Better

We were riveted by Rosie.

How much better if she could have been an engineer.

We need both, of course.

Dead, Dead, and never called me Mava!

Got that one spectacularly wrong then.
Nigel, in the Archers, should have taken advantage of those flying lessons when he had the chance.

We are acquainted with an eponymously handled couple and herself received a text at 19:16 hrs on Monday 3rd Jan. 2011 from our Nigel to the effect that:-

It's official, I'm dead, please address all future communications to Elizabeth.

Very droll but I'm not sure I would want to tempt fate!

The Year Ahead

A Statement by the Chairperson.
Buddhist Pizza Inc has, over the holiday period, been reconsidering its mission statement, its strategy for the next five years, its business plan and cash flows.
The executive summary is set out below with an appropriate reference.

Robert McCrum, in Th'Observer, has an interesting paragraph or two about the tensions between what we buy to read and what some of us would like you to think we read:- Stieg Larsson ahead of Hilary Mantel (Ed. I read and enjoyed both) He points out the importance, especially now, of the publishers being able (and of course willing) to cross-subsidise.

Being a literary gent he uses a quote to lend weight to his argument:-

In search of some support from the past, I found this passage in the preface to Tom Jones. "An author ought to consider himself," wrote Henry Fielding, "not as a gentleman who gives a private treat, but rather as one who keeps a pub, at which all persons are welcome for their money."

That's it then.

Buddhist Pizza:- think of it as a pub with no beer, but it's free.

Cheap at half the price!

What will the New Year bring?

I try not to allow the real world (Ambridge) to encroach on these musings and I am no great shakes in the prognostications department. I have enough problems with the here and now and the recent... However, here goes:-

I would put good money (50p each way) on Tony, the whinging misery guts, popping his clogs in some fashion on Sunday.

There now, I apologise to the host of our regular readers, yes you two at the back, who do not know what I am bleating on about.

Good wishes for the New Year!

More Pleasure Now!

Have been waiting for Treme, the series, to cross the Atlantic.
I came across a short video on the grauniad site about Treme, the district in New Orleans. Anyway, Wendell Pierce speaks about the origins, music and customs of Treme, and mentions the Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs (Mutual Societies). What a great idea, the name that is.

Too late now but we should have suggested that when they were looking for alternative names for the, somewhat presbyterian, Industrial and Provident Societies!

The link is here and it's short.

Another brick in the foundations of slow politics.

The time has come

The end of the year; no doubt we will be plagued by pundits, caused to fret by futurologists, and startled significantly by jobbing scriveners. Concerns will be raised about many things and I would, if given to betting, put 50p each way on the tired old nag being dragged to the starting line that the interweb is shortly to, if it has not done so already:-

• reduce our brains and those of our first-born to jelly,
• turn us into a nation of drooling addicts with personal hygiene problems, significant gambling debts and RSI in our wrists,
• suffer the horror at an ATM of finding that all our accounts have been emptied by arms dealing Albanians operating from a grass hut in Nigeria,
• force good, honest, hardworking monopolies to reconsider their modest surpluses,
• and in the last, mortal, words of Bluebottle that we have been deaded by an evil jazz playing conspiracy of grizzled old men called the Biderbeck Group.

(Ed. Ahem... could we move on a little?)

I made brief reference in a blog to some thoughts John Naughton had about the internet
in June of this year, and I would suggest you reread them.

They will act as an adumbrating antidote, a poultice for puffery, a balm for the bewildered....

(Ed. That's enough now. One more alliteration and I will turn the electrons off. Adumbrating antidote indeed!)

Slow Slow Quick Quick Slow

An article in Open Democracy caught my eye, Slow Food and the Pleasure Principle, by David Ransom and Richard Swift. It wasn't the prospect of even more overindulgence at this time of year but the trail:-

Much of left thinking has been based on denial: don't eat this, believe that or behave like the other. Slow Food provides a healthy antidote of inclusion, rather than exclusion...

It got me thinking.

The final paragraphs

Slow Food raises a lot of questions about what a social movement actually is. It undoubtedly has had a wider impact in Italy, where it has spun off a number of other slow movements (Slow Cities, Slow Money). But also beyond, there are now tens of thousands of adherents all around the globe, who identify with an analysis that merges issues of quality with those of justice and sustainability. The movement is, by and large, entrepreneurial, championing smallholders' rights to produce and sell their goods to eco-conscious consumers, in a market setting not dominated by corporate agriculture. This separates Slow Food from the conventional left. So does its enthusiastic embrace of the pleasure principle.

identify other evolving approaches, movements, but it also sets out what could be problems for the left.

We know what we want (see UN declaration of Human Rights if you don't)

We have had a few years since that was published, boy have we done well!

That is the problem. It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be quick.

Slow politics. Why not?

The cycle of politics even in democratic states means that little is achieved in the 4 to 5 years between elections. The parties, organisations and movements of the left are not geared to securing irevocable progress for people who need it. Added to which, of course, no one who has power ever relinquishes it.

Even though I am old, grey and have not changed much in the world I am heartened by the yoof of today and its approaches to these problems. Laurie Penny articulates some of these, in the cement is free grauniad, and captures a fine absurdity.

Of course, the old left is not about to disappear completely. It is highly likely that even after a nuclear attack, the only remaining life-forms will be cockroaches and sour-faced vendors of the Socialist Worker. Stunningly, the paper is still being peddled at every demonstration to young cyber-activists for whom the very concept of a newspaper is almost as outdated as the notion of ideological unity as a basis for action.

We speak in hundreds of thousands of voices – voices that are being raised across Europe, not in unison but in harmony.

Now if you can turn that very elegant phrase into a programme of action and create a set of tools for progress and conviviality you will really do something. But don't forget the conviviality, in my view it is what defines us as truly human!

Sod 'em

I'm reading a book about the other mafia; no not the Tories boy, do pay attention!
Gomorrah is a view of the Neapolitan Camorra by Roberto Saviano. (I did not select it from the wonderful world of Suffolk County Libraries on the off chance that it contained lewd and lascivious material. It contains much that is obscene but in a very different way.)

It would appear in the world of the Camorrista at some point you acquire a defining nickname which stays with you for the rest of your life.

Have we reached that point with Gideon? The Beeb website gives the following quote attributed to David Heath Deputy Leader of the House:-

George Osborne has a capacity to get up one's nose, doesn't he?

Gideon "Chicken Scratch" Osborne?

If not there are alternatives, including:-Bazooka; Blizzard; Blow; Bouncing Powder; Florida Snow; Foo Foo; Gold Dust; Prime Time; Star Dust; Star-Spangled Powder; Sugar; Sweet Stuff; Toke; Toot;
Sourced at link

Personally, I could go for sweet stuff.
Any offers gratefully accepted.

Ding dong!

Some things and some people are such a part of life, as we know it Jim, that we rather take them for granted. A certain Mr Bell is one such. I have lived long enough to know that, in some future biography, there may be allegations of a concrete curdling nature. Did he show less than complete kindliness to children and small animals? Would he regularly down the last of the sherry straight from the bottle before the vicar called? Discounts for cash, an account at the Gay Hussar, the company of East End pre-owned vehicle executives, a penchant for pipe and herbal tobacco, did he, really?

Apart from a lifelong affection for country and western music, for which there is not one scintilla of evidence, I could forgive him much for such little gems.

Having Steve Bell portray you as a caring, sharing, smoothie chops, politician with a condom over your head and knowing that he will do so for the rest of your time in power must give you a boost in the morning.

Revolting Students

An interesting article in the London Review of Books by Joanna Biggs, At The Occupation, gave me some hope. Buddhist Pizza's efforts in this department have improved little and left unchanged a lot.

On a personal level - I managed to appear behind police lines at a Stop the Tour Demo many years ago. I could not understand why the nice little piggies would not part like the Red Sea to let myself and a few of my navigationally challenged protesting friends through to join the revolution. I'm not sure the world is much of a better place for my feeble efforts in Student Politics, Local Government or Mutual Societies. However, it was cheering to read of the UCL protest and the things that they wanted in addition to their demands on fees :-

for the university to pay UCL cleaners the London living wage, to bring outsourced support staff in-house and to change the composition of the university council to get rid of the majority of corporate non-UCL members (they'd like a quarter each of management, students, tutors and support staff)

It is good to see some thought, humour and non violence in demonstrations for change. (I have to admit that I get no joy from seeing buildings trashed or people pulled from wheelchairs, the dinosaurs on both sides do themselves no favours by such.) It is interesting to see the use of technology and the internet to co-ordinate, organise and disseminate. Does it make the protest more effective? It certainly captures transgressions and makes them available for all to see. We may not know who you are, we may not know where you live but we know the cowardly, vicious and violent things that you do and so does everyone else.
Still, as Jody McIntyre said:-

'Why is it so surprising that the police dragged me from my wheelchair?'

I suppose it is a mercy that he is not Brazilian or a vendor of newspapers.

An Open Letter on a Happy Occasion

Dear Hu Jintao,

I would like to congratulate you as the Chairman of the People's Republic of China, its President,
on the award of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to one of your foremost citizens -
Liu Xiaobo.

I would have sent this letter from myself, a private individual but felt that the occasion was sufficiently auspicious, happy indeed, that it needed to be made available as widely as possible. You must be very proud of the work of Liu Xiaobo and the inspiration he gives to the downtrodden masses in the world. I know the joy I feel in my heart at the thought of his selfless striving in the fields of literature, political thought and humanity without fear or favour. I believe the emergence of such a person in your state under the Communist Party of the Peoples Republic of China is a real tribute.

I look forward in my declining years to the award of many more Nobel Peace Prizes to citizens of your state to include in the panoply of good men and women committed to peace regardless of whether it is profitable or popular including such luminaries as;
Muhammad Yunus,
Nelson Mandela,
Rigoberta Menchú Tum,
Aung San Suu Kyi,
Tenzin Gyatso,
Desmond Mpilo Tutu and of course
Martin Luther King Jr.

Kindest Regards,

Buddhist Pizza.

A Cure for Elephants

And another one bites the dust.
So some kack handed jihadi nearly caused major mayhem.
Was he a sneaky sleeper, a person well guarded in speech and behaviour? Did his cover include tea at the vicarage and speaking regularly at the WI. Up to a point Agent Copper.
What were the spooks doing? You may well ask but are likely to be told that the brave lads and lassies were doing all manner of things to save the country, nay western civilisation and very possibly humanity itself. What might that be? Couldn't tell you Gov, might have to kill you if I did and besides we are only providing information through the orifices of a certain Mr Assangle, under contract.

This has always struck me as being a powerful argument. Very much the same as my claim to have found a cure for elephants which can be very big and very troublesome.

I have an arrangement of stones in my back garden which, with the secret incantation muttered at the dead of night to a timetable involving the phases of the moon, has kept our garden, in the depths of Suffolk, elephant free for years. There are no equivocations, ifs, buts, or other mendacity beloved of politicios. This has worked! (Patent Applied For.)

Anarchy on a Tuesday!

Deep in the bowels of the Buddhist Pizza Manorial Home there is a small coterie of anarchists, trouble makers, Wikileakers and no good boyos. Lady BP feeds them caviar, mushy peas, and black pudding, washed down with tea, lashings of tea. They foment, they rail they call for the rebirth of Western civilization but, they pay their bills and there is no drink, women or noise after 10.00 pm. We have made provision, in the form of extensive server farms and other gizmology about the estate, to counter any denial of service. They have been subjected to vicious and vitriolic attacks. They have been accused of crimes, misdemeanours, perversions and failures of moral character that would curdle concrete and this by thrupenny jobsworths of low breeding, no hair and a very noticeable lack personal hygiene. I issue a call to support them. The very foundation of free speech is imperilled. If we do not take a stand now we risk all that we hold dear, our homes, our families, our jobs, our pensions, our mortgages, our savings and very possibly our first born! (to be continued ....)

It is very easy in this superheated, febrile, atmosphere with accusations of treason and treachery bandied about like snuff at a wake to miss that which we have always known.

The chumps of politicians lied to us, don't they always. Their actions caused the unnecessary deaths of tens, hundreds, of thousands of human beings. They are supporting corrupt regimes which are so far beyond the pale they are translucent.

The same chumps will try to control what we know and when we know it.

For once, possibly because of the technology, they are finding it very difficult.


John Naughton seems to think so!

What's in a name?

Jim, Jim ah Jim!
We have all tiped our slongs at some point.
I had a colleague, an architect, with a particular dread of Buckminster Fuller.

Still, many a true word out of the mouths of sabes and bucklings!
I'm sure your man, the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, could be described, loosely, in that fashion without too much offense being given to the female form!.

Very Krafty!

Don't let Cadbury cack on you.

How to avoid paying tax, other examples apply.

There was a rich man called Green.
Whose profits were entirely obscene.
The divvy for the wife
Caused considerable strife
She never paid a penny to the Queen!

God Bless you Marm.

If your lucky enough to have them, your home, job, pension, education, library, hospital, welfare benefits, mortgage and first born may be in danger if you continue eating the wrong sort of chocky.

Sovereign Debt

Sure I do not know what all the fuss and talk of billions and trillions is about.
A sovereign debt is a sovereign debt. The man from the IMF wants his pound of flesh. It is only a bob or two or twenty. Herself always said I was a whiz with the money.

Talking about a sack of potatoes perhaps we could help things with a sack of me Ma's finest; perhaps a wee note -

Best wishes from Fianna Fail.
Brian and Brian XXX.

There that should do it!

Stop Whingeing

According to a report on Her Gracious Majesty's Imperial Wireless Broadcasting Website Lord Young of Graffham stated that Britons 'never had it so good'. Up to a point, Lord Young, up to a point. He was, of course, reprimanded by the ever lovely Dave MacCameroon our boyish prime minister. I believe Lord Young was in trade before putting on the ermine!

Another little gem from Her Gracious Majesty's Imperial Wireless Broadcasting Home Service.

Who on earth would have a loyalty card to Hades?
Buddhists!

From Bleak Expectations - a suitably titled comment on our situation.

Later
The noble Lord Young
Stuck his trotter in the dung
He claimed they’ve never had it so good
Now he’s roast pork, period!

A Good Time Had By All

These are interesting times.
These are momentous times.
These times will be remembered.
I hope that the incident here, in which Paul Farelly MP allegedly defends his honour, integrity and physical person in the PoW , passes into the language.

The altercation is described as taking place at a karaoke party at Parliament's Sports and Social club. It sounds like a real doozie. I can see the excuses flying:

How did you get that black eye?
At a karaoke party at the PoW Sports and Social club!

Where did you meet such a slapper, he(she) is just so not your type?
At a karaoke party at the PoW Sports and Social club!

Where did you say the minister stood on the table, hitched her skirt into her knickers, danced in the Cossack style and sang the red flag?
At a karaoke party at the PoW Sports and Social club!

Snuff will no longer be kicked about at wakes it will head straight for - a karaoke party at the PoW Sports and Social club!

Well, in Hard Times it's good to know someone is having fun - and where would that be?
All together now...

Caps for All!

I had a thought the other day, yes I know get the wisecracks out of the way now.

If they are going to cap housing benefit which will take us back to the 1960's, Rackmanism, real suffering, families in bed and breakfast and another generation of .....
Well. you've heard it all before and you still did b****r all.

Why don't we cap tax allowances. Now I'm a wishy washy liberal and would not want to see anyone suffer so would peg this at the personal allowance, as it is, plus very specific allowances related to age, and health. But I suppose some ejit in the treasury is going to say such a move would cause untold suffering to those with grouse moors to support, lots of sprogs to put money in trust for and the creators of wealth..... They would go elsewhere to create wealth. So why don't we say £100k to begin with, just to give us a peg to hang this on. You can use it to claim on superannuation, sprogs or spread it around. Just a thought!

Made in Dagenham

We stumbled into our local flea pit to see this film. I had mistakenly taken it to be a tribute to our glorious, past and now failing leaderette, (one stop beyond Barking). That mistake aside I sat down to a very inspiring little film. There were glorious ironies all the way through from the titles - supported by the (late) film council. (Thank god says Dave and Gideon, we don't want any ideas about solidarity and what the right people in the right place at the right time can accomplish.) I'm sure the Mrs O'Gradys etc were not quite as Sally Hawkins, for all her gawk, and her mates appeared. Toby Ziegler(Richard Schiff the token lefty of the West Wing) appearing as the ball breaking Ford's fixer. He barks -break the strike- at the oleaginous union representative who obediently goes off to shaft the women who's union dues pay for his constipated, apparatchik lifestyle.

Barbara Cartland, the erstwhile Secretary of State for Employment, chuckling at the fact that Mrs O'Grady has (borrowed) the Biba while our Babs cuts a dash with C&A.

Interesting, while we wallow, debating with the forces of darkness about fair and fairness it was the Equal Pay Act. Even so, some are still more equal than others.

Came home to slump in front of Newsnight and the delicious ironies continued like sweets flying off an abandoned dessert trolley in a playground. Paxoid was grilling a number of lefties about solidarity, unionisation and where we will go in the current round of anarchy. You can just see him wobbling his wattles as he says that word. Tariq Ali who had been soothed with the sobriquet firebrand was mumbling something about class and I thought you're past it the Terry Kelly(try saying Tariq Ali in a scouse accent!) I knew would have asked Paxoid if he was a member of the NUJ, if he intended to strike in support of BBC Journos today, and if he was scabbing would he consider a pay cut in these difficult times? And he would have kept asking those questions until Paxoid did a Sweeny on him!
Heigh Ho.

Still did enjoy the film, right down to the closing title and 'you can get it if you really want it!'

Must keep an eye out what's on next at the flea pit.
Probably some Mike Leigh shoot 'em up sex romp!