175. Boris Johnson Solitaire, Sturgeon Blackjack or Trident Poker?

IN short –four months of Boris Johnson playing with himself to entertain a lazy press or the SNP betting on the dealers hand to see if they can shortcut to another Scottish referendum or stuff that needs our attention now.

Cameron proclaims the EU referendum as the big decision of our lifetime because he thinks he’s found his legacy moment and he really got off on striding round Europe buoyed by reports of his late night/early morning meetings with other ‘important’ people. It will all sound good for his post-PM speaking engagements. And the Oligarch / tax-avoider owned press play ball. Mayor Bad Joke himself defaced all the front pages on Monday morning (one can only assume there was something in London’s water in 2008 apart from chemical waste and recycled hormones). 

You can bet your life it will be indolent two-tone journalism all the way to June 23^rd. More interviews with immigrant-phobic Farage-ites - yum.

You know from blogs like 37 Oh Go on Scotland or 71. Scotland is a Strawberry Tart that I voted for OUT up here but bloody hell – what is the SNP leadership doing giving the dishonest non-too-subtle message that Scots can get a second referendum through Brexit? They think they are playing Blackjack and betting against the dealer but it looks like Russian Roulette to me.

Brexit or Brin (!) will make little difference to ordinary people other than an out vote would lead to the mother of all on-going administrative nightmares. It just is not the issue of the moment. It’s fiddling while the globe is engulfed in a towering inferno. For Britain, the Trident question (just for example) matters much more now and way into the future.

Renewal estimates for the big T now range from £30 billion to £50+ billion. We know – up here in Edinburgh with the recent tram fiasco - that whatever is quoted will in the end look like chicken feed. And it won’t do what they said it would…

(by the way - If someone can explain to me what a billion even is I’m open to a tutorial)

Even someone who seriously gets high on the whole war and shooting and killing people and destroying places thing must see that Trident is the ultimate poker game that no longer has workable rules. For a start you can’t bluff the new breed of nutters.

In our recent past those who spoke in favour of Trident said that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD – yes indeed) kept the world ‘safe’ from the Most Assured Destruction we ever came up with. Even they must acknowledge that things have moved on just a wee bit.

Nukes are a poker game. Global Nuclear Poker was based on the vital similarity of the players round the table – despite how they portrayed each other for the benefit of a gullible public. Everyone knew that the other was not going to press the button. It was ultimate testosterone machismo stalemate (yes I know that’s Chess – gimme a break).

What Cameron has been at in Europe, for the benefit of the Right Wingers in his own party, is village football where the spiteful spoilt brat threatens – yet again – to puncture the ball if he doesn’t get special treatment. Boris is not playing any sort of team game. He is playing Solitaire.

Back to something that matters – does anyone really think that the new uber terrorists or psychopaths like Mr North Korea (I’ll have my uncle killed because he didn’t clap loudly enough) are playing by the same rules or any rules? They ARE the jokers they ARE the wild cards. There is no bluff which would work in a nuclear bake-off with them. Bay of Pigs played with little Kimmy would lead to a lotta over cooked bacon.

Meanwhile, conventional forces are downgraded and automated and phoney wars are played out on territories far far away for ever more convoluted ends and we cannot tell from one day to the next who the politicians have designated as the enemy.

The only thing to do with Trident is to point it squarely in the direction of a suitable tax haven and let it go (after warning the maids, gardeners and other servants to get-the-hell-out like they do in those silly action movies where bystanders don’t get hurt. Yeah right. It’s ALWAYS the bystanders who get hurt).

Then we look around and see how better to spend £50+ billion.

 ***

Now – you may not have a spare £50billion or even million or even £50 but if you go without about 2.5 cups of coffee this week you could afford to buy my humorous sortofautobiography and then with the proceeds I could go out for a coffee.

Maybe I’m not A Pigeon

Is (amazingly) still available… 

174. Zero Hours is not a Contract it’s a Con-trap

I won’t bother with a new cartoon this week. Sadly the one I did in 2013 about this zero hours nastiness is still relevant (click on the orange Amanda Baker top right hand side and you’ll be pinged to the cartoon)

Everyone knows by now that a Zero Hours Contract is a fancy name for not-a-contract. It’s a sandwich with no filling, no butter and no bread. It’s Wimbledon with no tennis. It’s life with no life.

Back in 2007 I bought a small cactus for my daughter from The Green Festival in Newcastle. (Stick with me its relevant). It was tiny. Today it’s hardly any bigger. The wee spiky thing has a hand written name tag – still visible. ‘Not-a-cactus Magnificus’. A zero hours contract is Not-a-contract bollockus.

The only point of a zero hours contract is for employers to circumvent employees’ rights, falsely inflating profits. It is shocking then to learn that here in Scotland even modest estimates suggest that as many as 80,000 workers may now be labouring under this non-contract. It’s a contract for zero security, zero dignity, zero ability to plan your life.

ZHC simply means zero obligations and a totally free ride for the employer. It’s the ultimate FCKYU arrangement.

Farcical

Con-trap

Keeps

You

UNDER

But if these things are here to stay let us be imaginative.

As has been said before on this blog, it is often helpful to take an idea to its logical end. For example I did not throw up my hands in horror when it was suggested that Scottish MPs should be barred from votes on specifically English laws. I simply suggested that we embrace that idea fully and ensure that those with private healthcare do not vote on the NHS. Ditto those from private schools should keep their interfering lizard claws off state education. Surely the notion of Zero Hours Contracts could also be broadened. Let MPs keep their latest generous pay rise but put them on the FCKYU arrangement so they earn that wage on a pro-rata basis. We’ll just call them up when we want them!

And if the employers are so comfortable with FCKYU let them extend it too. Take for example a well-known high street fashion shop. I may go in (I wont) and buy a dress (I wont). Let’s say that a month later I have in fact only worn it twice. I should be allowed to get a partial refund. Oh and all shops using zero hours staff in any part of their supply or service chain must advertise that fact on their shiny smiley posters. Don’t be shy.

Is FCKYU even lawful? Under UK law parties to a contract must have some degree of parity. If one party is so powerless, so pressured by circumstance, so desperate then the terms of agreement between them cannot be regarded as binding. With FCKYU, the worker’s entire life is made vulnerable and random. It is the employer who enjoys zero commitment. In circumstances where there is inequality of bargaining power more sensible terms can be implied. Zero hours contracts should be abolished but if not standard terms of decent employment must be implied rather than leaving increasing tens of thousands of UK workers in long term, stressful, poor-pay limbo.

Zero hours contracts partly explain why – if 1.85 million people are unemployed (officially) The Trussel Trust estimate 13 million people in the UK live below the poverty line.

But as we learn that even the chancellor’s family firm manages to pay no tax in the UK we also see that zero hours contracts continue to rise and rise.

Some companies realise that the public find the notion of zero hours abhorrent. So they subcontract to companies they know use zero hours contracts and then claim ‘we don’t’. That’s like employing a hit man then claiming innocence because you didn’t pull the trigger…

Meanwhile zero hours contracts should be banned in all public sector institutions.

Not surprisingly the only people I’ve ever heard singing the praises of the zero hours contract are those who are comfortably off or nasty people or mad as loons or all of the above (Ian Duncan Smith)

Zero hours contracts are literally freezing families out of any chance of a decent life.

They must be banned.

173. Cameron’s fake crusade is Euro-trashing us. My small, red, shiny thingy proves it…

My 3^rd hand Toshiba was finally ‘obsoleted’ by Microsoft – boooo hiss. I was forced to retire the chunky, held-together-with-tape reliable grey friend. It supported me valiantly, most recently in writing ‘Maybe I’m not a Pigeon’ which as you know you can buy online.

Unlike tech giants I am a fan of the adage ‘If it aint broke don’t fix it’

However, amid my bleating and complaining, my partner got this small shiny red thingy for me. It weighs just a couple of pounds (1kg to you modern types). I was all pleased to get a pressie but also cross to have been cyber manipulated and also pre-hassled at all the re-adjusting I would have to do in order to be able to do the things I was doing quite happily before.

So I charged it, switched it on and did not recognise ANYTHING about its display.

I switched it off.

I turned it back on and STILL did not get even a whiff of familiarity. It wanted to connect to devices I don’t have. It kept mentioning things that meant nothing to me. It wanted to access games. Er – no, I’m not 15. I searched in vain for the familiar icon that would mean I could open a page and start typing.

In the end I took it with me for a little bus trip to the Virgin shop in town as I needed help with my phone and I hoped someone there might be able to speak to the small shiny red thingy. The young trendy (aren’t they always) guy could barely disguise his disdain at my pathetic non i-phone but did sort the sim out for me. I waved the small shiny red thingy at him (I wanted to know why there was no port for plugging in the internet cable) he had to go out back. For a laugh I think.

‘You don’t need to be attached with a wire’ said another nicer man

‘But I want a wire’ said I

‘It’s fine being wireless’ he said kindly

‘I like the yellow wire, it seems a more secure connection’ I sulked

‘Only hackers need a connection that secure’ he assured me

(How did he know I wasn’t a hacker?)

Then after more of the turning-it-on-and-hoping kind of activity an icon popped up asking me if I wanted to chat online for some help. Tada. After more than  90 minutes online and a couple of phone calls with a lovely woman in India the new shiny red thingy is doing things I want it to do and has icons on it that I recognise and it suddenly doesn’t seem so scary. And she was SO nice and SO clever and friendly and did NOT make me feel like a moron.

Now you may feel this next bit is a leap but – after we’d finished and while I was still dazed and confused – it occurred to me, again, how much of a load of old cobblers David Cameron’s phony posturing over Europe really is (and I already knew it was bollocks)

Stay with me you know I get there in the end…

Last week – prior to The Guardian publishing another of my Ms Angry letters (29^th Jan – look up Amanda Baker Edinburgh) I got a Guardian HQ confirmation call from a youth. This young un clearly had practised his tone of studied boredom – possibly to give the impression he was just too good to be making mundane phone calls to nobodies like moi. Now if he is following the pattern of into-UK journalism in the 2000s he is possibly one of those fortunate enough to be able to afford to do an internship or shoe-horned in by a family contact. I don’t know. He didn’t sound like he was from the local comp.

The point I am making is that there are lots of things wrong with the UK - the economy and education and healthcare yada yada yada but it has NOTHING to do with belonging to the EU.

If India can produce young women of the calibre of the one who sorted out my shiny red thingy – intelligent, well educated, speaking great English – does Britain really think it can compete with the rest of the world if it is NOT part of Europe?

I mean seriously?

Plus, like other emerging economies – India is making things. Britain isn’t.

In emerging economies the brightest and best get on. Its ages since that ever happened in Britain as the upper echelons are chocked up and stagnated by the dual societal terminal illnesses, privilege and nepotism. Meritocracy is a past (short lived) dream. As I said a couple blogs ago, Tim rich but dim stamped out Trevor poor but clever before he got a foothold. And those who are thinking they should get out of Europe so that the scary immigrants don’t come and take their jobs. They don’t need to actually BE here to do that. WAKE UP.

And as the UK continues to be sold off to the highest bidder just what exactly is DC defending? It’s a mirage. It’s a fake. It’s a cartoon crusade.

If we want to compete globally we need to stop pretending the UKs problems are caused by immigrants or European membership or the disabled or those on benefits or any of the other bogey men the media and politicians scare us with. We need to fund talent and infrastructure and education with sturdy taxation and then protect it by chasing out the profiteering bastards who are bleeding the UK dry.

*

Now if you want to see this post as a (slightly rude) sketch click on the orange ‘Amanda Baker’ at the top right of the blog and you'll find my latest cartoon.

172. Syrian Pogrom

Syria – a Haiku

Olive saplings drowned.

Hothouse *lilies undisturbed

But I condemn you.

*lilies are the flowers on the Eton crest. 

171. Privileged White Men keep getting it wrong & we keep listening. Why?

     

As I was pondering this conundrum last week the answer came to me via the armchair drone of Andrew Rawnsley. On a mid-week radio filler programme the topic was the abuse if migrants in Middlesbrough where the landlord (a subsidiary of G4S) had painted their doors a nice stand-out, uniform red.

Rawnsley stated with bizarre conviction that it was not the case that the landlord had deliberately made targets of these tenants. He was so sure. The only thing that mystified him, he said, was why they re-painted a white door red. Why was he so sure? Ironically it’s a conviction rooted in the most basic kind of one-dimensional ignorance. He has never been/will never be in that position, cannot conceive of being at the mercy of such an intolerable situation, has never been so powerless and cannot make the socio-cultural leap to put himself there.

Is the expensively educated Rawnsley unaware that if an action so obviously leads to injury as to be entirely foreseeable, the law treats it as intentional? The landlord knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the effect of their red door policy (it had been reported to them from numerous sources). Neither is it in dispute that they altered that policy only when the problem was brought to public attention by journalists.

It really is obvious why things keep getting so wrong. But even with the wealth of information at our fingertips and the obvious lessons from history (if we read history without an agenda) it keeps going pear shaped. From the economy to the pointless wars, to the constant mix ups over whether we are friends or enemies with Sadam / Assad / Putin yada yada yada. China is the new economic power house – oops no it isn’t.

The ruling elite are homogeneous, we know that, but they are also now more removed from everyday life than at almost any time in modern history. In the brief socially fluid era after WWII and before Thatcher there was a time when Tim bright-but-dim was counterbalanced by Trevor-poor-but-clever. Somehow Tim and his pals put a stop to Trevor (Leroy [see blog 117] and Lucy never had much of a look in). Add one more ingredient to the mix, which is the speed at which the world now turns due to technology, and there has never been a more unfortunate time to be ruled by entrenched privilege rather than merit.

The level of control is exquisite. It wasn’t long after greedy (predominantly PWM) bankers wrecked the global economy that somehow it became a bit distasteful even to refer to that little hiccup. Ill-mannered types who continued to ask why so few money men were ever brought to justice were told to stop ‘bashing the bankers’. Here here – jolly poor show etc.

Yes, the reason Privileged White Men keep on keeping getting it wrong is because they are Privileged White Men. Their rarefied upbringings and the fact that they only give credence to other people like them means that when the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes ( and he’s been naked for quite a while now) there is no one with clout to point it out. (See archive blog 21. Save the Emperor’s Genitals).

What is less easy to explain is why the rest of us – the majority – keep letting them piss on our lives.

This is the breed that employed members of the police to have sex with left wing women. Sure, tofu eating lefties who believe in natural child birth are possibly a threat to the planet but you know what – they don’t make a big secret of what they do or think. So these guys living out sordid 007 fantasies at tax payers’ expense really could have been doing something more useful.

Who kicked off the illegal invasion of Iraq? Oh yeah – two really privileged white men (something else we aren’t really supposed to talk about much. Chilcot anyone?).

Who gives contracts to G4S and BT and other incompetents? Oh yeah – a government/administration of predominantly PWM.

Who decided we could bail out bankers with public money but not protect the steel industry? Same. Why? Because bankers are like them and steel workers are not.

Which bright spark introduced early draw down pension laws BEFORE sufficient safeguards were in place? Oh yeah – Osborne.  A privileged white man. Someone who will never be reliant on a modest company pension. And so on and so forth.

Come on people

Time to grow up

*

See also

Blog 35. Eton Mess, Pudding or state of the nation?

Blog 97. Viagra, Yes – effective cure for Malaria, No!

170. FUNNIEST JOKE...

My funniest joke or my worst joke - my only joke (!) was bequeathed to me by my dad and he may have been telling it since the mid 70s.

You need this joke.

If, like me, you are depressed by the government paying policemen to rape left wing women (consent is surely void as the women were being conned by the state). You may be confused because that same government (which bailed out bankers) cannot find money to support steel operators, Britain’s last substantial industry.

Despite a brief tangle with stand up comedy, joke telling per se (sorry – everyone seems to be adding ‘per se’ to their sentences at the moment) is not my forte. A fact you will become au fait with if you reach the end of this post. Ok.

I’ve been in the habit of telling this particular gag to my family at intervals of a couple or three years either because I forgot I told them or I hoped they’d forgotten it and would be merrily entertained by my stored wit. As my dad may also have said, ‘if wit were shit you’d be constipated’. But God loves a tryer apparently.

It may be that you are depressed that London already passed its 2016 pollution limits and we’re not out of January. You might also have read the news that up to 1 in 5 recycle bins ends up in landfill. I won’t mention the fact again that we are all knee deep in dog excrement most of the time. Well done local government.

You may be in denial, blocking the horrible reality that oil prices are a game that the super wealthy play with a precious global resource that we should be weaning ourselves off, having long ago lost their connection with ordinary people.

In the UK you may be catatonic with the knowledge that our PM is not a leader but a figurehead while the opposition leader is a collective manifestation of wishful thinking. In the US, you will be whistling loudly and trying to distract from the reality that your most well-meaning president finds himself vilified because he’s trying to reduce the incidents of teenagers shooting their schoolmates. And you also have the headache personified of D Trump (see three blogs down - 167) who just keeps on and on and on not shutting up.

As local services go down the drain you may wonder why local councillors get paid – at all. In the old days when they actually had direct responsibility for e.g. education, and services were not all farmed out to private companies they did not get paid.

You may be confused as to why G4S still gets government contracts despite yet more evidence (do we need more) of bad management, poor practice and the violent treatment of vulnerable people. But then why does BT still get government contracts despite being incompetent and crap?

So – for you – here is the joke my dad used to love and which I also loved when he told it. And I apologise if you are not familiar with the relevant proverb.

*

#funniestjoke-browngirloutsidethering

A man went to his doctor complaining of a problem with his bottom

Dr. –What exactly seems to be the trouble?

Patient. – Whenever I fart my bottom makes a weird noise

Dr. – What kind of noise?

Patient. – “Honda Honda”

(The Dr examines the patient and pronounces the mystery solved)

Dr. – Ah yes – It’s quite obvious. The problem is caused by an abscess.

(The patient was a little sceptical)

Patient. – Why would an abscess cause such a strange noise?

Dr. – Surely you’ve heard, ‘abscess makes the fart go Honda’.

*

Sorry...

Again – if you need my psychology explained try this http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/151924729X

169 Drinkers are dull as Rosie Millard proved.

I didn’t have to work far through Rosie Millard’s article in Saturday’s i (The Independent’s weekend paper) before I came across the hackneyed term ‘party pooper’ in relation to the new alcohol advice. Because of course you must be boring if, like me, you don’t drink and worse than boring if you suggest limits on people poisoning themselves on a regular basis.

Trust me – it’s drinkers who can bore you to tears. Forget the cherished urban myth. Unbelievably, mind numbingly, tediously, deadly dull is an evening with someone who needs alcohol to grow a personality. I don’t get paid for my blog but this teetotaller would be embarrassed to write something as asinine as Ms Millard’s Saturday article.

Through my 20s 30s and 40s I tired of the adults who (wile regarding themselves as whacky – good time party people) clearly could not handle the fact that I could enjoy myself without alcohol.

Now we’ve had the no-safe-level message from the people who reckon they know but who will probably be telling us something different next month. Surely the least we could hope for would newspaper articles a little less – boring - predictable.

The usual reactionary guff was trotted out and not just by RM – I simply use that as a fine example. You know the type of thing – you can live on water and lentils then get hit by a bus... Yeah – ok. Tell that to the staff in A&E on a Saturday night dealing with the body and or social breakages due to alcohol misuse.

Maybe the article was especially petulant because one of the target groups for the new information is the chattering class chugging a bottle a night. Yes – oh my goodness. The humous-eating, jogging, desperately networking, Waitrose-shopping, Boden-wearing, little-bit-of-work-on-the-face suburban comfies. Lordy.

Recently a friend told me that her son’s student bar job entailed him wandering round a club with a tray of vodka PRETENDING to be drunk and PRETENDING to be having a really really good time. The aim? To induce other youngsters to acquire the drink habit. This was his ‘job’. I’ve no doubt that those who are successfully brainwashed will, like Rosie Millard, regard people like me as ‘party poopers’ if they make it to middle age still able to enjoy life.

There are lots of things that may reduce your lifespan. I was surprised to hear that even watching television has been calculated in life shortening terms. As I haven’t had a T.V in over fifteen years (why would anyone living outside London pay a licence fee?) I’m unmoved by that stat either.  However, while some things MAY shorten our lives/damage our health, there are very few that we know WILL. Regular and/or excessive alcohol being one.

And while I abhor the fashion of fat-shaming (usually by men aimed at women – no surprise there) I’d be less averse to drunk shaming. I’d enjoy watching some brave soul lambasting the groups, drunk at 11am on the train en route to their hen/stag dos and discussing, in detail, their sexual preferences at the top of their boorish, screechy, alcohol amplified voices.

Yes it’s true that simply living shortens your life. I do not dwell on the ever changing proclamations from those who appoint themselves to tell the rest of us how to live. However, I am sick of drinkers doing that to me. The husband of a friend spent literally years trying to persuade me to take an alcoholic drink whenever I went to their house. I never once tried to persuade him not to drink...

I was married to a drinker (not an alcoholic) and the bad times due to alcohol that could have been good times were countless (check out my latest book).  Am I the party pooper? I don’t think so. Others may disagree but at least I can remember the fun I’ve had.