper sausages with your fry-up. Sausages with herbs in them – not just reconstituted meaty pinkness.

Such was its place in Heaton social life that it soon even spawned a blog. The extensive menu was worked through by reviewers.

On their FAQs they explained:

Essentially, it’s a fan site. It’s just slightly different in that the object of our obsession isn’t a celebrity or tv series or movie, but rather a place. The food at Belle & Herbs is absolutely wonderful — and we love good food.

Then something happened. The obvious phrase to use is “victims of their own success”.

Suddenly you could not get a table. Quite rightly, for a glorified greasy spoon, there was no booking system so you queued. Trouble is there is no real space for queuing so while you wait you just clutter up the space between tables. There you get in the staff’s way and very nearly literally lean on the shoulders of diners.

The uncomfortable space causes you to soon become irritated. Alternatively, if you’re lucky enough to be seated then it causes you, out of sheer guilt, to eat quicker to vacate your table. No more lazy breakfasts. No chat either. Heads down. Eat. Out.

In this slightly frazzled environment my own ability to become uber-irritated comes to the fore. Slow service. Arrrrrrgh. Cocked up orders. Arrrrgggh. Too stuffy. Arrrggghh. Too many people. Arrrrgh. Okay lets go. I want to get out. Now. Come on.

Then I need a lie down

Even that eclectic furniture starts to annoy. While you’re queuing you think: “Oh no, not the old knackered seat that’s too high/low for the table.”

The other worry is that the table that becomes available is a six-seater and there’s only two of you. That means. Worst thing ever. You have to share.

Again that wouldn’t normally matter. But it brings me to one of the most oft-repeated moans. Posh Jesmond students taking over.

On the “I Love B&H” site this comment is included:

Queuing for an hour behind inane yacht club-affiliated students in windcheaters who’ve driven over from Jesmond in their Xmas present from Daddy.
AKA. HELL IN THE ‘BURBS.
Otherwise, fine.

For the record, they’re wrong. Tesco Metro in Jesmond is the real hell. B&H is just hell lite.

I once heard a young well spoken lady in Tescos say to her friend: “Oh my God I’ve got a stalker. Honestly. This dirty, spotty Geordie asked me out”

But I digress…

Now live and let live and all that. Really. But the loud loud LOUD voices. The ear splitting barking laughs. The: “Oh but Sebastian we were soooo drunk.”.

If you have to share a table with them then you can’t compete. See the Boris-Johnson-alike with posh mates pic above.

So again, it’s heads down. Eat. Out.

There are other irritants although they are comparatively minor. First off the chef has an odd habit of occasionally just emptying his pan on your plate. Getting extra food is no real hardship but, at times, your plate is drowned under extra egg or beans and sometimes even sausages.

I wonder sometimes if this is also as a result of the whole overcrowding thing. Are we being compensated with extras? Paid off with pork?

Maybe their hearts are in the right place but with the already large portions it just makes you want to give up before you start eating. Plus it’s not exactly attractive.

And maybe it’s just me but in these days of obesity being such a hot topic I no longer feel quite so good about stuffing extra lard-based objects down my neck. (Yeah I know, if I cared that much I could just order cereal, but then again I could do that at home)

As a result of all of this everyone I know has stopped going. The B&H blog has gone silent for almost a year - although I emailed them and they said it was for no other reason than they have been busy. Though it does suggest a lack of enthusiasm for a place that once was Heaton’s favorite hangout.

It’s hard to know what to suggest to make it work again. You could certainly argue that as they are so full they don’t have to.

They certainly need more space. They need to open before 9am so you can get a breakfast earlier if you’re headed to work. They need to open later too.

While that may help stretch some of the trade it’s fair to say the effect might be limited. It might sound strange but what B&H really need is competition.

Sure they can sort out their slightly erratic service, their occasionally bizarre helpings and their queuing system but most of all they need another café (or four) nearby to take up some of the strain.

Best of all they should open another themselves in Jesmond and the Heatonians and err.. Jesmondonians can keep ourselves to ourselves and stop irritating each other.

Because the sad thing is, that the once great B&H is now no fun at all to eat at and I miss the place.

Particularly the sausages.

A few links, thank-yous etc: First off B&H’s MySpace thing is here. It includes enough to make me feel bad for complaining about a place that has obviously been lovingly created with the likes of my ungrateful self in mind. Sorry. Also some suggestion of progress on some of the issues outlined above is included.

The black and white B&H pics are from the very talented annette62. Thanks to B&H blog creator Meri for her input (Relax B&H she still loves you). Her mouth watering B&H Flickr shots are here.

A glowing food review (but a mention of the popularity problems) here.

Finally, Heaton photo group here.

A parcel was sent “guaranteed Saturday delivery”.

Unfortunately, with it being sent to a business address, there was no one there take personal delivery.  So it wasn’t dropped off.

On Monday my customer rings me and asks where the urgent parcel is. I check with Royal Mail. They explain the Saturday situation.

But by this time it is 2pm on Monday. They tell me it is in the van to be dropped off today. But apparently not yet.

“Can you,” I enquire, “check with the van to see when they will deliver?”

“No,” they reply.

They explain they have no means of communicating with the driver once he has set off in the morning.

“Really?”

I’m quite surprised.

“So there really is no way at all of getting in touch with him? Not even in an emergency or when an urgent parcel hasn’t been delivered?”

“No, none at all,” replies the indignant, but suddenly seemingly proud, Royal Mail lady.

“We are not a courier service you know.”

Doing a Royal Mail: Promoting yourself as superior by offering a significantly poorer service than your competitors.

Even during my recent years out of the country I managed to hold onto my Newcastle United season ticket.

A friend seat-sat it and, on my return, I bought a new one to swap with him to get my old place back.

It’s a great spot. High enough to see the shape of play. Low enough to make out the players. The cheapest in the ground but with some of the best sight lines.

Next to me is a bloke that occasionally lets me have his ticket so I can take a friend. In front of me is a classic old gadgey whose rants are hugely entertaining. Alongside him are his boy (who must be 50 himself) and his mate who is suffering the new smoking ban with difficulty.

I know them all through football and we’ve sat together (breaks notwithstanding) for well over a decade now.

Most of the lads I meet up with before the game have slowly collected their seats together in a clump at the opposite end. I’ve been tempted to join them but am too attached to my current location.

There have been prats in the past who have almost ruined it for me. The racist drunk behind me wrecked countless games before I eventually decided to report him. I was as shocked as he was when the police actually moved in and arrested him at half time the following match.

While it was no less than he deserved, I’d only anticipated he’d receive a postal ticking off.

He was gone for a while before resurfacing. I guessed he’d suffered either a short-term ban or was banned for good only to get back in “on appeal”.

Either way he seems a changed character. No more racism from him and over the years he has sobered up. I forget he’s there now.

But now there is a new dick on the block. If he too was overtly racist then I’d have no qualms in reporting him.

But he’s not. Or at least not beyond making moronic jokes about the size of black players’genitalia. It’s that kind of thing. Loud, and moronic and probably mostly with the aim of being a terrace wit rather than anything more sinister.

But, it is horrible.

A few expletives I can take. I have even, broadly speaking in the past, been against efforts to try and clamp down on swearing. The whole point of football is that it is emotional enough that we all let out the occasional four letter word. I know I do.

But this…

Without wanting to go into too much detail his language is invariable at the sexual end of swearing. Lots of very, quite disturbingly, anti-women stuff, a little bit of homophobia chucked in.

For the most part, every time he opens his mouth there is an embarrassed silence on his behalf. I can’t be alone in wishing he’d shut up. I’ll admit, however, that I have heard the occasional titter in response from younger fans.

Maybe I’m just getting old. Or maybe this really is nasty stuff.

But is it my problem, not his?  Are football terraces no place for the easily offended?

Would my teenage self think this guy was amusing? Even cool perhaps?

Either way my thirtysomething self hates this guy. His shouting is constant and it goes right through me. His every utterance is followed by “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP,” repeating itself in my own head.

And anyone who knows football knows the score. You’re asking yourself: if I speak to him will he only get worse to wind me up? How many of his mates are with him? If I speak to him and nothing improves then, if I report him, will he know it is me?

So here are the questions:

Should I report him to the club? Ideally they’d just send him a threatening letter but I can’t pretend I wouldn’t love to see him kicked out

Or should I just learn to live with it?

Or should I finally give up my seat?

I don’t want to be “Angry From Newcastle”.

There are newspapers I have written off. The Daily Mail is simply evil. I don’t believe that to be the slightest over-statement.

Like you’d ever write a letter of complaint to the Daily Mail? Why bother. Just as you wouldn’t write a letter to the BNP to complain it’s racist. It’s somewhat stating the obvious.

But I did recently write to the BBC. I expected better. But all I seem to hear from them these days is one anti-migrant story after another.

There is little or no attempt to balance these issues. No one speaks out for the migrants. Instead you get politician after politician jumping on a bandwagon to please the more moronic elements of the voting population.

Has anyone also noticed that these reports hardly ever actually interview migrants?

When did the BBC swing to the right on these matters? When did it become acceptable, even for them to take this “grrrrr bloody foreigners” line?

In trying to be non-biased are the BBC also trying to reflect the views of small race-hate organisations?

Watching it in front of my non-British girlfriend, I am absolutely mortified and left entirely embarrassed by views that now even the BBC seem to regard as fair.

Okay here goes…

I haver never met anyone who mourned the death of Diana, beyond what you might expect following the death of any public figure.

I don’t know anyone who signed a condolence book. I don’t know anyone who travelled to her funeral. I don’t know anyone who admits to having shed tears.

I am sick of being told by the media that the whole country ground to a halt. I am tired of being told that my fellow countrymen were “united in their grief”.

To mak