Ink & 'spirituality' (really)

My latest tattoo installment on Saturday: This time the stylised head of a beast, described variously as horse, dog, lion or otter, taken from a piece of 7th century Pictish silver found at Norrie Law in Fife.

Why? Well here’s one answer.

As an atheist I have absolutely no idea what religious people mean when they talk about ‘spirituality’. Nor I suspect do they. I could take the obvious cheap shot and say that their spirituality is nothing more than a kind of narcotic-like experience induced by singing, fasting, incense, being silent etc. Or any other stimuli depending on your particular brand of mumbo-jumbo on offer. If I were being more charitable I might say that spirituality is a sense of being part of something bigger or outside of yourself. Although passionate football fans could probably make the same claim.

Some atheists manage to take a kind of pseudo-spirituality from cosmology. For them contemplating the sheer scope of the universe puts the individual in perspective. Personally, to quote the classic line from Spinal Tap, for me that’s ‘a bit too much fucking perspective’.

Instead, I’ll settle for archaeology and tattoos to get my ‘spirituality’: I find the idea of wearing something on my arm that an ancestor carved 1,400 years ago gives me the same kick that others would get staring down a telescope at the stars. A simultaneous sense of connection and my place in the scheme of things.

Oh yeah and it looks the bollocks too. (Well I think so).

1968 & all that

Went to a meeting last night to mark the anniversary of the 1968 movement in France.

I’d like to say that it re-ignited the spirit of ’68 in a new generation, but to be honest the meeting was full of the usual suspects that come to these things. Despite a rousing singing of the Internationale at the end, I have to say that whilst ’68 may have been the defining moment for a generation of the left, I fear that moment has now passed.

Certainly in this country much of the then student left have reverted to the safe middle class lives from whence they came. One particular sub-species, especially prevalent in academic circles, is the ‘New Left intellectual’ – for career enhancing purposes they had to define themselves as Marxist in the 70’s when it was fashionable. Now they can’t shake it off but having revised their revisionism so often, they have fully disappeared up their own arses. And are barely socialist any more let alone Marxist.

But bucking this trend was the main speaker – a dowdy little Frenchwoman who spoke through a translator. Still an activist today, in ’68 she had been in the thick of it. She described carrying paving stones in her shopping bags, roof top battles with the ‘flics’ and organising discussion groups at the local Renault factory. Today, if you passed her in the street she could pass as a member of the Women’s Institute (if there is such a thing in France). I found that strangely moving.

When the abused becomes the abuser ..

Sixty years ago the sinister euphemism of ‘ethnic cleansing’ wasn’t known to the world.

But today it is exactly how we would have described the bulldozing in 1948 of Palestinian villages and the displacement of 700,000 refugees to secure Israeli settlement of the region. And many more have been driven from their homes since then.

It’s a cliché that nationalism when suppressed is romantic, whilst nationalism in power is obscene. But never was it more poignantly true than when it comes to the history of Israel-Palestine

As far as Palestinians are concerned, Zionism crossed that line with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Maybe liberal Israelis could point to 1967 and the Six Day War as the defining moment when Zionism lost it’s innocence.

As a neutral observer, it didn’t come home to me until I saw on the news in 1982 the horror of Israeli forces facilitating and colluding with Lebanese Fascist militias in the massacres of Palestinians at the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps.

Today Bush is visiting the Kniset to cheer-lead Israel’s 60th birthday celebrations, describing the USA and Israel as ‘the ardent defenders of liberty’ in the Middle East. Meanwhile Palestinians describe the 15th May simply as al-Naka or ‘The Catastrophe’.

To many of us who watch in safety it is perhaps the most depressing injustice of our generation; and in a sense the fate of the Palestinian people has become a symbol of all injustice. How ironic that the fate of the Jewish people was the same symbol for a previous generation.

SATs and stats.

This week my youngest daughter, in her final year at primary school, is doing her SATs. A whole week (more or less)of tests is inevitably stressful – inevitably she thinks it’s a big deal because for most of this school year they have been preparing for them and little else.

Except it isn’t - we know from experience with my eldest daughter that the secondary school will test the kids all over again. But it is a very big deal for the school because the performance of the pupils will be a major factor in how the school is rated. So we have a system which replicates the stress of the old 11+ system without even the carrot of getting a place at a grammar school.

Last week I went to parents’ evening at my eldest daughter’s secondary school. I was half way through a meeting with one of the teachers talking about ‘learning outcomes’ and projecting levels of attainment for the end of the year, before I realised that we were talking about Cookery for fucks sake !

And this is a good school – in fact it’s officially ‘outstanding’; a rare thing, an inner city comprehensive with all the usual
problems that actually out performs the national averages.

But I’m suspicious what all these rankings mean.

They seem very much like the tick-box collecting that we have to do at work to win contracts these days – and I know that they have sod all to do with quality in any meaningful sense. On the contrary they make a fetish of the mediocre.

There are a small number of inspirational teachers; the ones that you remember for the rest of your life, whose lessons often spin off at all sorts of tangents as the kids' interests take them. That is genuine education. I can’t imagine that all those averages and targets leave very much room for them these days.

Double standards

The level of class deference in this country never ceases to amaze me.

When a nutter starts shooting at his neighbours through their windows and is subsequently killed in a drunken gun battle with the police just off the Kings Road in Chelsea, it is reported as a tragic end to a glittering career.

As of course it is when any 32 year old suffering from substance-abuse and other emotional problems flips and ends up dead.

But Mark Saunders wasn't just anybody: He was a barrister tipped to become a QC. A graduate of Corpus Christi College Oxford and a part-time soldier in the poshest regiment in the territorial army, the Honourable Artillery Company. He lived in one of London's most fashionable and exclusive areas. And apparently he also had a drink problem and kept a shotgun at home.

Now imagine just for a moment that the shooting had happened in Brixton or Tottenham. And that Marks Saunders was a black man on crack cocaine, and a graduate of North London Polytechnic who worked in IT.

The papers would be talking about how gun crime and drugs were a blight on a community with a growing culture of violence. No doubt social services, political correctness and rap music would be held responsible.

Maybe the Metropolitan Police will now be setting up a special squad to tackle 'toff-on-toff' crime as a counterpart to Operation Trident. But I doubt it.

Austria needs a make-over ?

Austria’s having a bit of a bad press at the moment.

Obviously the paedophile incest in the cellar horror was never going to be good for the tourist trade. The Austrian government is trying to re-establish the country’s good name – you can just imagine the PR brief ‘emphasise the Sound Of Music and Mozart thing but play down the whole Hitler and child molesters angle’.

In this country the red-tops are carrying pictures of the small town of the Amstetten at the time of the anschluss. Unsurprisingly pictures from the time have surfaced of townspeople and members of Fritzl’s family giving Nazi salutes. The implication is something along the lines of 'see they’re all Nazis really with a genetic disposition to do evil'.

Naturally any sane person regards this kind of inherited collective guilt as absolute bollocks. Otherwise we’d be blaming all the serial killers in the USA on that country’s shameful near-genocide of its indigenous peoples and an inherited predisposition to callous violence. Truth is, no nation is any more predisposed to these horrors than any other. But when small town values predominate it doesn’t half help in keeping every thing hushed up.

And here is the serious and valid point: Culturally Austria is an affluent and conservative country with a strong Catholic influence. Attitudes that Hemmingway, in a different context, called ‘wide lawns and narrow minds’.

The sort of place we are told where neighbours address each other by their surnames and respect each others’ privacy. Where the word of the ‘head of the family’ is respected when he is asked where his children have gone. Not the sort of place where liberal nosy-parker do-gooders from social services stick their noses in.

In fact it sounds suspiciously like the Conservative vision of ‘family values’. Come to think of it - a bit like our own island of Jersey.

Almost summer music

A ride on an (almost) Summer’s evening over to the Hammersmith Apollo on Saturday. Although it’ll always be the Hammersmith Odeon to me – the venue in which I saw my first every gig – Thin Lizzy in 1978 or thereabouts.

A very different night on Saturday though; to see the Buena Vista Social Club. With 14 band members on stage I would guess that the average age was well over 70. The bass player literally had to be led off at the end – he’d just about shuffled away when the rest of the band came back for the encore.

It may be a terrible cliché to say so, but the old boys visibly seemed to come to life as they played. In true Anglo-Saxon manner I tend to show my approval at concerts by sitting with my arms folded and with the odd nod of the head. After a couple of numbers even I found a few involuntary dance-like moves overtaking me.

It hadn’t been my idea to get the tickets – my other half is big on world music – and I’ve got an inkling towards jazz - so we kind of meet in the middle when it comes to Cuban music. But I have to say that this was one of the best gigs of any sort that I can remember for a long time. And it proved that cool is definitely not age-related.

Nooooo !

I love London. Dirty and impoverished though it may be (at least the bit where I live is) - I don't think anywhere else has the same diversity, history and vibrancy.

SO WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?

How did this city get a racist, elitist, over-privilidged Tory buffon as its mayor?

I'm still pondering it - so far I can think of three things:

Like The Sun in 1992 - it was The Evening Standard 'wot won it' - the voice of Middle England inside the capital has been running a vendetta against Ken since the 1980's and it has finally paid off.

The 10p tax fuck-up - the fiasco of a Labour government tinkering with the tax system to ease the burden on the middle classes by shifting it to the lowest paid. Whether it was a policy decision or whether someone hit the wrong button on their calculator it is unforgivable and try as he might Brown can't take it back.

Morons with short memories who didn't think of the horror of bringing the Tories back in. Make a protest vote against Ken by all means but the whole point of the transferable vote system is that in doing so, you don't have to cut your nose off to spite your face. Any Lib Dem, Green or Left List first preference voters who didn't transfer to Ken frankly need their heads examined.

Possibly there's a silver lining and people need to experience again an ascendent Tory party, particularly one run by Old Etonians, to re-discover what politics is all about and get radicalised. But I fear that it doesn't work like that and that the shameful turning point of the fascists winning their first seat in the London Assembly may be a taste of things to come ....

Keep Boris Out !

I have fond memories of going to anti-racist gigs in the 80’s in the Jubilee Gardens with my mates from school ( – did Aswad really play every one of those benefits?).

It may give my age away but I can remember the days before we had a Mayor’s Office in London – those glory days of the old GLC. When Ken Livingston was the council leader. In those dark Thatcher years, the GLC was a local beacon of defiance, and naturally the Tory press demonised them and him in particular as the loony left.

Admittedly with hindsight some of the community groups and campaigns the GLC supported were pretty daft, and undeniably played in to the hands of their opponents. And probably laid the basis for the cronyism and corruption allegations that are haunting Ken to this day. But I firmly believe that the GLC was a GOOD THING – and this of course is why a vindictive Tory government went on to abolish it.

Ken has come a long way since his antecedents as a fellow-traveller of the obscure Trotskyist entrist Socialist Action sect. These days he doesn’t even talk about socialism – he’s an unashamed radical-populist. Which is why he's just about tolerated by the party leadership as New Labour’s prodigal son.

But he has one vital thing going for him. He’s not ludicrous racist Tory toff Boris Johnson. And no amount of stupid bendy buses, lies about the cost of the Olympics, or dodgy dealings with Lee Jasper can outweigh this.

So, in the absence of a proper socialist candidate (sorry but the front organisations of the Socialist Workers Party, or of the Communist Party of Britain, or Galloway's Islamo-apologists just don’t cut it) - I will be holding my nose and voting Ken for mayor tomorrow.

Fuel and penions

With a petrol tank on my bike the size of a thimble I have my own mini fuel crisis quite regularly. So I filled up a jerry can at the local petrol station for my own emergency supply ‘just in case’.

I then felt kind of guilty about it – like I was a victim of the hysteria that seems to take grip at the mention of ‘fuel strikes’. Contrary to the predictions we haven’t yet seen the breakdown of western civilisation because of the two-day strike of oil workers at the Grangemouth refinery.

This hysteria seems to blind many people to the perfectly reasonable position of the Ineos workers. Think of the issues at stake:

• Big companies expected to take care of their former employees after a lifetime of service with a full salary pension? Outrageous and outdated.

• Thinking that a company making profits in excess of £50million per day, with a chief executive worth £1.3 billion, should be able to afford such a scheme? Ludicrous and unreasonable.

• Workers who work 12hour shifts 365 days a year having a basic wage of £30k pa – rising with overtime to £40k? Over-privileged and outrageous.

• Unions taking limited strike action after prolonged negotiations have broken down? Selfish and irresponsible.

The pension issue is a time bomb for most of us. A whole generation now faces insecurity at the end of their working lives that was unkown to our parents and grandparents. Many have had to come to terms with this and suffer the lesser of two evils with private pensions. Some of us who work in the small business sector have always had to accept it. In the oil industry there is a group of workers who may just be able to use their industrial clout to defend what so many others have lost.

Good luck to them, even if it does mean a bit of inconvenience for motorists (and bikers).

Support the teachers

You couldn’t pay me enough to be a teacher.

And I’m not adverse to the sound of my voice, and I get quick a kick out of ‘teaching’ whether it’s doing presentations or trying to help instruct martial arts. But the thought of being part social worker, part security guard, part mentor and the responsibility for shaping young minds that goes with being a school teacher, frankly scares me shitless.

Which is why I think they deserve more pay and support their strike today.

I’m not totally soppy about this. With two children in inner London schools and a partner who is a school governor, I know that there are some crap teachers, and it’s still too difficult to get rid of them. But then there are weak individuals in every industry or profession.

However the arguments behind the strike today are really about the status of teaching itself . A lot of people in the private sector - actually most of the people I work with - are totally misinformed about teachers pay (the quoted £35k is at the top level not the average) and the hours (the unpaid overtime and out of hours working is conveniently forgotten).

But even if they weren’t mis-informed, even if teaching really was a cushy over-privileged profession; why shouldn’t it be?

Graduate trainees in city financial institutions regularly start at £35k – who do we really need most? Maybe if we go these priorities right we’d have a more civilised society.

Administrative Professionals

Apparently today is International Administrative Professionals’ Day.

It used to be called Secretary’s Day but it’s been re-branded. It started in the 50’s and I think the idea was a kind of be nice to your secretary day. Fair enough I suppose, secretaries were a pretty hard done by group of workers.

But nowadays they have gone the same way as the hand-loom weavers. It’s difficult to conceive of a time when junior and middle managers were not capable of typing their own letters or answering their own phones.

Actually I’m pretty sure these skills were easy enough to acquire - but having someone else do these things for you was a status symbol. Laptop, email voicemail and open plan offices have thankfully made much of this corporate petty bollocks obsolete.

In fact I don’t know anybody who has a secretary. Of course there are some executives who live in the management stratosphere who have PA’s. (People like Sur-alun-sugar the nation’s favourite fat cat bastard). I guess PA’s can fill some kind of practical function in being gatekeepers for their bosses – managing access and running the appointment diary - they get to know all the corporate skeletons in the cupboards. But they’re not really secretaries at all, they're a kind of middle manager - and possibly a backdoor way by which women have been able to by-pass the corporate glass ceiling.

So who is an ‘Administrative Professional’ these days ? The only people who would use that title are probably jobs-worth petty bureaucrats who think that they aren’t working class because they get to wear a polyester tie, and have a BTEC in business studies.

Although actually Generation X-ers in clerical McJobs are the real equivalent of the down-trodden secretaries of the past. So rather than 'Sending a bunches of flowers to your secretary-day' it might be more appropriate to have 'Mourn the loss of proper jobs in manufacturing-day'.

Humourless

‘It’s political correctness gone mad’ tends to be a clarion call for the small minded whenever their bigotry is challenged.

But it does seem apt when train drivers’ union ASLEF picket the premier of black comedy ‘Three And Out’. The storyline is apparently about a tube driver who having two suicides throw themselves under his train seeks out a third to get the compensation and compassionate leave.

I’ve not seen it so I can’t vouch for whether it’s funny or not. Mackenzie Cook was superb as Gareth in The Office, rather less so in ‘Sex Lives Of The Potato Men’. Ultimately as a black comedy, the funniness criteria is the only one that really matters.

Picketing the film because it touches your own sensitivities tends to make you look like a humourless twat. Maybe the shop workers union USDAW should have picketed ‘Are You Being Served’, or the bus workers could have done the same for ‘On The Buses’. But the only real offensive aspects of these series were that they were complete shit.

With local elections in London where public transport features as a massive issue, and when tube workers are demonized as the enemy within, it’s probably rather bad tactics too.

Teenage kicks

Channel 4’s Skins finished last night, with all the characters if not killed off, certainly dispersed for ever. I know I’m not the demographic that’s supposed to be watching it, but I think it’s genius – ridiculous and poignant at the same time.

I’m also pretty sure that a lot of the cultural references are wasted on me. But substitute Special Brew for the pills, 80’s metal for the trance, and obviously all the fashion, and essentially it’s me and my friends aged 18.

It captures that brief window when everything seems possible, it’s all still to be discovered and the whole world centres around your friends – a kind of intensity that will never come again. The human tragedy is probably that we forget so quickly how it is to feel that way - and lose something in the process.

Which is why it should be compulsory viewing for every 40-something, especially if they are a parent. And it’s bloody funny too.

Trade unions - initials & names

My trade union (Unite) has spoken out about bullying in the workplace – of clergymen by their parishioners. I’m a bit taken aback by this. As an ex-Catholic I can’t really think of clergymen as a part of the labour movement. And I was amazed to find that I am now in the same union as them.

I joined the print industry in the days of the closed shop and of jealousy and rivalry between the unions. In my naïve enthusiasm I initially joined the wrong union - SOGAT (Society Of Graphic Allied Trades). Trying to move to the correct one for my actual area of work, the NGA (National Graphical Association) was ludicrously difficult and achieved with only slightly less hassle than re-partition after a civil war.

But even when this was done I found that we didn’t really consider ourselves part of the NGA at all. We had merged only a few years before and still thought of ourselves as SLADE (the gloriously named Society of Lithographic Artists, Engravers & Process Workers). Not to be confused with the ex-ASLP (Amalgamated Society of Lithographic Printers) and definitely not with ex-NATSOPA (National Society of Operative Printers & Assistants).

All of which convinced me that craft unions were basically bollocks. Whilst everyone was arguing about differentials and giving archaic craft designations to new technologies, employers like Murdoch were busting the unions. And a new generation of people were coming in to the industry from design and IT backgrounds who the craft unions wouldn’t let in and who didn’t see the point of joining anyway.

For a too short time we had what had always made sense; a single (more or less) union for the printing / graphics industry - the GPMU (Graphic Paper & Media Union). But it was too late and financial pressures meant that we got swallowed up in a series of mergers with super-unions. Accordingly we traded initials and acronyms for vague and silly names – firstly Amicus and now Unite. Meanwhile fewer and fewer people see the relevance of being in a union – in fact the main benefits of memberships are cited as legal support, insurance and financial services.

I’m pretty sure I’d be hard pressed to find a fellow member of Unite any more who had a clue what my job was or what companies like mine do. That’s a pretty good acid test. Industry based unions made sense but I’m not sure that super-unions do – there seem to inevitably become lobbying groups rather than workplace-based.

And I wish the clergymen would just bugger off and form their own ARSE (Association of Religious & Spiritual Employees).

Ink & Iron

With a taste of Spring in the air I fancied a ride up to Birmingham on Sunday to the annual Ink & Iron show at the NEC. Custom bikes, tattoos and a ride in (short spells) of sun – what’s not to like?

So I was thoroughly pissed-off to find that the show has been canceled at short notice. Apparently the West Midlands police have advised that they couldn’t guarantee public safety. This of course is in the context of the supposed escalation of the ‘biker war’ between the Hells Angels MC and the Outlaws MC. Allegedly.

With the murder of Gerry Tobin last August, and the attack at Birmingham airport in January there is clearly some serious shit brewing. But I have no insights into these events to offer - and neither I suspect does anybody else outside the two clubs, whatever the self-appointed experts are saying in the tabloids.

The clubs are effectively a closed world that has nothing at all to do with ordinary bikers. And whatever you might think about their antics, no outsiders have been involved in any of these incidents – the general biking public are not at risk.

What this is about is a massive over reaction on the police’s part, fueled by media hysteria. Remember we are not talking about suicide bombers walking into the NEC – a small but visible police presence at the event would be enough to assure that any business the clubs might want to conduct is done elsewhere. But obviously a simple stewarding operation at an event that merely affects a minority sub-culture is not a priority.

Imagine the outcry if a football match was canceled on similar grounds.

Put that light out

I was surprised to learn that like so much of the Olympics, the whole torch carrying thing was a modern intervention. Apparently it was first used at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Fantastic, you really couldn't make this stuff up ...

I'm a bit slow off the blocks on this one - but just how marvelous were those scenes from London and Paris as the Olympic torch was assailed by demonstrators ?

It's not often that protesters face a win-win situation. But here it is for once. If the torch is extinguished it's a propaganda coup and if the authorities crack the protesters' heads - then the image that goes around the world is that of the repression of legitimate protest.

Hopefully by the time the torch eventually gets to Beijing the the credibility of the Chinese government will have taken a bit more of a battering at each city it passes through.

Bike DIY

Motorcycle Storehouse, the mail order supplier of all things custom and performance for Harleys has a slogan: 'A biker's work is never done'. It certainly isn't when you are a complusive tinkereer like me.

I've experienced what is euphemistically known as the oil blow-by phenomenon. This is a peverse peculiarity of Harley Evolution engines that vent the oil breather into the air filter. The idea is that oil is sucked into the carb and burnt off. Only it doesn't work - there's more oil mist than the carb can handle so it just collects in the oil filter and then drops onto the engine casing or your boot and scares the shit out of you that you have an oil leak. It gets worse if you have a performance air filter. And worse again if you have the 1200cc re-bore. I've got both - so I thought I'd better do something about it.

So I picked up an oil breather kit from Ebay. This weekend I'd thought I would fit it.Last night I took the air filter off. Or tried to, but I stopped as I realised that I was fast rounding off the original recessed breather bolts that held it on. A quick trip to Halfords before it shut to see if I could get a better socket was a non-starter. Asking for an imperial rather than a metric tool is guaranteed to get a blank stare. Trying to explain that I wanted a six point rather than a twelve point socket (that's what had done the damage) was even more so. Next morning I took the tube to Buck & Ryan the mecca of obscure tools in Holborn, and got the 9/16" deep walled six point socket I wanted. Except it still couldn't get a grip on the fucking bolts.

I took a deep breath and phoned the nice man at the local bike shop. He took one of his own sockets and put it onto a lathe to get rid of the lip at the end so as to get better purchase on the damaged bolts. Happily this worked. I returned home expecting to now finish the job in about half an hour. But instead I found that the breather kit wouldn't actually fit with the air filter. The plastic backing plate required drilling new mounting holes, sealing up old mounting holes, and recutting away some of the moulding. Thankfully my other half's jewellery making Dremell came to the rescue for that. The coast should have been clear to now fit the bloody thing - except the bolts supplied were too big and wouldn't fit the new mounting arrangement. So back to Halfords for some smaller (metric but sod it) bolts to hold it all together. Finally I got the fucking thing on - the best part of 24 hours after starting an half hour job.

The oil breather kit was only about £35. The new socket was £5 (plus as I'm a tool fetishist I also brought several other sockets also at £5 just in case). I gave the nice man at the bike shop £20 for his trouble and ruining one of his sockets. The new bolts from Halfords came in some ridiculous multi-part blister that cost £10. And the tube fare was another £5 or so. In total about £50 worth of buggering about in addition to the cost of the original part.

From long experinece that's a fairly typical bit of bike DIY.

Stupid but smug

To protect our kids apparently anyone with an e.mail address such as a.nonce@pedophiles.com will find themselves banished forever from social networking sites.

That’s pretty much the drift of the governments’ proposals to tackle convicted predatory abusers who contact children online. Oh yes - and if they give a false email address when they register with the police on their release, then they face five years imprisonment.

Have the fuck-wits who came up with this ever actually used the internet – do they have the slightest idea how easy it is to get an email address ?

It’s the same kind of thinking behind the debate about taking cannabis up to Class B status. People living in some kind of unworldly cocoon can feel sanctimonious and smug in making glib and hollow proposals that will have no impact on real problems, to the applause of an ignorant baying mob.

Welcome to dumbed down Britain.

Finest Hour ?

It’s the 90th birthday of the Royal Air Force.

Inevitably there will be talk of ‘the few’ and of Spitfires and Hurricanes. Rightly so - the achievement of the Battle of Britain pilots was a heroic and vital contribution to the war against Nazism.

But it’s worth remembering that the origins of the RAF do not lie in its ‘finest hour.’In fact they're downright ugly, and chillingly close to the new world order.

The emergence of a separate air force, as opposed to the Flying Corps of the army or the Air Service of the navy, lay in the theories of a new type of warfare that emerged at the end of the First World War. The Italian theorist Douhet and the visionary HG Wells predicted a form of strategic bombing that would target cities and civilian populations. Wars would end swiftly and decisively, rather than in the attritional slog of the trenches.

The theories were adopted by Trenchard, the founder of the RAF and were summed up with the slogan ‘the bomber will always get through’. Inter-service politics played a part too – if the RAF was to concentrate purely on battlefield ground targets, reconnaissance and dominance of the airspace over the trenches, it might just as well stay a part of the army.

After the First World War the British armed services reverted to their peacetime role of policing the empire. Ironically two of the trouble spots were Mesopotamia (Iraq) and the North West Frontier (Afghanistan). And the newly formed RAF formed a cost effective alternative to traditional troops on the ground. In the 1920’s it was estimated that it would take 105,000 British and Indian troops to conventionally police the revolt in Iraq. With the presence of the RAF it was actually achieved with a force of only 14,000. This was made possible by a campaign of terror bombing – the punitive incendiary bombing of villages that harboured insurgents and the use of chemical weapons – mustard gas was dropped on Kurdish and Shia rebels.

Arthur “Bomber’ Harris the architect of Dresden and Hamburg’s destruction was a squadron leader in Iraq. And Winston Churchill was an early advocate of these new efficient methods:“I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes to spread a lively terror”.

None of this need diminish the memory of aircrew, including some of my own family, who gave their lives in 1939-45. But in these times it does seem appropriate to remember exactly how we got to have an air force.

Cool or pseud ?

There’s a row going on over at The Guardian on-line about one of their columnists singing the praise of the Moleskine notebook. Of course the Guardian’s art, design and architecture blog is a pretty easy target if you want to take the piss out of people who wear black roll-necks (I have several by the way). Fair enough up to a point.

But I like Moleskine diaries. I also like Converse Chuck T’s. And Apple Macs. And Harley Dvaidsons. And Jack Daniels. Maybe this just makes me a sad wanker because, as comments on the blog make clear, there are always cheaper, better 'value', utilitarian versions available of just about any iconic item you can think of. Usually from Tesco.

But the trouble with that argument is that if you take it to its logical conclusion you deny the existence of quality. (Quality that is in the abstract sense of the word as Pirsig uses it in ‘Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance'). A world without it would be a totally grey dis-utopia. With no design or art.

Of course it’s highly personal and we all apply a concept of quality only to those things that matter to us personally. So for me, yes when it comes to bikes it’s a Harley, a BMW, a Guzzi or a Triumph rather than a better performing or better value Japanese clone. But when it comes to clothes – who gives a shit ? – it’s £10 M&S jeans rather than £100 on the designer equivalent. Go figure. It’s a matter of taste.

Carla fever

What’s with the national obsession with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy ? Sure she’s easier on the eye than the queen or Camilla, but then let’s face it that’s setting the bar pretty low.

The press seem to be whipping themselves in to a frenzy that she’s the next Lady Di / Jackie Onasis / Queen Of Hearts. But apart from being photogenic, what else is there to say about her ? Well she certainly didn’t let her professed left-wing sympathies get in the way of becoming the missus of a French tory leader (apparently she supported Sarkozy’s socialist rival Segone Royal, and she's been linked with former socialist premier Laurent Fabius).

Coming from one of Italy’s wealthiest families, and having been a top earning supermodel you couldn’t really call her a gold-digger, but from her impressive list of famous ex’s she is some sort of power-digger: Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Kevin Costner and Donald Trump. For all her left-bank chic there's not too many struggling artists or impoverished intellectuals there. One story going around relates to her having seen Sarkozy on TV and saying "I want to have a man who has nuclear power." Nice. Rather more WAG than Simone de Beauvoir.

But the most telling image of the visit is not of Carla in one of her Dior suits – it’s this shot of her feet alongside Sarkozy's. Never trust a short bloke who wears high heels to compensate. Even Napoleon didn’t do that.

Boycott Beijing

The spectacle of the England football team giving the Nazi salute at the 1936 Berlin Olympics sends a shudder of revulsion down our spines today. I wonder what we will think in seventy years time about images of the 2008 forthcoming Beijing Olympics.

Which begs the question: Bearing in mind the suppression of protest in Tibet, the continuing sale of arms to the Sudanese in Darfur, civil engineering projects of unimaginable environmental damage, the suppression of ethnic and religious groups, an appalling criminal justice system and a litany of human rights abuses against dissidents .... why was it considered reasonable to boycott the Moscow Olympics in 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan , apartheid South Africa or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, but not China ?

The only reason that I can see for these double standrads is that none of those countries were/are emerging economies on the global stage. Meanwhile China is fast becoming the manufacturing sweat shop of the world, and pissing them off is bad for business.

Wandering in the snow

Braved freak snow flurries to make the annual Spring shakedown run to Southend on Easter Monday. I thought I’d wear the full-face helmet to get a bit of wind protection but hadn’t bargained for it freezing up on the inside as well as the out – with the visor up I’d have been better off wearing the trusty open-face with goggles.

Southend itself never fails to disappoint - so it was a quick once up and down the seafront to check out the bikes (unsurprisingly fewer than previous years); some very second-rate fish’n’chips; a half of Guinness to catch a set from a Rockabilly band and then head for home again.

One particular bike caught me eye; a stunning old Triumph in a Metisse frame although in a street scrambler style rather than the usual café racer, but still with the alloy tank and loads of polished stainless. It was immaculately clean but details like the hand-plaited bright wiring, modern foam grips and Hagon shocks would have all pissed off the classic-bike purists. I was happy that it was clearly ridden and looked-after rather than just restored and polished.

Riding home my mind wandered as it tends to when you have an open road and aren’t in any particular hurry.

The snow made me think of the Battle of Towton, fought in the middle of another freak Easter snowstorm in 1461. Visibility was so bad that the two armies stood toe-to-toe and hacked away at each other for hours. Officially it was the bloodiest battle on British soil – something like 1% of the total population perished in a single day.

How did I get there?: Well I bet a few of them wished they’d had a full-face helmet that day.

Happy Eostra

Everybody's making noises about Easter coming early this year. Few seem to be aware why this is so: It's because, in simple terms, the date of Easter is calculated around the lunar calendar and the first full moon of Spring. It is not you'll notice an anniversary based on Roman records of the date of the crucifixion of a certain Jesus of Nazareth.

Hmmm. Maybe there's a clue there to its origins ?

(Just to spell it out for the hard of thinking: Eostra was a pagan Germanic fertility goddess. Her name provides the derivation of Oestrogen. Hence the whole Easter egg thing).

Which reminds me of I read a nice story about a child being asked to describe the Easter story: Apparently it's when the Easter bunny hatches out of a chocolate egg and then goes to heaven.

Makes as much sense as some stuff I've heard. Whatever. Enjoy the break ...

No sense of history..or irony

Here's one of those quirkly stories about obsolete laws that are still on the statute books – stuff like being able to urinate on the back wheels of a hackney carriage or shoot a Scotsman on a Sunday in Carlise. Apparently a whole number of such laws are being repealed at the moment.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw, a man I expect whose sense of humour is matched only by his passion for civil liberties, came out with the following piece of unconscious irony:
"Laws on turnpikes, workhouses, and the Peterloo Massacre are rightly of interest to historians, but there is no need to retain them on the statute book.”

He maybe being a bit hasty there:

• Turnpikes – well we have PFI, privatised railways and toll roads so why not turnpikes?

• Workhouses – with the concept of 'workfare' and social housing reforms to evict those not actively seeking work, workhouses seem like a reasonable option.

• The Peterloo Massacre – a legitimate and peaceful protest brutally dispersed amidst hysteria about revolutionary ‘outrages’. Dare I mention the current anti-terrorism laws or the regular over reaction of the the police whenever there is a public order incident?

I’m just off to piss on the back of a taxi now…

'Bloody do-gooders'

I was having a discussion with a few colleagues at work about identity cards and asylum seekers, and I got called a ‘do-gooder’.

It’s a strange form of abuse when you think about it . Do-gooder as opposed to what ? A ‘do-bollocks to them all-er’ or a ‘do-don’t give a shit about anyone else-er’ or a ‘do -not in my backyard-er’ ?

Of course I knew what they meant. When I was a bit more doctrinaire I would use ‘liberal’ in the same way – as in petty-bourgeois liberal who fails to understand the correct Marxist perspective.

But after years of dealing with real reactionaries, I’ve woken up to the fact that there are worse things than being a liberal. Things like being a xenophobic racist cunt.

A depressing story

This isn’t a story about bringing back capital punishment. Or about ending anonymity for juvenile offenders. Or about stiffer sentences and ‘life meaning life’. Or about holding parents responsible for out of control kids. Or about chavs and hoodies. But it's nonetheless FUCKING DEPRESSING.

The on-going trial of the killers of Sophie Lancaster: Last year she was kicked to death in a park in Lancashire by a gang of kids who also managed to put her boyfriend into a coma which has left him with brain damage. The reason, apparently was that they were Goths and the kids didn’t like the look of them.

Racist attacks and gay-bashing has been around for a long time. Nowadays they’re classified as ‘hate crimes’ - which perhaps is progress of sorts. There’s all kinds of social, economic and psychological reasons for racism and homophobia. Knowing these reasons doesn’t mitigate the crimes - but it just might put things into a political context, where something can be done to address them.

But kicking someone to death because you don’t like their eyeliner – where the fuck does that come from? There’s always been a thing with kids and tribes – as a teenager I got into several fights with ‘casuals’ for having long hair and being a ‘headbanger’. But that was always ritualized and a bit half hearted - this kind of vehement hatred and intolerance is something else. And profoundly bloody depressing.

A week in the life …

I don’t usually blog about work. Not because of any sort of professional discretion but because this blog is meant to be an antidote to work.

But three things this week illustrate what I end up stressing over most of my waking hours. These may or not be typical of people running small/medium sized business (I think SME is the jargon). Actually, they’re probably typical only of Trotskyists who find themselves as company directors, with an under-used education, in a former craft industry that has been decimated by technology, and now continually reinvents itself.

(As background the industry of graphic arts/ pre-press is an odd little world – a mixture of creativity and manufacturing - and because of the type of businesses we sell our services to, we rub alongside the bollock-speak arena of corporate marketing).

But anyway here’s the three things that have dominated my week:

• I had to sack an incompetent member of staff; a horrible process that I have been through (very rarely) before. It was done (I think) fairly and legally but it's still not what I ever imagined myself doing. It’s a difficult process – as it should be - and because I’m something of a reluctant boss it was made more difficult because I let the situation fester longer than I should. In fact until the individual’s colleagues were clamouring for me to take action. But enough already - I’m not going to come out with any ‘this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you’ bullshit. It obviously didn’t, and I’m still here, but only a complete wanker would be unaffected.

• Two of our trainees finished their apprenticeships. In the not so old-days they would have gone through a rite-of-passage ceremony of being ‘banged out’. This involved getting covered in ink and flour and all sorts of other horrible shit and dragged through the streets. Nowadays they just get an NVQ certificate. For about a decade we had no apprentice scheme at all – the result of new technology and union-busting. But I took the decision to introduce the NVQs and bring back an updated version of the old system. It’s one of the few things I can actually take some pride in.

• The rest of the time has been devoted to pulling together a pitch for our most important client who are re-tendering the services we have supplied to them for the past 12 years. There’s a new regime there who are excited about the idea of ‘global sourcing’. In reality it’s got fuck all to do with our services but I have to defend the fact that we don’t off-shore our work and we’re not part of some multinational group with offices in every sweat-shop zone in the world. Oh yes - and also still demonstrate how we can reduce our prices and be more productive. Needless to say, if I can’t convince them, the future doesn’t look too bright …

That’s it – the bad, the good and the increasingly ugly - welcome to my world. I won’t be talking about it again soon.

We don't need no (monarchist) education

Public displays of patriotism fill me with dread. When they involve children, even more so. It seems like a slippery slope to the worst kind of nationalism – exactly what we don’t want to pass on to new generations.

Which is why I couldn’t believe that Lord Goldsmith (now there’s a name to conjure with for a politician in a supposed democracy) suggested that the oath of allegiance is introduced into schools. It all stems from some twisted New Labour concept of citizenship and civic pride. I’ve covered this before – it’s a complete fabrication – we are subjects not citizens - you’ll only find citizens in a republic.

Ironic isn’t it that in this country you can opt out of acknowledging god but not the monarchy ? For official and legal purposes, atheists can choose to affirm rather than swear. But there’s no such option for republicans, democrats, socialists, anarchists etc. Or anyone else who isn't happy to bend the knee like a medieval vassal. We can't choose to pledge loyalty to the parliament and the constitution rather than the crown (well not since Cromwell’s day).

White tribes ?

It’s a debate that comes round from time to time: ‘who speaks for the white working class ?’.

There’s been a survey of the former mining town of Easington in County Durham which apparently is the whitest place in England, and with the colliery gone and the steelworks gone, life is unsurprisingly fucking grim. And there’s a BBC series coming up – something along the lines of ‘the lost white tribes of Britain’.

I got suspicious when I hear the question asked because it’s usually a rhetorical device for the BNP and other fascists to jump in and answer ‘we do’. Or it’s asked by whinging Little Englanders who sometime way back in the Eighties decided that they weren’t working class anymore and embraced the Thatcherite dream. What they really mean is ‘who speaks for the white bigots ?’ And of course the answer is the BNP again. And Jeremy Clarkson and the Daily Mail.

Undeniably communities like Easington have been disenfranchised. It’s not because they’re white though – it’s because they are working class – the Tories declared war on them and then New Labour deserted them. If they came down to Hackney, Tottenham or Brent, they’d find that life for the Black or Asian working class isn’t too peachy these days either. And all the bollocks about preferential housing etc for ethnic minorities is precisely that: Bollocks.

It’s not fashionable to say so, but class is more important than race as far as ‘life chances’ go. The fascists don’t want to hear that and neither do the small and very much exaggerated Black or Asian middle class.

And whilst we're at it; being abandoned and disenfranchised is one thing, but building an isolated ghetto of ignorance and small mindedness is another. Every society has it's rednecks - and it's possible to choose not to be one.

Binge drinking Britain: a history

Hysteria about 24-hour drinking everywhere at the moment. (Strange I must have missed the decree that we had to drink for 24 hours. Much as I haven’t yet found anywhere that actually does serve alcohol round the clock).

What we are talking about is really just a slightly more relaxed attitude to bar opening times (as opposed to the draconian restrictions put into place in the First World War to keep munitions workers sober and in the factory). It’s said that the liberalisation brings us into line with the rest of Europe – although I haven’t yet found anywhere where we can get a breakfast beer, as you can in Germany and the Netherlands.

The disapproving hysteria about the new laws opening the floodgates to binge drinking is just sanctimonious bollocks.

Maybe it’s the climate, something genetic or our cultural history but, for better or worse the British are, and always have been, a nation (or nations) of drinkers.

The Romans exploited the fact that the Ancient Britons would pretty much sell their own grannies for an amphora of Mediterranean wine and used it as a tool of colonial oppression, much as Europeans did to Native Americans.

For the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, social life centred on the mead-hall. The ability to hold your drink was one of the warrior virtues. It was even embodied in religion – an average day in Valhalla consisted of fighting all day, being revived by the Valkeyires and then embarking on an all night orgy and piss up in the mead-hall.

In the middle ages, the yeoman English longbowmen were feared throughout Europe not just for their prowess as mercenary archers that threatened to destabilise the knightly class, but also for their propensity for drunkenness, looting and brawling.

In the eighteenth century, as the working class took to the urban centres, binge drinking reached an epidemic much as heroin has blighted many inner city estates today. Hogarth exposed and satirised it as ‘gin alley’.

Poe-faced Victorian middle class reformers used alcohol as the dividing line between the deserving and un-deserving poor, seeing it as the curse of the working class and led ‘temperance’ crusades.

And that is exactly the point of the current hysteria, behind the sanctimony there is a common thread of the ruling and middle class disapproving of the antics of their inferiors:

Yes ‘binge drinking’ can fuck up both individual lives and city centres. Yes we should have a more mature attitude to alcohol – and develop better tastes than chemically lagers and alco-pops.

But the fact remains that if you knock back eight pints of Stella in Middlesbrough you are a disgraceful yob - have a couple of bottles of Pinot Grigiot at a dinner party in Islington and you’re just being bohemian.

Harry the hero

Unsurprisingly, I’ve managed to resist the Harry fever that’s sweeping the country.

Fair play, on a personal basis as rugger-bugger toffs go, Harry doesn’t come across too badly. At least he had the balls to go on the front-line. Unlike George Dubya he didn’t elect an easy form of service. Like defending Texan air-space with the National Guard from incursions by the Viet Cong. (I guess the equivalent would be defending Boujis with the territorial army from Taliban attack ).

But amidst the euphoria of Harry’s return the larger issues have been lost.

Channel 4’s Jon Snow has been crucified by the press for daring to criticize the media embargo. But it’s a fair question – just why did the Western media agree to keep silent ? Surely it is not their role to be conscripted into the war effort. Therein lies a very slippery slope.

Of course it’s naïve to imagine that there is no censorship in war - but Harry’s presence in the theatre wasn’t an operational secret. And can we rationally argue that his life is any more precious than that of any other young squaddie?

As it stands though Harry has become the poster boy for the war. Army recruitment will doubtless get a boost. And fresh life has been breathed into an increasingly irrelevant and unpopular monarchy. PR mission accomplished.

Martial arts: check up and maintenace.

I’ve been getting fairly frustrated with my training recently. Inevitably after so many years the learning curve is going to flatten out. But I’ve often come away with the feeling that I’m actually getting worse. This may or may not be true but it isn’t a good feeling.

But last night I had a session where I felt as if I had progressed more in a half hour than I had in the previous three months.

One of my problems is that as a supposed ‘senior’, I tend to spend a lot of my training time teaching less experienced people. Doing so is a blessing in many ways because you don’t really get to understand something until you have to deconstruct it and explain it to someone else. But is has a downside too: If you don’t want to be the kind of bullying teacher who beats up on his students, you can end up with some bad habits. Like letting your opponents into openings so they can try moves out, or over-elaborating your moves so that you can demonstrate things, or breaking your flow to explain something.

Which are exactly the traps I seem to have fallen into. And it only took a half hour with my Sihing (elder brother) to point this out. Of course it’s going to take a lot longer to eradicate ingrained bad habits but at least I now know the cause of my frustrations.

It makes me quite realise how lucky I am to have found the school that I have: small private and old-skool with a high student retention rate. At most ‘McMartial Arts franchises’ I would long ago have been pushed out to teach my own students. But at our place, even though my own teacher (Sifu)is no longer around, with sixteen years training behind me, I still have maybe five or six Sihings who train regularly. And that keeps me (or gets me back) on course.

And it does make me wonder about all those ‘black belts’ that you will find running martial arts classes at just about every sports-hall in the country. If they are not regularly checked out and stretched by their seniors at best they are going stagnate, or worse, if they are not honest with themselves, develop some serious ego problems.

Plastic bags make strange bed fellows

My front yard is a magnet for a particular variety of bright blue plastic bags that are given away with EVERY purchase from the Turkish general stores we have in either direction on our street.

Cans of Special Brew and cheap imported Polish lager are the most common purchases - consumed pretty much on the spot and the unnecessary wrappers discarded almost instantly – into my hedge and yard.

Indoors we also seem to have accumulated more than a lifetime’s supply of plastic bags. I’m not sure if my partner is just an obsessive hoarder, or if she is making an environmental statement, but we never throw the fucking things away. And of course the council’s re-cycling service aren’t interested in them. We used to have one of those long sausage bags to store and dispense them – but we’ve long outgrown that and the unwanted plastic bags now leap out at us whenever we open a cupboard door.

So all of this, along obviously with the sea life being killed by the millions of bags dumped into our oceans, leads me to support the anti-plastic bag campaign of the Daily Mail. And M&S’s initiative to charge their customers for plastic bags. Now there’s something I never thought I’d see myself writing. Bloody hell.

Whatever happened to those brown papers bags and sacks that we see in the movies but never have in real life in this country ?

Opiate for the star struck

Is it just me or is there more than the usual amount of bollocks about the Oscars this year? When I turned on the TV before going to work this morning it was actually the lead item on the BBC breakfast news.

Possible explanations for this unjustified hype:

• Something serious is really going on in the world and this is just a diversion before we hear tomorrow that the invasion of Iran had begun.

• It’s part of a well orchestrated PR campaign by the film industry to down play the effect of the screen-writers’ strike.

• We have become a generation of morons: Celebrity is the new aristocracy and star–gazing the new religion.

I like films. But I don’t give a shit about stars or their industry awards or what they are wearing on the red carpet. Much as I don’t imagine they are too bothered about the packaging design or pre-press awards.

(I’m not in a good mood today).