Children should be seen and not heard?

THE KIDS FESTIVAL?  SOMETIMES....

My last post, harking back to events in August, reminded me of another thought I had at that time and it still feels worth sharing.

Anyone who knows me well will be aware of my paedophobic tendencies.  I have spent most of my life trying, where possible, to avoid the company of small children (or even large ones).  They simply make me feel uneasy, that's all, in much the same way dogs or cats or spiders do to other people.  So I certainly don't pretend to be an expert of the subject of bringing them up.

But, despite this, I did notice that the Edinburgh Fringe seems to be catering for the needs, and entertainment, of children more and more.  This year there seemed to be far more shows advertised that were aimed at a younger audience, and lots of street acts too.  It would seem easy to find something for your child to enjoy, and the Fringe is making itself as family friendly as possible.

Although even I can see that there must be some limitations.  Making your way through densely packed streets is sometimes bad enough for someone my size, so I imagine it might hold occasional moments of terror if you're only two feet tall.  If you're going to 'do' the Fringe than you have to be willing to brave the tidal flows of Festival-goers in their many thousands.

Some adapt to this in their own way.  I have heard a comedian tell of, and seen for myself, parents who use their pram/pushchair as a form of weapon, a battering ram to carve a path through the hordes, expecting that people will fall aside when confronted with the magic they wield.  Like I said, I'm no expert, but is that approach in any of the myriad childcare manuals?

Of course the parents have come to Edinburgh to enjoy a bit of culture themselves, not just to see their kids entertained, so they want to see something a bit more grown up than three puppets in a plastic boat.  But where do you find child care in a city that's in the throws of hedonism?  This is not a question some of them seem to have asked before they turn up.  Which brings me to the two incidents which inspired this wee rant.

Phill Jupitus is a bit of a TV star now, but began as a street poet, and each year at the Fringe he reincarnates himself as Porky the Poet.  Although it's on around five o'clock it is emphatically not a kids show.  It isn't advertised as such, there are no grounds for suspecting that it might be.  So when a couple brought their twelve year old along and plonked themselves down in the front row it wasn't quite what Mr J was expecting. He was, as you'd expect, pretty decent about it.  He asked the kid how old he was, he asked the parents if they knew what kind of show he was about to deliver, he gave every kind of hint you might ask for.  When there was no sign of them moving he told the kid he'd be learning some new words and concepts that none of his schoolmates would know about yet.  And still they insisted on saying.

Personally I'm glad they did. Because Porky then proceeding to rip the piss out of said parents at frequent intervals during the following hour.  Which he seemed to enjoy, and the rest of the audience did, and maybe even the kid.  Well, the bits he understood.  As for the parents?  Who cares....

Our final Fringe show of 2014 was a Glasgow comedian called Janey Godley.  If you don't know here then check her stuff on YouTube.  Very funny.  And very sweary.  The show was just getting going when a woman came to the door with a small child.  Janey went over, told her this wasn't a good idea, and she had the sense to recognise the wisdom in this and turned back.  Which prompted Ms Godley to relate the tale of a less readily convinced punter she'd had in a few days earlier.

Two parents with a small girl.  Janey did the same as above, went over and explained that this really wasn't a show that was suitable for children.  The parents argued that it was up to them as they'd paid for their tickets.  The Godley voiced was raised in volume so that all could hear. "Why would you want to bring in a wee kid in to see a woman who says 'cunt' a lot?"

They got the point.  They left.  Now that's my kind of show.

Not the 2014 Review it should be

IT'S REVIEW TIME, ISN'T IT?

This is the time of year when world, dog, and dog's granny are all looking back at the preceding twelve months and attempting to crowbar some sense of order and narrative on to their own randomised lives and the mixed up storyline that is humanity.  And this isn't one of those.  It is, however, a review, even if a little on the late side.

Last year I posted a list of my favourite ten shows from the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe.  I did so about four weeks after my city had sighed it's relief at the annual ending of the world's largest arts festival.  Sufficient time had passed to give me some perspective on what I'd seen, near enough for it still to have some sense of relevance.

This year I had, really, intended to do the same.  But (insert your own choice of lame, half-arsed excuse here) and that's why it didn't get done at the time.  However, never let it be said I don't deliver eventually, despite my Adamsesque attitude to deadlines.  Better late than never?  Probably not, but here it is anyway.

As with last year's effort, I present these in no particular order.  We managed to see sixty shows in little more than three weeks, and trying to reduce that to a favoured ten was hard enough without trying to pretend that one was better than another.  I'll start with the acts who made this list last year.  There were six we saw again, three are back here this time, and I'll begin with the same man I did last September.

Cuckooed is a one man drama telling a tale of treachery, espionage, and the exercise of naked power.  It shows Britain's largest arms manufacturer, BAE, spying on a small group of activists who are trying to bring said company's disdain for human rights to the attention of a wider world.  The cuckoo in question is an old friend of most of the activists who has been bribed into betraying his fellows.  The one man telling the tale is, of course, Mark Thomas.  Which means that the show is slick, the narrative compelling and fast paced, the emotions often raw, and frequently hysterically funny.  Particularly mention has to be made of the staging, which sees various talking heads pop out of filing cabinets on screens to give their side of the story.  Very effective.  Thomas is an astonishing stage presence and never fails to be both informative and hilarious.

Jennifer Williams was one of my favourite discoveries of 2013 and she was back again with another one woman performance (assisted, in the background, by her brother providing music and sound) and another quirky story to tell.  The Cold Clear Elsewhere is based on factual events and tells of Grace, an Australian war bride, who married a British sailor, and eventually sailed half way across the world to start a new life with a man she could, by then, hardly remember.  With a few props Jennifer creates several scenes in differing places and times, her acting skills well up to playing a wide variety of characters along the way, yet never leaving the audience in doubt about who they were watching, or where, or when.  By the end it was hard to believe that an hour had passed, so absorbed had I been in the action.  It was a shame that this was probably the smallest audience I was part of all month, only just breaking double figures, and I hope she can find her way into a more central venue next year.

And finally, in my repeat trio, Mr Aidan Goatley.  Once again he performed 10 Films With My Dad, and my comments of last year still stand on second viewing.  There was also 11 Films to Happiness (there may be a theme here....) which was equally entertaining, silly, charming, funny and simply enjoyable.  Aidan is just such a lovely, lovely man that it's hard to imagine him not being fun to watch.

In "10 Films" Mr G has roped in a few of his mates to help with some of the cinematic sequences in his show, and we went to see one of said mates doing his own stand-up thing.  Oft times there can be a sense of disappointment at seeing a comedian live after seeing him or her on the telly.  This man had been on Mock the Week, but I wasn't going to hold that against him.  Romesh Ranganathan is Funny.  You know the kind of comedy where you come out unable to repeat a single joke and barely remember what it was all about, except that your chest hurts because there was hardly a second when you weren't laughing?  The sort of comedy where you have to remind yourself to keep breathing?  That's Mr R.

Oh, and he helped make my night, albeit indirectly. He asked me if I thought I was a good husband.  I suggested I wasn't the person to judge and that he ask Barbara sat next to me, so she was requested to give me marks out of ten.  And there am I thinking "Maybe a five?  A six would be good....".  And she say "Eight and half".  Eight and a bloody half!!  I'm still not sure what I've done to deserve anything that good, but I'm not about to forget it (or remind her when it seems 'appropriate').

Another stand up comedian, of sorts.  An American in a weird, scarlet, bulbous onesie who worked his audience into the act.  If you don't like participation then this wasn't for you.  It was teasing, testing, terrifying, timeless.  If at times it verged too far towards the simplistics of the Self Help 'Industry' it fully redeemed itself with the opportunities it provided for thought and the sheer funniness of the words and actions on stage.  The show is called Red Bastard and I will say no more, for it is something you have to experience to understand.  Would I go back?  Maybe....

Away from the stand up, but sticking with comedy, Austentatious is certainly an act you easily view several times, for every performance is different.  Six actors improvise a comedy drama based on title suggestions from the audience, all in the style of Jane Austen.  That could so easily go wrong, but these guys all know each other so well, and have such a great sense of timing, that the result is laughter making throughout (sometimes for the cast as much as the audience, the corpsing serving to make the performance even funnier).  I'll be back.

Another comedy drama, Spilt Decision, but scripted this time.  Partly in verse, which highlighted the unreality of the action and the satirical intent.  The characters portray a drunken husband, a domineering wife and a non-combatant marriage counsellor.  The battle lines are clearly drawn and the script, written by local comedian Keir McAllister, wears it's heart proudly on it's sleeve.  With the sharp end of that heart pointing strongly towards a Yes vote in the then upcoming Scottish Independence Referendum.  I can't tell you what it would have been like for a neutral, or even a No supporter, but they were preaching to the utterly converted in me and I enjoyed it hugely.

Three to go, and I'm going to cheat a wee bit.  This event was advertised in the Fringe programme, but was also selling tickets as an independent theatre event.  It was also held outside Edinburgh, in adjoining Musselburgh, so I'm stretching the definition a bit.  This was a last minute decision too.  We'd had tickets to see James Rhodes (one day, one day), but illness had forced him to cancel at short notice.  Was there a music gig that would replace it?  Cue mad phone calls to get tickets and we were off to the far East (Lothian) that evening.

It's been a few years since I last saw Blazin' Fiddles and the line up had changed considerably, but the format remains the same.  A rhythm section of guitar and keyboard, and four of Scotland's best fiddle players up front.  Some fabulous music, some terrible jokes and a lot of silliness.  Best of all, sheer energy coming off the stage and infecting the watching crowd.  The line up kept changing, with solos and duos and trios, and then the full band again.  There was virtuosity and sheer bloody joy out there.  Impossible to leave without a grin.

Even more of a cheat for this one, for two reasons.  The event was in the International Festival itself, not the Fringe.  And it was actually three events, but as an experience deserves to be treated as one.  You may have read about (or even seen) the James plays.  Three new works, each based on the lives of the first three kings of Scotland called James.  We saw all three in the one day, enjoying the sense of continuity and overriding narrative that opportunity provided.  All three made powerful individual statements, with James 1 the most complete as a drama, 2 it's slightly weaker cousin, and 3 falling somewhere in between.  The presentation of 3 in a more modern setting took some getting used to, and the first half was more 2 than 1 in dialogue quality.  But the second half saw Sofie Grabol, of Killing fame, deliver an astonishingly powerful and commanding performance which demanded that Scots and Scotland take a good hard look at themselves.  Historic, important, unforgettable.

And finally.  Not necessarily the funniest, or cleverest, or most dramatic show I saw, but perhaps the most memorable.  Have you ever heard of Tourettes Hero?  If not then shame on you, because you should.  Jess Thom has tourettes, which makes her say Biscuit rather more often than you'd hear it said after spending a day in McVities.  Penguins and hedgehogs feature on a regular basis.  And she hits her chest a lot.  All of this is, of course, involuntary and a by-product of her condition.  A much misunderstood condition and Jess has made it her role in life to dispel the myths and encourage understanding as much as one person can.  And she's very, very good at it.  So much so that she created a stage show to show to anyone who cared to come along to see what tourettes involved, how it affected her life, and just what an instinctively funny person she is.

The show was called Backstage in Biscuit Land and in it Jess, aided by an excellent actress also named Jess, tells us what having tourettes is like for her and those involved in her life, how the wider world sometimes reacts and what that feels like for her.  All the while making the whole explanation wildly entertaining.  Unpredictably so for all concerned because, as she explains at the start, her condition makes her incapable of sticking to a script, and some of the unplanned outbursts are even funnier than the original lines.  (Plus, at the show we were at, she had a couple of friends with tourettes in the audience, and one of them added some great punch lines of his own!)  Simply lovely.

And that's it, out of my system at last.  Still not sure how I've been forced to leave out Jo Caulfield, Chris Coltrane, The Nualas, Bruce Fummey....

Maybe next year I'll be back to doing this in September?

'Twas the move before Xmas

THE WRONG WAY TO MOVE

No, this isn't about my attempts to dance at a Xmas night out.

It's been several weeks since I last posted anything here and that has almost entirely been down to one thing - we've been moving home.  Again.  It's said to be an experience almost on a par with bereavement for stress levels. That always sound a bit OTT to me, but it certainly isn't one of the more relaxing ways to pass the time.

But we thought we had a way to make life easier for ourselves, take some of the pain out of the process, give ourselves a bit of time.  For reasons I won't go into here we were in the unusual situation of being able to stay in our old flat for a while after we had been given the keys to the new one.  So, we thought, let's do a staged move, and not actually settle into our new home until it's been made habitable.  They're little more than a mile apart, so shuffling back and forward won't even take much time. Will it?

And now, one month on, I can give you a solid recommendation should you ever find yourself in a similar position:

DON'T

DO

IT

Just don't. Go on the traditional path of enduring one day of extreme harassment followed by days and days of living amongst the boxes.  In the end it will be quicker and less effort, and you won't look like total plonkers to the rest of the word.  Trust me.

We'd bought the flat fully furnished (that too is another story....) and spent the first three days rearranging the items we were keeping and moving most of the others down to the garage. Day four and our old stuff arrived from storage where it had dwelt these past four months. An episode straight from a seventies sitcom (with me as Terry Scott) as we tried to remembered why we'd wanted to keep all these....things. Endless things of limited use was how it appeared. More things to stick into that garage.

So we now had an overstuffed flat that looked more warehouse than penthouse. Ah, but we had that 'luxury' of not having to move in and live amongst the cardboard, did we not?  And therein lies the problem.  Because instead of working every available hour to make the place habitable we'd wake up somewhere that already was, and return there in the evening.  And there would still be food shopping to do, meals to make, a social life to lead (why not?).

So the days passed in this fashion. Empty a few boxes, fill up the wardrobes, move furniture around, return home ('home'?) weary and ready to eat, watch TV and have a good sleep. And maybe a lie in, since it was tempting to do so. Progress was slow.  But then the moment arrived when the decision had to be made about actually 'moving in'.  Prompted by that most essential element of modern life - when the broadband account switched properties.  Suddenly it doesn't feel like home any more without a fast internet connection....

Which means moving all those bits and pieces that made one home feel like home into the other home to make that feel like home, so that the first home wouldn't be home any more, which it wasn't without that broadband connection, even if I (there were a few days when I was left to my own devices) was still sleeping in the home that wasn't any more.  I think.

No vans this time, no strapping young men to shift the heavy stuff, just a hatchback and us. And a new block of flats that has a lot of doors and distance to cross.  There's nothing like a suitcase/box obstacle course to improve the temper.  That operation began about, oh, six months ago maybe.  Or is it really just six days?  A short drive across, yes, but why has it come to feel like a commute?

But we are in, and have slept here. Several times.  There is still more 'stuff' to come, but if we live without it for long enough maybe it will fade away from memory.  There is, just like in a normal move, one room decorated with wall to wall cardboard boxes, so there was no advantage there either  In fact the only positive I can come up with isn't for us, but for any neighbours who might have chanced to watch.  (Not that I've seen any net curtains twitching, it's not that sort of neighbourhood.)  They may have enjoyed a few comedy moments from two not-so-young people trying to move cases and boxes and oddly shaped items through rain and wind - carrying back the empty boxes for another load is a particularly good way of turning into a Marcel Marceau impression of a rudderless Cutty Sark.

And that's how not to do it.

But at least I can start blogging again.

EU Referendum? Oh, alright then.

WIN OR WIN?

Until recently I considered the idea of having an In or Out of the EU referendum to be a vast waste of public money and totally unnecessary.  The only people who really consider this to be a major political issue are usually suffering from Daily Fail-itis, a condition that induces irrational fear of benign situations.

But that ailment is now gripping several of the leaders of the main UK political parties, so that instead of showing some sense of direction they have ended up following a misbegotten bandwagon.  If Milliband had said, after his conference speech, that he'd left out the deficit and immigration because they aren't the major issues we face in the real world, and are largely constructs of a self-interested mass media, he might have won my admiration.  That would have been proper leadership.

Similarly for the EU.  It's a far from perfect institution, particularly in the ways it reinforces the neoliberal economic agenda.  But overall it remains a positive force for good and the benefits greatly outweigh the disadvantages.  And criticisms that it is undemocratic sit uneasily coming from a state in which we have legislators whose sole qualification is being on particularly close speaking terms with their imaginary friend, and a had of state that symbolises our greatest problems.

But the referendum is starting to look desirable, at least if you live in Scotland.  The most likely result is a comprehensive majority for staying in, according to pretty much every reputable poll.  Which would have two major benefits.  It would likely put the issue to bed for a long time to come (unlike the recent referendum in Scotland....).  And, better still, would kill off ukip and send frog-faced Farage into well earned obscurity as a minor footnote in history.  The cost would be worth it just for that outcome for, without the far right tugging the strings, mainstream politics could drift back towards the centre-left ground where it truly belongs.

Of course these things are never entirely predictable and freak events can render any predictions redundant.  And in the event that an Out vote were to triumph there's still a big plus lurking in there.  Because that would almost certainly trigger a Yes vote in Scotland and the break up of the UK.  Tough on the English initially, but the possibility of a successful social democratic Scotland might be just the impetus the English left need to reinvigorate themselves.

Seems like a win-win to me.

Meditating your way forward

BEING MINDFUL

A few weeks ago I stopped off in a pub in Newington (in south Edinburgh) in need of sustenance.  Burger ordered, pint in hand, I made my way to a table in the far corner.  To my right two young women, probably students, busy with their laptops. To my left a lad I would, at first glance, have described as a bit of a jakey. Cropped hair, tattoos, denim, near skeletal and vacant of expression.  Not the person to engage in conversation. Maybe.

So I got my book out, started to read and supped at my beer.  Then the lad got up and started patting all his pockets.  As he'd just been rolling a fag it seemed obvious that he was looking for a lighter so I smiled and preempted the likely question by saying I didn't have a lighter and what a pain it was when you had so many pockets and no idea which one of them held the object you needed.  He found it eventually, went for his smoke, then came back to the remains of his pint. At which point I found him in the mood to talk.

Books, covers, don't judge, eh?  In part my judgement proved correct, but this guy was also full of surprises, and taught me a thing or two.  The biggest surprise was his opening gambit.  Had I ever tried mindfulness? This was not what I'd expected.  I admitted I hadn't, although I had heard of it, and had a had a go at various meditation techniques in the past, but never found anything that worked for me.

He was on his way to his regular mindfulness session - I think he was scheduled to attend two or three a week - and was really looking forward to.  I mean, REALLY looking forward to it.  Because he truly believed that it had played a big part in turning his life around.  Not so long ago he'd been a heroin addict, had lost all proper contact with family and friends, got into trouble with the police.  I wasn't clear if he'd spent time in prison, but if he hadn't then he was almost certainly on his way there.  Nor was he very forthcoming on what had actually prompted this huge change in his way of living.  What he did want to share with me, and possibly anyone else who would listen, was that he'd now been clean for months, and that mindfulness had played a huge role in turning him around.

He went into details about how hard it had been at first.  Not just the coming off the drugs, but learning to reach the mental and emotional state that the mindfulness exercises required.  That emptying his mind was something he could achieve easily on drugs, but that state, that degree of detachment from the physical world, was now a sensation he could experience simply through his own mental effort.  That no matter how hard, and at times pointless, the process had seemed at first, in the end it was all justified by the results.  Now he was not only drug free, but able to hold down a job and interact with society.  (It did cross my mind that he may have been told to engage in exactly the sort of conversation he was having with me, whenever the opportunity arose, as part of his rehabilitation process - ?)  Now his drug of choice was the mindfulness meditation technique and it felt like this had become the centerpiece of his life.

Eventually he said he had to go as his class would be starting soon and he very definitely did not want to be late for it.  Indeed I felt he might be the first to arrive!  Just before he stood up he got out his paper and tobacco(?) and rolled another smoke. I imagined this was to help calm him before the start of his session.  But no. He put it down in front of me and said 'Enjoy'.  I made him take it with him, rather than seeing it go to waste, making sure he understood it was because I'd never smoked.  So he didn't seem at all offended by my refusal and off he went smiling, presumably not to be seen again (this wasn't a pub I'd been in before, or am likely to visit often in the future).

But the memory of our brief chat, and that gesture of kindness at it's close, will stay with me.  Here was a totally unexpected moment of pleasure, from a seemingly unlikely source.  And I told myself off for being such a judgemental and patronising old bugger.  This lad had mastered, and benefited from, a technique which I have never been able to come to terms with.  It's true that I have never attended classes, and only made the effort on my own, but it still felt like something I would never fully get my head around.  I can listen to my own breathing for no more than thirty seconds before my mind insists on drifting away into my usual state of daydreamedness.  He has may admiration, as well as my gratitude for providing such a bright spot in my day.

Retired? Enjoy life. (While you can....)

THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS

I once again live in the city which hosts the largest annual arts festival in the world, so August is a crazy month for culture consumers.  Whatever you might want you'll find it here.  (And I will get around to looking back at my personal highlights of the 2014 Fringe in a post coming soon.)  But it's not like there's a lack of things to do during the rest of the year.  And last week provided us with one of the most culturally varied seven days imaginable.

On Monday we went to see Tony Benn : Will and Testament, as mentioned on this blog a few days ago.

Tuesday evening saw us return to the Leith Folk Club, our first visit since January, to see the young band Dallahan.  They were our favourite musical discovery of this year's Fringe, an eclectic mix of Scots, Irish, Americana and Hungarian influences.  The singer, Jack Badcock, has a surprising voice, more crooner than folkie at first acquaintance, with an incredible range.  Their arrangements are constantly surprising, with that Balkan influence creeping in regularly.  A varied set covered traditional ballads, gypsy jazz, celtic dance, bluegrass and culminated with a comedy calypso piece (originally made famous by Lance Percival in the sixties!).  They have also realised there's a lot more to being a live band than simply playing and their gabbing between numbers was both informative and funny.  Their CD has since been getting a lot of plays chez Crawford.  Oh, and they have one of the coolest bass players you will ever see.

If it's Wednesday it must be musical day.  And so it was off to the Playhouse for my second musical of the year.  Which is about two more than I'd normally see.  My standard view of the genre is "get on with the plot oh there isn't one", a view confirmed on the other occasion I ventured to the same venue and saw We Will Rock You.  They didn't.  We Will Bore You.  How did Ben Elton ever sink so low?

So I ventured to see Jersey Boys with a mix of trepidation and open mindedness.  Amazingly the latter won out.  It might not be something I'd rush to see again, but I did genuinely enjoy myself.  There is an actual plot, the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and it whizzes from scene to scene at Linford Christie pace.  I'd heard of them, vaguely recalled about three of the songs from the sixties and seventies, but most were new to me.  There's some good pop tunes in that there catalogue, and all the main singers had excellent voices, especially the guy playing Mr Valli.  Where musicals usually come unstuck is in recruiting the cast it's singing and dancing abilities that are prioritised, leaving acting chops a poor third.  But this lot, by and large, made the grade.  All four leads took it in turn to act as narrator, a device that worked well in holding the time and scene shifts together, and a real test of stage presence and audience management.  And, with the exception of a cedar-like series of monologues from the Bob Gaudio character, all of them handled it well and brought genuine emotion to the part when required.  I might not go quite as over the top as this review from the local rag, but I did have fun.

Away from the live entertainment we had a couple of art exhibitions we wanted to see on Thursday.  At the City Gallery the theme was Common Wealth, both in it's more widely known sense of a group of post-imperial nations, and the more important meaning that the wealth of a country is there to be shared amongst all it's citizens.  Other than a fabulous video history of land ownership in Scotland, viewed in some kind of giant patchwork Wendy House, there was little I found memorable.  An additional exhibition on the top floor did have some wonderful pop art style pictures and a great cat sculpture, but overall the visit was a bit of a let down.  Some days you just aren't in the right frame of mind.

But we crossed the road to the Fruitmarket Gallery and found the Jim Lambie retrospective.  No, I've never heard of him, but I've learned that one of the great features of exhibitions here is the video room upstairs where there's a film interview with the artist in which he explains the works on display and his motivations in creating them.  Thus armed the actual viewing makes a lot more sense and becomes simpler to enjoy.

Vibrant colour highlighted the unusual juxtapositioning and transformations of familiar objects.  Objects of intrigue and beauty.  My favourite was the room filled with floor to ceiling ladders, some with mirrors, some without.  You never knew if you were going to look through into another scene or see your own setting reflected back at you.  A real life set from Oz.

So that's a film, a folk gig, a musical and some visual art.  It must be time for some proper theatre.  One of the best things Glasgow has exported to the capital in the east is regular seasons of A Play, a Pie and a Pint.  Which pretty much describes the experience.  For a measly twelve quid you get your choice of pies (worth getting there a bit early to avoid being stuck with the stodge encased in stodge option that is the macaroni cheese pie....), the choice of a pint, glass of wine or soft drink (whatever that is - I went with the excellent local brew, Stewarts Traverse Ale), and then down into the bowels of the building for a one act play.  Value, eh?

Last week the play was Mrs Barbour's Daughters, a modern look back at one of the most important women in Scottish history, yet one I'd never even heard of before.  She achieved fame in the First World War as an agitator for social justice and an opponent of the rampant profiteering of landlords.  Which sounds familiar....  We could do with more like her today to help counteract the dire consequences of unfettered neoliberalism on most of the population.  There are plans to erect a statue to her memory in her native city and maybe that will help to encourge wider knowledge of her objectives and achievements.  An evening of entertainment and education.  And pies.

Saturday didn't quite work out as planned, thanks to our continued search for a new home and an estate agent with little sense of geography or planning.  We saw three flats, but as this involved criss crossing the city each time a lot of the day passed on buses.  So the planned visit to see a free comedy music gig resulted in us seeing only the last ten minutes of The Priscillas, a sort of electro-pop version of The Nualas (Who they?  All will be revealed in a future post....).  The venue was the best secondhand book and music shop in all Edinburgh, the brilliantly named Elvis Shakespeare.  If you come to the city you should visit it.  Yes, you should, just go there.  And buy stuff.  This man deserves your support.

Sunday.  Day of rest?  Sod that.  My perfect winter Sunday.  Stick something in the oven and head up to The Stand comedy club for the free lunchtime show.  That's free as in no charge, at all.  Yes, free.  Should be rubbish then?  But people, like us, come back time and again.  Stu and Garry's Improv Show, aka Whose Lunch Is It Anyway?, is a consistent chest hurter.  I've seen many 'big name' comedians and I don't think there's one who's made me laugh more than these guys.  They have been doing improvised comedy together for something like fifteen years and provide the nearest thing you'll see to telepathy.  Somehow I ended up on stage manipulating parts of Garry's body, but Ill leave that to the more warped and diseased corners of whatever passes for your mind.

The route home took in another flat (I think this is what's called multitasking), the oven produced the goods, and then we were off to our final cultural event of the week.

I lie.

But it was definitely live and definitely entertainment.

To The Fridge of Dreams, aka Murrayfield Ice Rink, to see the Edinburgh Capitals SNL team take on Moray Typhoons.  If you aren't keeping up let me tell you this is the fastest moving team sport around, ice hockey.  There were goals, fights, and we posed for a photo with the man or woman in the smiley lion outfit.  Plus a win for our guys.

And all in the most beautiful city on the planet.  I may just be winning at life.

Greed overrides people every time?

CARING CAPITALISM

Unless you live in Edinburgh you probably won't have heard about this example of the joy that unfettered capitalism can bring into our drab little lives.

Childish?  Bitter?  Pathetic?  All of these things and more.  The symbolism is perfect, targeting the relatives and friends of people in hospital as revenge for failing to retain a council contract.

And there still people out there who can't understand why big business is not fit to run public services? Who do not comprehend the essential importance of a public service ethos?  As if the Passport Office weren't warning enough....

Mr Benn - Yes or No?

THE WRONG TONY

A couple of days ago we went to see Tony Benn : Will and Testament at the Cameo cinema.  Long awaited (we first saw an excerpt from it over two years ago) it lived up to my expectations.  Often, sad, even moving me to tears at times, it was, largely, inspiring.  A man who stuck with his convictions, unless evidence were presented to the contrary.  A man who went up against the system no matter how much The Establishment vilified him for it.  Their efforts to marginalise him stand as the very testament to how much he hit raw nerves and came close to cracking the united facade that the rich and powerful put up to deceive the majority of us.

Benn wasn't always right - he freely admitted as much himself - but he was always honest (much to his cost when he was a minister) and spoke his mind according to his own beliefs.  Even his opponents admired (and feared) him for that reason.  That and his sharp intellect and analytical mind.  One of the few leading politicians who genuinely applied themselves to the betterment of their constituents and the wider society they served.

One the closing statements of the film struck a strong chord with me, one that has an additional resonance in the light of recent events.  "The battle is between Socialism and Barbarism.  And I know which side I'm on."  And in the decades since the Thatcher governments began to reverse all the progress which had been made by Attlee's administration, and kicked off the social decline which continues to see inequality in the UK grow and grow, the barbaric nature of capitalism becomes ever clearer.  The idea of "Capitalism with a human face" becomes ever more risible and evidence accumulates of the duplicity that those in power will resort to.  After the Tory domination of the eighties and early nineties the election of a Labour government felt like a chance for the slate to be wiped clean, for a new social direction.  But, despite some advances such as the Minimum Wage, in most respects the Labour of Blair proved to be no more capable of the kind of change needed than it's predecessors.  What we got was Tory-lite, a Thatcherite party in all but name.  And the death of any real pluralism of choice.

Is it any wonder that voters have become increasingly disenchanted with the political mainstream when all three of the old traditional parties look ever more and more the same?  The loss of Clause Four, and a commitment to state ownership, destroyed the socialist Labour movement that Benn had pinned his flag to.  Although he remained a Labour man to the end it was obvious he did so with only a few vestiges of hope remaining.  The Labour party of the Twenty First century has little in common with his honest values and commitment to a fairer society.  We did indeed end up with the wrong Tony B leading our state. Just look at Mandleson....

Benn was opposed to EU membership, throughout his life.  In this I think he was wrong, although I sympathise with the anti-capitalist thinking that guided this view, for the biggest failing of the EU, and the ECHR, is the commitment to the sanctity of property.  It remains a charter for the rich.  Equally he expressed his opposition to Scottish independence and might have even spoken on behalf of the No movement had been around to do so.  Or would he?

There are many reasons to be sad at Benn's demise, but from a personal view I'd have loved to know what he'd have made of the Yes campaign in the final weeks leading up to the Referendum.  Whilst many of the public faces remained the expected politicians - Salmond, Sturgeon, Harvie, Sheridan et al - the Yes movement had taken on a life of its own, above and beyond political parties.  It had become a genuine people’s movement, operating outwith the boundaries of party loyalties.  It had become exactly the kind of movement that Benn had inspired, and been inspired by in the past.  It had also, in the closing weeks, become a target for everything that The British Establishment could throw at it.

Benn was once described by a national newspaper as "The most dangerous man in Britian".  If only.  He received much worse than that, and only once they considered him relatively harmless was he accorded National Treasure status.  Most papers hated him.  The TV stations found him hard to handle, easier if ignored.  And he had opponents in both his own and opposing parties lining up to declare him borderline insane.

Tony might have recognised all this in those final days leading up to 18 September.  We'll never know what he might have made of it.  And I recognise my own confirmation bias, and wishful thinking, in imagining that he would have come over to our side.  Perhaps recognising the Yes movement for what it was - the biggest democratic attack on the UK's rich and powerful since the days of the Attlee government.  I wonder....?

The votes are in, the results to come

NOW WE SIT AND WAIT

As I sit to write this it's three minutes past eleven on the evening of the eighteenth of September, two thousand and fourteen.  Of course I could have written that sentence with far fewer keystrokes, but the pseudo formality feels right for the occasion.  Because today history has been made.  And in a few hours from now I'll find out if I'm one of those who made the change, or was a bit player as a nation actually turns down the offer of independence - the latter an unprecedented event as far as my knowledge goes.

The polls have closed, the rhetoric and shouting and half truths and downright lies are at rest, and all we can do now is watch and wait. The only big decisions left are whether to watch BBC or STV, and if I should pull an allnighter or try for a nap and an early rise?  

If you've read this blog before, or follow me on Twitter or Facebook, then you'll know exactly how I voted and which result I'm hoping for, so I'm going to skip that issue and look at how it's felt to be a part of such an epochal event.

We went out to vote late in the morning, by which time the flow in and out of our polling station wasmodest and there was no queue to join.  Outside the Yes and No campaign representatives stood chatting away to each other like old pals (perhaps they were).  There was no sense of great drama,not a hint of intimidation, none of the elements beloved of the sensationalist end of the media.  The only drama was in my my own heart and head when I paused before marking my cross in the box.  This really did feel so very different from any vote I've ever cast before.

Our afternoon took in a (Yes leaning) comedy play about the referendum, a bit of coffee and cake, and then a Danish thriller at the cinema.  So I haven't spent a lot of time walking the streets and my sense of the occasion is largely based on time spent on buses, and in the cafe and the theatre bar.  The skies over Edinburgh have been grey and gloomy all day and the public mood may have been influenced by the weather.  There seemed little excitement, no hint of panic.  But there was a definite tension in the air, not of the crackling electric variety, but an expectant calm that knows there will be a lot of disappointed people in the morning.  Very few Yes or No badges were in evidence on the street, although journalists were evident everywhere.

But the evidence from the ballot boxes belies this to an extent.  Following on from the record breaking 97% registration figure, there looks to have been a voter turnout unheard of in this country.  I've seen a story from one of the more rural stations, of all registered voters having recorded their votes by nine thirty this morning.  Many stations had queues awaiting their opening at seven am.  Are we going to hit 90% turnout?  As an exercise in democracy, whatever the outcome, this has been a remarkable occasion.  And, despite the efforts of the tabloids, largely devoid of nastiness (any large scale campaign that raises such passions is bound to bring out a few extremists on either side).  Citizens have been engaged, excited, ready to debate the issues and on both sides this has become as much a movement of the people as of politicians.  Scotland can be proud of being such a civilised country.

Whatever tomorrow brings the world will be different.  For all sorts of reasons.  For me the greatest of these is that the Yes movement has taken on the combined power and money of the UK government, what is generally referred to as "The Establishment", and 95% of the mass media (the Sunday Herald was the only national publication to come out for Yes, and there were justifiable doubts about the even-handedness of the BBC) and still managed to convince around half the electorate to join their cause.  That is a remarkable achievement, win or lose.

Now let's wait and see.

Oh, England, just give us a bit of space now, eh?  It isn't always about you....

The resuscitation of Gordon Brown

WHY GORDON?

Back in the dim and distant past, when this whole referendum thing first got into gear, the Scottish Government proposed there should be three choices on the voting paper.  For full independence, to retain the status quo, or for an increase of the powers devolved to the Holyrood parliament.  The latter quickly acquiring the daft name of 'Devo Max'.  The Cameron government thought otherwise and next Thursday's simple binary choice was the result.  Devo Max was an option Downing Street thought unnecessary.

Polling at the time suggested that that missing option was the one most likely to have attracted majority support from Scotland's voters, had it been offered.  But Westminster felt confident that if it came to the choice of staying within the UK, or going it alone, the unionists would win comfortably.
And all the evidence at the time suggested they were right.

Fast forward to Spring 2014 when it already it feels like the campaigning has been going on forever.  Yet now starting to ramp up in intensity.  Devo Max has largely been left to rot in the gutter, but the occasional unionist politician has mentioned that when a No vote goes through Westminster may give some consideration to passing on some additional powers.  Crumbs from the table.

How times change.  As the polls have closed up and the underdog Yes campaign has gained momentum, as the day of polling gets ever closer, as arguments and 'experts' get thrown at the electorate from every angle, the polarity of the debating has increased and passions have been raised.  This was going to be closer than almost anyone had imagined.

And then there was one, just one, poll that showed Yes ahead.  By only two points, and other polls still gave No a lead, but it seems to have sent a shudder through the whole Better Together movement, and the leaders of the three main UK parties in particular.  Just days later, backed by Cameron, Clegg and Milliband, an announcement was made proposing that a No vote would result in significantly greater powers being devolved to Edinburgh.  There wasn't a lot of detail, but it did seem reminiscent of something from the past.  It seems Devo Max has been picked up, given a bit of a dust, and presented to us as a fresh new set of ideas.  And it only took one poll....

If you know me in real life you might not be surprised at a teensy-weensy note of cynicism creeping in here.  Poor old Devo.  Cast aside unwanted, she's now back on the scene, slightly faded, slightly jaded, and not quite sure what she's doing any more. But someone seems to need her, urgently.  Good luck old girl.

But it's not the return of Ms Max that concerns me here.  Desperate times bring out desperate measures. And Better Together have been sounding very desperate recently.  No, what intrigues me more is the presentation of this brave new world.  And, more specifically, the choice of presenter.

Gordon Brown emerged as the spokesman for this one, the front man, apparently, for the Westminster establishment.  At first glance he seems a sensible enough choice.  A weel kent face.  Former leader and statesman.  And still retaining some degree of credibility, even affection, in Scotland (despite being a laughing stock to many in England).  A sensible choice.

Really?  If I was a government trying to convince an electorate of the sincerity of my very-late-to-the-party proposals would I really choose Gordon?  A backbench MP, perhaps with some influence, but with no power and no prospect of being in power.  A voice from the past, irrelevant to the future of all three parties.  A voice it might be very easy to disown if the future dictated such a course of action....

If these proposals (and note that's all they are - nothing is, or can be, guaranteed) are being brought forward with genuine sincerity shouldn't they be presented by someone who has real power to take them forward?  Someone, perhaps, from the current government?  A Scot of course, so that rules out the Conservatives (I've met hamsters with more charisma than Scotland's sole Tory MP).  So a credible LibDem then (that's Danny Alexander out of the reckoning).  And who do we have in the post of Scottish Secretary of State?   None other than Alistair Carmichael, one of the few senior unionists to maintain an air of moderation in his pronouncements and with the decency (or career awareness!) to announce that if there's a YES result he'd be available to be a member of the Scotland negotiating team.  That rare beast, a coalition minister it's possible to have some respect for.

And, if you really wanted to give the impression that the three parties were unified behind these proposals why not throw in Margaret Curran, Alistair's shadow?  Wouldn't that demonstrate some commitment to implement the new legislation required (let's for a moment that this will have to be done by a UK parliament that hasn't actually been elected yet)?  Wouldn't it?

But no.  We got Gordon.  Yesterday's man.  Anyone convinced?  Draw your own conclusions.


PS If any No voters read this, or perhaps a committed unionist in England, I'd love to hear from you and tell me where, if, my analysis is flawed.  Please do.

Sixty goes by and it's time for normal life

HITTING THE BIG SIX OH

No, not me.  That's still some time off, albeit now more easily reckoned in months than years.

Yesterday, on the last night of the 2014 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, we ended up at a couple more shows to bring our total of events for the period to sixty.  In twenty three days.  Slightly knackered, but elated with seeing so much great entertainment.  This is not the post to go into details of what we've been to, but The Nualas gained a couple of new fans last night.  And we finished with the godmother of Scottish comedy, so a laugh was guaranteed.

But this is more about reflecting on the artificiality of the Fringe-going life, and what is now to come.  If you've read previous posts you'll know that immediately prior to launching into all that comedy, drama, music, radio, TV and sundry other events we were tied up in the house moving process, shifting ourselves and worldly goods from Southport to Edinburgh (even if most of said goods now reside in a warehouse a mile from where I now sit), and trying to squeeze a quart of clothing etc. from a four bed semi into the pint pot of a two bed flat.  Which is a pretty artificial existence in itself, and even more knackering.  So it's been quite a few weeks since we've experienced anything resembling normal and I am looking forward to a quiet night in as much as if I'd been asked round to supper by Sidse Babett Knudsen.  Well, almost as much.  Maybe.

So having, in effect, just arrived, the new kids on the block, we have to contrive to find out what normal now looks like.  If normal can include house hunting, which looks like taking up a lot of our time in the coming weeks.  Viewing properties, getting to know various areas of the city better than we do at the moment, and acquiring Mastermind levels of knowledge of bus timetables.  So it's going to be an odd kind of normal, looking for another life to replace the one we're trying to establish.  And retirement's supposed to be restful?

There's one final block to something like normality.  A little local matter of a referendum, taking place in twenty three days time.  You might have heard about it.  Or even read how I reached my own decision on the subject.  The polls still say there will be a negative result, but three weeks is a long time and much can still happen.  So I'm going to offer my services to Yes.  It won't be much, but at least it's something.

So what is normal?  And can it include moving house, Fringing, seeking out a new home and trying to ensure the future of democracy in your country?  Normal might just be a bit boring.

More Fringe stuff

LOOKING FOR THE BEST?

Aaaargh!  They played that bloody Sting song on the radio this morning.  But, fortunately, I suffered none of the flashbacks I feared when I wrote this post because there have been a few other distractions in the intervening eight days.  Like finally getting the flat into something like a liveable state after our move up here, having guests to stay over the weekend, and seeing a further seventeen Fringe shows.  We're not short of distractions.

If you're coming to The Fringe, or already here, you might read this hoping for some recommendations of what's best to go and see.  And I have a problem with that.  Partly because my tastes are eclectic and almost certainly very different to yours (you weirdo), and also not knowing what 'best' means.  We've seen stand up comedy, science based comedy, physical comedy, music, drama, a full blown musical and a couple of guys having a bit of a chat.  Which 'best' did you want from that lot?

There is one definition of best I could go with.  That's when the thing you're watching ends and you don't applaud because you're thinking "that couldn't have been sixty minutes".  Then you realise it was and you've just been so engrossed that time compressed.  If that's your idea of 'best' then I can give you a clear winner from the stuff we've seen so far.

If you read about my personal Top Ten from Fringe 2013 then the name Jennifer Williams might ring a bell. Wonderful last year, even better this time.  The Cold Clear Elsewhere tells the story of Australian war brides who came to the UK in 1946, a tale Williams makes far more interesting to watch than it might initially sound.  She plays Grace.  And Grace's best friend.  And her mother, and her husband, and his mother, and few others along the way.  With music and ambient sound provided by her brother, Jennifer makes smart use of a big space and carefully chosen props to take the audience through time and on a journey across the world.  She is funny, moving, pathetic, inspiring and coquettish.  It is a compelling performance with scene succeeding scene in rapid succession, but with no confusion as to time and place.  We might even go again when our next visitors turn up.

Other recommendations?  Go see the wonderful, hilarious, at-times-confessional, big softie bear that is Mr Aidan Goatley doing 11 Films to Happiness at Ciao Roma.  You will be amused, charmed, entertained and barely educated.  (Did I get that last bit right?)  Molland and Sullivan in the Beehive were laugh-a-second funny with a fine line in instant insults for audience members.  Possibly not the best choice for the shy and retiring.  Finally there is an odd comedy/lecture/art demo hybrid in the National gallery every Thursday.  Phill Jupitus shows off the copies he's made of paintings in the gallery, Hannah Gadsby (art expert and stand up comic) gives her, em, views on his efforts.  Some of his drawings are great.  And some are less than great.  You never know what's coming up next.

And then there was Red Bastard..... but that deserves a post of it's own.

That's it for now, there's another couple of shows awaiting our attention.  Barbara just suggested we have something she calls 'a day off'.  I think she must be talking about September.

There's no such thing as weird on The Fringe

OF A BIG BLUE TENT, A BLONDE WIG AND A VAGINAL LIFT

But not all three at once.

So we've done two days of Fringe going so far and seen three shows.  I'd call that a nice gentle start, easing ourselves in.  

Last night we went to see our favourite local comedian/physiotherapist, Elaine Miller, in her show Gusset Grippers.  Appropriately for a day when the skies crowded in and Edinburgh took on a damp sheen this was an hour dedicated to people who pish themselves.  Part comedy, part education, part science.  But mostly just bloody funny, despite, or maybe because, being shambolic.  How many shows offer you interactive pelvic floor exercises, a mental image of Bruce Willis in a lift inside a vagina, and free fanny wash?  Recommended show?  Absolutely.

Today we went to the BBC's Big Blue Tent which we've visited frequently in the past, and will be doing again this year.  The draw is twofold.  There's a variety of interesting events taking place.  And (better still) it's all free.  But having applied for loads of shows it's in the hands of the licence fee gods as what you actually get tickets for.  This afternoon's offering was towards the more random end of the spectrum.

I haven't consciously chosen to listen to Radio 1 since the eighties.  So the name Greg James registered zilch with me, old fogey that I am proud to be.  His presence on stage might explain why the crowd we were part of felt a good bit younger than is usual for these shows.  Bring back a Radio 4 audience....

Mr (Master?) James was interviewing John Kearns, winner of the best comedy newcomer award at The Fringe 2013.  Talking about how his life had changed as a result (he only gave up the day job last November and is now a full time professional comedian) and why August in Edinburgh matters so much to comedians in general, even those who have been well established for years.  There's simply nothing else like it in the comedy world (which is great for those of us lucky enough to live here) and has been the launch platform for so many of today's laugh making stars.

Kearns described his own act as 'silly', complete with daft wig and comedic false teeth.  We 'do' silly, so we followed him down to town and filed into the Voodoo Rooms (a good place to visit for breakfast even when the Festival has packed up its suitcases and wheeled itself off to Waverley Station).  JK was certainly different, although far less weird/silly than a lot of other acts we've seen (and the lack of a miniature Die Hard star was noticeable), and likes a bit of audience interaction. We were in the front row.  So somehow I ended up being the one perched on a bar stool on stage, ill fitting curly blonde wig affixed to my head.  I was instructed to drain the remains of my pint which was then replaced by a mixture of Lucozade and Tia Maria.  So stroking John's right knee, and swaying with him in time to Sting's rendition of 'Fields of Gold', seemed like the easy option rather than having to take a sip of such a disgusting mixture.

But I wonder what pictures my mind will flash before me next time I hear Any Sting?

Not quite ready to Fringe

ON THE FRINGE OF THE FRINGE

It's day One of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  If you read any of my posts from around this time last year you'll know how much that thought excites me.  But today has been about restraint, before we gorge ourselves on the feast.

We have just completed a house move, and are now full time Edinburgh residents.  The flat isn't quite straight yet, and there's more to be done, so we can't become committed Fringe goers quite yet.  So even though we were up in town today we managed to resist the lure of all the sights and sounds that simply watching the street acts can offer.  Although, inevitably, I did find myself with a pocketful of fliers, despite skirting around the edges of the main areas of activity and performance.  The Fringe is unavoidable.

What I did do, and I know how sad this sounds, was sort all our tickets into date order and put them into daily plastic pockets so it's clear each day what we're on our way to see.  Eighteen Fringe shows booked, and tickets for eight of the BBC offerings in the Big Blue Tent.  Plus three plays in one day from the 'proper' festival.  There's comedy, of course, plus drama, interviews, a TV broadcast, music (folk, jazz and classical) and even a stage musical (a genre I would usually avoid).  All of which gives the coming weeks a bit of shape, around which we have to fit in a few of our favourite Free Fringe performers, such as the wonderfully funny Aidan Goatley and the lovely and talented Jennifer Williams.  Plus my personal highlight from last year, The Showhawk Duo.

And a friend has just told me, via Facebook, to go and see her friend in a play.  Will it be any good?  I have no idea, but I'll go anyway.  If there's one word sums up Fringe time it's serendipity.

Watch this space....

I'm feeling moved

LITTLE BOXES, LITTLE BOXES

If you are of a certain age the above four words will almost certainly have brought to mind the phrase "and they're all made out of ticky-tacky".  You might even have started singing this song.

It's been on my mind a lot recently, because we're about to exchange one box for another (and probably a further box to follow, but that's a tale for another day).  Not sure if they're both made out of ticky-tacky, but the place we're moving to, built in 2002, probably meets the description better than the 1876 crumbly we're leaving.  I don't think they knew what ticky-tacky was in them days.

But we've certainly experienced plenty of boxes looking the same, as this photo proves.

I have made up boxes, filled boxes, sealed boxes, carried boxes, stacked boxes, for days on end.  I hate boxes.  I am boxed out.  I crave box rehab.  Box me no more, don't cry for me argent boxes.  It's probably for the best that I didn't have enough time to watch the Grand Prix today because if I'd heard one driver being told to "box, box, box" I'd have punched the television (which I can't do because it's in a box).

But the end is in sight.  Here's the same view after two nice gentlemen, one of them a red headed Orcadian ( you felt the need to know that, didn't you?), picked up all of our boxes and stacked them in a very large and very dark blue, and very box shaped, lorry.

And.........

Relax

Until we have to start unpacking those bloody boxes again.....

Work? Life? Balance....?

ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM

A curse upon my feeble memory.  Last year there was giant billboard, looking down upon the people of Edinburgh, which truly irritated me every time I saw it.  Which is where my feeble powers of recall fail me, for I have no idea which company was being advertised, and the exact wording escapes me too.  So this is my poor effort to recreate that sight.

There was a head and shoulders shot of a smiling, white, middle aged man, the owner of the business being plugged.  The wording was supposedly a quote from this guy, which I paraphrase thus : "I ask my employees to give 100%.  And if they want to give more then that's fine by me."  This was the sales pitch, because there's nothing makes me want to give a company some of my money more than knowing that they treat their staff like enslaved chattels.  It's what we look for in a business, isn't it?  A total lack of morality or humanity.

Progressive employment practices have brought us the concepts of work-life balance and flexible working hours.  The notion that you shouldn't live to work, but only work to live.  It's the living bit that should get our priority, not the work.  This guy appeared to fly in the face of such modernity, no doubt seeking a return to those good old Victorian values of exploitation and monotony.  Or maybe he just hadn't thought it through?

Either way I felt, each time I saw the words, that this was sending out the wrong message to any and every person who read it.  And it was a reminder that the UK already has the longest working hours in Western Europe and some of the most restiveness and unnecessary anti-trades union legislation.

I recalled that reaction when I read this excellent article advising a reduction in working hours.  An idea that goes so much against conventional 'wisdom', as dictated by The Establishment whose interests must be gratified at all costs, that it demands a giant shift in our culture.  One that might take a long time to bring about, but would, eventually, greatly benefit most people.  The idea that sharing the available work around is the best use of  human beings.  Those already in work get more time to actually get something out of life, and the unemployed have more opportunities to work.  We no longer pay taxes to support people who have no job to go to, and spread the wealth of our society more evenly.

The arguments put up against this will say that it damages our economy, restricts financial growth and makes us uncompetitive in the world.  To which I'd say - So what?  And for us all to do that requires the biggest culture shift of all.  Because we would need to stop seeing ourselves as consumers, the label that big business want us all to identify with, and start to think more as members of a community.  To recognise that simply accumulating more and more 'stuff' is not as self fulfilling as we're being told.  To, maybe, remember that there's a lot more to being human than work and possessions.

Thirty hour week anyone?

PS  Yes, in case you're wondering, I am engaged in a huge downsizing project at home right now.  And it feels so good....

The sadness of the finale

THERE WILL BE TEARS

As I wrote last week, I have found the onset of alzheimers for the fictional character of Kurt Wallander deeply moving.  In a few minutes I will sit to watch the last ever episode of the detective drama, featuring the wonderfully shambolic Krister Henriksson, knowing that I will be experiencing more than just your average thriller or police procedural.  

Sometimes the finale of a favourite TV series leaves a bit of a gap in our lives, a small sense of loss.  There will be that, of course.  But far more will be knowing that character is leaving us for reasons outside the norm, with a condition we all know of and fear.  I will be crying for Kurt, for myself, and for all of us.

Cherish your humanity.

It's all about the football, isn't it?

ARE WE NEARLY THERE YET?

I’m pretty certain this World Cup thingy has been going on for about two and half months now.  So, like a child in the back seat of the car, just as you hit the edge of the town you’re leaving, the only question in my mind is “Is it nearly finished now?”.  From the bits of the news even my selective brain can’t quite blank I’m hearing the English soccer team is out of it.  And I’m guessing from the lack of mentions on the EBC - oops, sorry, BBC - that none of the other British isles teams are involved.  So does that mean it can all go a bit quiet?

I think I read somewhere the whole thing goes on for a month?  A whole month?  Even the Olympics doesn’t take that long.  Are these soccer players particularly lazy?

So, media, can you just pipe down about it now please.  And lets have some proper sport.  Because we don’t want any of the ball kicking nonsense to interfere with Wimbledon, do we?

First the whales, now the planet?

OF WHALES, PLANETS AND GREED

On Monday night I watched the second (and final) part of a documentary about the history of the whaling industry.  I'd originally tuned in to see if there would be any scenes of Leith Docks, which had quite strong whaling connections (there's an old harpoon gun mounted on the river bank next to our block of flats), and there were a few.  But in the end I watched because , in spite of a monotoned presenter, it turned out to be a very interesting story. And I learned the trivia that the biggest British whaling station, on the South Atlantic island of South Georgia, was called Leith Harbour, because the company that established it was Christian Salvesen of Edinburgh, a business I can recall still being prominent in the city during my childhood.

There isn't much whaling being carried out nowadays, and none at all by British ships, which is giving the whale populations a chance to recover, albeit to something far less than the vast numbers which once swam in the oceans.  For several decades during the early to mid twentieth century, when the whaling industry was at its peak, many thousands of these huge animals were being slaughtered every year.  Britain alone had over two hundred whaling vessels, several of them being vast factory ships, covering the Antarctic seas, and it wasn't until the sixties that the industry collapsed, leaving the few remaining whales in peace.

Long before then ecological scientists had identified that over-whaling was rapidly reducing whale numbers below long term sustainable levels. The demise of the industry was long foretold, but ignored as far as possible by those making huge profits from the killing.  Time and again scientists presented a logical case for at least a substantial reduction in the scale of whaling operations, only for the fleet owners to hone in on some small flaw in the data (which was always difficult to collect and interpret) and claim that there was no need to rein in their activities.

After the Second World War governments cooperated to form the International Whaling Commission to try and find a solution that would prevent whale numbers dwindling to the point where whaling would not be feasible (although there was some ecological motivation behind this, it was largely driven by a desire to see whale 'resources' still being available for exploitation for as long as possible).  Of course the company owners fought against any restrictions being imposed upon them.  Quotas were eventually agreed, but were far too high to have the desired impact, never mind that they would frequently be broken.  In the end the decision to abandon Leith Harbour was not made out of decency, or guilt, or concern for the species, but because there were so few whales left that their exploitation was no longer economically viable.  And that there were alternatives to whale oil more readily available for the production of soap and margarine.  Greed remained the driving force throughout, and almost ended in the extinction of the largest animals on earth.

All of which rings a modern day bell in my mind.  Scientists pointing out, over and over again, that current practices are leading to an ecological disaster, while the capitalists refuse to listen, always ready to point out that the evidence isn't 100% conclusive (90% is never good enough....).  Meanwhile the problem continues to get worse, will continue to get worse, and real action will only be taken when it's almost too late.  Or, possibly, when it really is past the point of no return.  Sound familiar?

The current arguments over climate change seem remarkably similar to those that once took place over whaling.  And, as in the past, sides are taken which result in entrenched beliefs, impervious to reasoned argument.  As before, it's the scientific community leading the call for change, based on the evidence they collect and interpret.  As before, the evidence isn't 100% certain.  But the job of science isn't to be certain.  It's to put forward the mostviable theories, based on the available evidence, and project what those could mean for our future.  And almost every scientist working in the field is confident that there are huge changes in our climatic systems taking place, and that man made emissions are in part the cause of this.  Exactly what proportion of this comes down to humans, and how long it will take for the most severe symptoms to become apparent, are subject to disagreement.  Unsurprisingly, given the fluid nature of the subject.  Despite this it is the degree of unanimity which is the more striking.  Few who have genuine knowledge of the matter appear to doubt that change is taking place, that our species is partly responsible, that the changes will likely have disastrous consequences for our ecosystem.  The disputes are over the degree of change, the speed of development, the exact contribution made by emissions.and the argument is not about whether or not something terrible is going to happen - only about when and why.

Those uncertainties are pounced upon by the 'whalers', in this case the big businesses, especially in oil and gas, who do not want to see their profits curtailed.  And governments fearful of telling hard truths to their electorates, of having to say that the days of freely available energy, of cheap flights to holiday destinations, of fruit out of season, might have to come to an end.  That we have been living beyond our ecological means.

And, of course, of those governments not answerable to their populations, who are often driven to keep trying to 'catch up' with the lifestyles of the rich west.  When perhaps it should be us coming closer to them.

This argument has become political, not just at the level of those in power, but for those who aspire to it.  The scientists have the support of the Green movement which has long called for changes in society to reduce waste, to work more in harmony with what is, after all, the only planet we've got.  There are many on the left of political thought who are coming to recognise the wisdom of this approach.

Against them, siding with big business, is the right wing which broadly opposes changes which might go against their god, economic growth.  For elements of the far right, such as UKIP in this country, climate change denial has become some kind of totem, an element of macho posturing which considers anything 'caring', be it for people of planet, as effete.

I don't know who is 'right'.  I'm not even sure there is such a thing as 'right' in this case.  But I do know which makes most sense.

If the scientists have got their interpretations correct, and we are headed towards catastrophic changes later this century, failure to act on their warnings now might leave humanity defenceless, possibly leading to the deaths of billions of people.

If the deniers are correct, and the changes being seen are part of a natural cycle which will eventually sort itself out, but our society has decided to cut back emissions, change to more sustainable food sources and invested heavily in renewable energy, what's the worst that can happen?  Fewer holiday flights, less choice in the supermarkets, a readjustment of the global economy?  Some people will make a lot less money.  Oh, and we might have cleaner air….

What's it to be? The common sense of the whales? Or the greed of the whalers?

Footnote - The deniers make a lot of capital out of renewable energy technology being expensive and inefficient. really?  Well, Doh!  With exception of hydro electric power, all our renewables - wind, solar, wave - are in their infancy.  At about the same stage in their development that the petrol engine was in the 1920s.  Only by investing in research, and using them in the real world, will they improve at a rate which can make them truly useful within the time we may need them.  If you complain about them it's a bit like criticising a five year old for being poor at project management....