I’ve had a New Year resolution that I’ve been too busy to keep. That’s to use this blog for something. Or at the least, to try to blog properly if only for a couple of minutes a day. This is for the other side of my brain and I should remember that…

Tonight, I found one of those little pieces of writing that just give me some faith about the world. I’m not one of those pedants about grammar but I do like writing to have clarity. The whole debate about commas seems to me to be fundamentally ridiculous but I was cheering when I read this by James Wolcott.

I suppose I found myself thinking about this even more as I’ve been reading about this idea of extending the school age to 18. I shuddered at the thought. Everything that should be a joy to discover will continue to be forced into our youth. If only people would leave them alone and let them discover learning for themselves. So much organised education teaches you only what to hate. I don’t like to agree with anything that Jamie Oliver says but I have to agree with something Jamie Oliver has said when he argues for more apprentices and less graduates.

When will somebody propose the sensible idea of making compulsory education end at 13? Those that suggest the alternative are doing so based on something other than a consideration for the children or an understanding about the proper goals of education. Perhaps it sounds wonderful for anybody but the poor teacher who has to get a year of struggling 14 year old students from a council estate in Manchester to understand King Lear.

Teachers will tell you that too much of their time is spent dealing with bad behaviour. Yet why is there bad behaviour? Because teenagers hit puberty at the same time as they’re being force fed Shakespeare or some left wing poet writing about gender issues in South Africa. My sympathies (and those of many teachers) are with the rebellious types who recognise their own interests, limitations, and goals in life, yet are forced to attempt something which they as rational thinking individuals do not want to do.

Undergraduates enter university without the proper skills. It is a fact. Many can barely write competent English, are incapable of using punctuation, and have little or no idea why they want to study. They have some vague notion about jobs but no interest in the subject’s for which their parents are often paying thousands in order to make them ‘experts’.

I can’t help but feel that the harder we strive to forcibly educate, the more that education will ultimately fail.

Hi it’s Jerry…

Or Malcolm, Jose, Peter, Mary, Tiny, Tricia… The list goes on and on.

Everyday, I get dozens of emails headed ‘Hi it’s…’ and each time, my brain jumps into rolodex mode. Do I know anybody called ‘Feliciano’? Have I a friend called ‘Carlos the Jackal’? It doesn’t matter than I don’t know that many people and that the few I do know are not international terrorists. My brain has some social networking function that I can’t disable under the options menu. I wouldn’t mind but the disappointment is tangible each and every time I realise that I am reading yet another email trying to sell me shares in a Mexican bean factory. You’d think that, by now, there would be enough investors in Mexican beans to leave me the hell alone…

A report yesterday suggested that something like nine in ever ten emails sent are supposedly spam. Nine in every ten sounds terribly low but if it’s right, then judging from the amount of junk mail I get, there must be some lucky soul in the world that lives a spam free life. Every piece of mail must be a real gem: the winning ticket to a competition, the letter from a publisher accepting their novel, the email from the long lost friend… I, on the other hand, must get 1000 spam emails for every one that’s real. Some of my email accounts have become unusable since they’ve become dark holes filled with prescription drugs, free TVs, stock market quotes, and more erectile products quotes than you could shake a… well, let’s just say that there are a lot of them.

There goes the ‘whoop-whoop’ of the email again. I should go and check it… You never know. There’s a one in a thousand chance that a real opportunity has come my way.

I don’t update this blog as regularly as I should. At times, it seems like I only think to come here to complain about whatever I can’t/won’t complain about over at The Spine. But the Fark thing has really taught me something about web traffic: it’s the little links that really matter. Huge traffic would be wonderful but only if it is meaningful traffic. If I can help it, I don’t want to get front paged on Fawk again.

Over the course of twenty four hours, I had about 5000 extra visitors hit my site because of Fawk, but three days later, the figures had dropped back to where they were at the beginning. I didn’t get any extra backlinks, get listed on any extra blogs, or even (I guess) attract any extra readers. Instead, I had a corrupt database, not many clicks on my ads, and a feeling of futility after reading one of the comments over on the Fawk board. But a bit of reflection made me realise that this is just the nature of Fawk and so many of these sites that collect the flotsam of the web. If I plastered my blog with pictures of naked supermodels doing things in grease, I would probably double my hits within a week. Who knows, more Fawk traffic might come by and have a look. And wouldn’t I feel proud of myself?

There is a difference between good traffic and poor quality traffic. Somebody who looks, reads, understands one of my silly stories is work a thousand of those that flit by. These brief visitors take without question, leave nothing of value, and move on to the next poor fool to incur their interest. It’s like a swarm of locusts that come and strip your land to nothing.

Blogging here in the UK can feel pretty pointless at the best of times. A small fraction of the total UK blogs offer real wit, intelligence, righteous anger, insider knowledge, or even influence in the wider world. It’s hard to get noticed in the crowd, and appealing to a US audience is even more futile. My experience with BlogMad led me to understand how being listed with US blogs only leads to your work being marginalised, criticised, and degraded by people who don’t understand it, won’t understand it, and (worse of all) cannot even acknowledge why this is so. I constantly felt that my blog was being criticised for something that wasn’t really in my power: simply because I am English and write about British topics.
I spent too much time each day thinking about a story but until Fawk visited, I never understood how much I really only blog for myself. Each visitor is a small miracle and I should say a small thank you for every one.

I’ve now seen three episodes of The Unit, shown here in the UK on Bravo. Produced and (supposedly) written by David Mamet, it’s the story of an special forces unit and their families. It’s hard to admit this as a huge Mamet fan, but so far, I’m extremely underwhelmed. Despite the imposing presence of Dennis Haysbert, the military side of the story lacks grit (usually such a strong Mamet trait) and the family side appears to be second rate Desperate Housewives (which I don’t watch). It’s also from Shawn Ryan who created The Shield (for which Mamet guest-wrote an episode) which makes my disappointment even more acute.

The first time I saw The Shield, I thought it had to be by Mamet. It had his ear for language, great dark characters, and shared his sense of borrowing from the real world in an all out attempt to convey what a small portion of real life is like. Now I’m supposedly watching something actually written by Mamet, it looks like it’s written by third rate TV-movie writers. Each show seems to split quite happily into the story of troops defending the nation and wives struggling to survive against army beaurocracy. Where is the darkness, the blurred morality, the love of profanity? Where are the great Mamet ideas, the twists, the intellectual games? Where is the love of small details? Where are the obsessives and the freaks?
Whether it’s one of those situations where Mamet hands in a story outline for others to work on, or whether there’s a time-slot that is heavily limiting him, The Unit is the most disappointed I’ve been by my favourite contemporary writer. They should remake it for late night cable because as it stands, it’s tepid and Mamet’s work is never ever tepid. Which only makes me think (and hope) he’s allowing the producers to use his name as a favour to someone? I want the real David Mamet back.

Well, The Spine is finally up and running on its new server, hosted by Site5, and so far I’m extremely happy with them.

The problem with paying for your own own hosting is that unless you pay a fortune for a dedicated machine, you do have to share them with other websites. Some companies cram you all on one machine and then your site runs slowly. So far, Site5 has been speedy and I hope the Spine is loading quicker than I’ve seen it of late. I hope there’ll be less downtime, which with the old webhost happened for four hours on the only day I managed to get a link and the Last Supper pictrue on Guido Fawkes‘ front page. I guess I could go and use a free blogging service, but I do like to play around with PHP and do things which these free services can’t handle.

Okay, so it’s not all new but 3CDs of Tom’s music will make November a month to remember. At over twenty three quid, it’s a bit on the pricy side but I can’t remember the last album of his I didn’t go out and buy on the first day. Damn, this is good news.

Boris Johnson has done it this time. When will he learn to stop saying things that are right on the money? Doesn’t he know that the press will give him hell for it? He should really stop saying what everybody is thinking. Like the rest of the country, he should keep a low profile and try not to draw the attention of the mind police.

His crime this time is to – allegedly – criticise the soon-to-be-knighted Jamie Oliver whose health regime is leaving the nation’s kids hungry, bad tempered, and prowling the school corridors across the land looking for any stray Mars Bars. Ask any teacher and they’ll tell you how unpopular everybody is finding Oliver’s plan. It only makes me wonder how many saturated fats are consumed each day by cabinet ministers. Has Prescott really cut out the pork pies? I think we should be told.

This doesn’t mean I would advocate the widespread distribution of meat and potato pies in the morning assembly, but if children are learning to be adults, then they should be taught how to exercise a little free will. By all means inform them about healthy eating, and by all means make healthy options available to them, but for goodness sake, you can’t force tofu on a child and expect them to be happy. What is the point? They’ll come to hate healthy food like I now hate white sauce and sponge cake I was once force fed at school.

But, of course, we are in a nation where free will is frowned upon. I know I’ll soon be made a wanted man simply by refusing to have a bell fitted to my bike, but how long will it be before children are forcibly removed from families to be whisked away to a fat camp should they have dared indulge their love of saturated fats?

Some people see Jamie Oliver as a lovable little Cockney tyke, with an adorable lisp and polyunsaturated sunlight beaming through his lovely locks. I say we need men like Boris too see this tyrant off. This could be Boris’ finest hour if only the media would leave him alone.

Why do I bother? I mean what is the bloody point?

I mean: how should I respond to the latest comment over at The Spine from a person claiming to be ‘Tory’:

How dare people slander the Conservative Party leader in such a way. Just because a new medium of contacting the electorate has become available, does that really mean that he is all bad? If so, then why are those who broadcast on radio and television mediums not also slandered?

Blair and Brown would look rather nice with little slanderous comments and poor-pictures cheaply and unprofessionally layered over an image of them.

Poor show indeed. The makers of this horrid blog should remove the article and issue an apology.

I have to take it that the Tories have been let loose on the PCs at their conference. Where else could I find somebody with such a serious sense-of-humour bypass on a Monday morning? To be honest, I didn’t think my Photoshopping skills are that bad, but I only spend a hour updating the site at the end of each day.

I think the tell-tale phrase is the bit about the ‘new medium for contacting the electorate’, which sounds like it’s right out of some Blogging Primer given out to the blue-rinse-brigade to help them move into the Age of Cameron. What is sad about this comment is that I’ve been taking the mickey out of the Labour Party and the Lib Dems for months now, and all through their conferences, without a word said in their defence. Can it really be the case that Lib Dems and Labourites have a better sense of humour than the supposedly more libertarian Tories? Two days into the Tory conference and somebody comes along and leaves a comment as seriously foolish as this. It makes you wonder. Need I explain what I do, or why I find it funny?

Yet perhaps this is an indication of why the Tory Party have found it so difficult to regain power. Many of them (and their members) remain isolated from the humours (of all kinds) within the country at large. Their best representatives in the country are William Hague and Boris Johnson, two witty fellows who endear themselves to people through their humour. Only yesterday I was talking about the ‘ordinary man’. I think that most people who I would consider ‘ordinary’ would understand what I’m doing and the points I’m trying to make.

I don’t know if I should feel upset at having offended somebody, or delighted to have pricked some of the pomposity that is too rife in this country.

Yet,still, I do sometimes wonder why I even bother…

I usually try to knock myself out by running into the nearest brick wall whenever Sky News goes over to a party conference for the big speech of the day. Few politicians understand the importance of brevity, humour, or even a good turn of phrase. Fewer still actually deliver speeches that grip you with an intellectual argument. Great political speeches are like great lectures at university. They are those sudden bursts of insight that wake you up with the strength of an idea. Lucidly delivered, a political speech is a thing of beauty. Written down, they are things worth studying and, in their way, make for great literature.

I doubt, of course, if Tony Blair has ever given one of those speeches in his entire life. Even his recent ‘lecture series’ were little more than the equivalent of those fridge magnets you throw around the kitchen to produce spontaneous poetry. Only an imbecile would think it poetry, and only a fool would think Blair actually delivers lectures. What he delivers is personality.

Today, however, I found myself unwillingly drawn to listen to David Davis’ speech at the Tory Party conference. I wanted to spend my Sunday afternoon reading a book, but finding the TV on, I listened to Davis begin to outline a liberal view of Tory values that I’ve always thought have been missing for British politics for at least two decades. This was not the Thatcherite style of Conservatism that has come to leave a bad taste when reworked by emotionally shallow city whizkids. It was a politician quoting Auden…

“To save your world you asked this man to die.
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?”

This seemed thoughtful, reflective. It marked this speech out as being a cut above the usual stale rhetorical forms. Davis also delivered it well and re-emphasised those qualities that I believe the party rather foolishly rejected last year.

After Davis, and a typically funny speech by Hague, John McCain explained his own brand of conservatism though delivered his speech rather poorly and seemed to find the autocue difficult. His speech was probably better written down than it sounded when delivered and I also thought it was, in the main, a cut and paste job taken from other speeches written for mainly American audiences. I don’t dislike McCain, but this speech didn’t exactly win me over.

I didn’t make it all the way through David Cameron’s speech, but the Cameron style that puts me right off. Dabbling with Photoshop tonight, I couldn’t help but play on that whole nobility thing, thinking it might work for The Spine tomorrow, but I don’t know if it’s totally fair to stick his face on Wellington’s body. I know I shouldn’t hold his upbringing against him, but I cannot help but feel that as much as he wishes to reform his party, one of those reforms should have been to address the issue of social class within the Conservative Party.

Perhaps I make too much of it, having witnessed the inability of the Tories to mount any challenge within a Labour heartland, but whether it deserves it or not (and I think it more than deserves it), the Tory Party is still perceived as the party of the toff, the old Etonian, and the Oxbridge set. In reality, this may equally be true of Labour, but Labour are never punished for it in the polls. And punished, the Conservatives most certainly are. In a society where many people still vote based upon accent, Labour have a head start at any election. There is no greater evidence of this than in our local elections. Shaun Woodward is the MP for St. Helens South, voted in after his switch from the Conservatives. He’s supposed to be the only Labour MP with a butler. As a Tory, he would have taken his life in his hands campaigning around here, but as a Labour MP, he enjoys a 9000 vote majority. I believe it’s one of the safest Labour seats in the country.

Reality doesn’t matter when the perceptions are so strong. By appearing to share the same sensibilities as his electorate is the only reason Prescott is so well liked within the country. Most people are uninterested in political gossip. Few watch debates on TV or vote based on considered reasons. People care little about scandal which they simple ignore as run-of-the-mill for politicians. When it comes to an election, they want to see themselves in their politicians. Prescott, for all his deceit and incompetence, is a master of speaking to people in their language. Political hacks may scoff at his incompetence, but has nobody really considered how and why he reached his position given his huge deficit in any other talent? Many might sniff down their noses at the inarticulate northerner with his Jags and terrible liking for leopard skin furniture, but many people are also inarticulate, love a bit of tat in their living rooms. Prescott portrays himself as just one example of ‘most people’. It is a virtue that one would never say is shared by David Willets, George Osbourne, or (god help up) Jacob Rees Mogg.

In the Tory Party of today, only David Davis portrays himself as another ‘ordinary man’. Though articulate and prone to quote his W.H. Auden, he would have taken the Tories to places where Cameron can never ever go.

I generally admire how Cameron is changing the look of the Tory Party but I wish he’d stop trying to prove how normal he really is. His latest venture onto the web, his newly launched site WebCameron, is a more expensive and high-tech version of Tony Blair’s mug. It all goes back to what I was saying about writing in cafes the other day. When you have to act at what you’re doing, then you’re not really doing it.