REALIT-V

As I was having a relatively laid back day at work today I was playing a random playlist of tracks. I say random. I mean barely random in the spirit of being drawn from my own hand-picked collection of mp3's that sit safe and happy on my 500Gb external hard drive. A back up of everything that is Polko-digital. And why not? Given Polko is somewhat of a digital ego anyway?

Anywaaaay...

I'm not a U2 fan but.. isn't Beautiful Day a great track? Or is it just my mood today? Or the fact that it has stopped raining at last today and I find I have to go to the post office with my 48 year old classic car sat outside and ready to please. It may be a slightly indirect journey?

So here they are. Simple and plain. Like the way I spell my name.

The traffic is stuck and you're not moving anywhere.
You thought you’d found a friend to take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand in return for grace

It's a beautiful day,
the sky falls
And you feel like it's a beautiful day,
Don’t let it get away

This track was followed by Spiller's Groovejet.. big change!

Parts of the track also reminded me of someone that I have 'bumped' into and off recently. But more pertinent perhaps are these lyrics from Roland Orzabal - always good listening if he's behind the lyrics..

Wake up
You've had an operation
Ideas above your station
Too much reality
(Everybody Loves A Happy Ending, from CD of same name)

Says it all about the individual in question really. I'd only embellish it further by changing reality to realit-v. But it was written sometime before 2004, slightly ahead of the mass invasion of the nation by reality shows. A better day. A more beautiful day in fact.

Gotta go now. A Nick Cave track has just entered the playlist and that's a very different mood for a very different days blogging.

SW1

Belgravia. 09:00. Ebury & Elizabeth Street corner. Coffee and Croissants.

I'm in London most of this week and it's great to be staying in Belgravia where independent shops and eateries abound. On the corner, just past Ebury Mews is a great, friendly coffee house called tomtom that has a table full of the best croissants this side of the English Channel, & pots of jam, honey and warmed butter. Partner that with the early morning sun and strong coffee as a dip and you're in heaven!

Just a quick signposting blog for others to find this gem.

More when home and not tapping this out on a mobile phone!

POSITIVE THINKING

People are not exactly happy right now. And I mean this generally and, through those that I meet in my day to day going about the place, I mean it specifically. Why? Some of the causes are obvious - economic woes, global flu pandemic worries, dare I even add over-consumption in the last boom period?

What is clear to me is that the underlying problems of many people - and certainly society (and what is society but the actions of each person summed?) - is they are in shock.

The credit crunch was one shock, the resulting downturn in demand and economic recession period is another that we are running along the bottom of. News that maybe 100,000 people per day in the UK alone will be catching an unknown flu and death rates estimated by central government of between 6,500 and 750,000 (no, really, who on earth leaked that estimate range??). Damn, some people are even having to hand back the keys to their houses and their B M double shits and Range Rover Shits, sorry Sports.. All shocks to the people involved.


What history will tell you is that shocks cause people to do things differently, sometimes radically differently.

My own shock (I reckon to date I'm lucky as I've only really had one) occurred in Spring 2004, a crime that made me and my close ones look at life in a different way. We sold up, bought into a new way and as a result changed our life radically. I mean look at my big cock on the top picture.. who would have thought I'd ever have a big cock!

lol

So, people who are sitting waiting for the normal world to return, businesses who are trying to sit it out, countries that are trying to stimulate old ways of doing things, demand management, quantitative easing - call it what you want - all these groups are playing the wrong cards. Once the recession is over, however it ends and economic growth returns (and there's another implicit assumption that might not be right to make?) the world will be a different place, operating by different rules to some extent or another.

Get thinking. The rule book just got thrown out of the window. The new one has not yet been written.

Opportunities abound. Now!

TO HEL(MAND) AND BACK

I recently came back from a weekend away feeling a little run down and last night had a kiler sore throat so I was up in the middle of the night consulting WHO guidelines on swine flu symptoms. The array of very general advice that has been posted by UK government agencies led me to start thinking..

Who Do I Believe?

So, I've got a sore throat, losing my voice, woke up in the night hotter than usual and a bit achy.

The government's Swine Flu website tells me that these are all potential signs of an onset, although the sore throat element is not usual but has occurred, in some cases.. helpfully vague. Then I notice a link titled 'current emergency situations - find your local authority. Sounds like they are gearing up for a flood of emergencies nationwide - which is worrying given the downplaying of the whole issue generally. I am asked to put in my postcode (not bloody likely - I've seen Survivors and 28 Days Later and the sound of boots and loaded MP5's on my doorstep isn't one I want to experience!) or my local authority area, which I did. This redirects me to my helpfully-absent-of-any-obvious-link homepage of ABC Council.. Great. They're taking it seriously then.

Another link yielded an NHS site with a hopefully titled 'NHS Flu Symptom Checker.' Trouble is, I clicked and answered two questions, the second being have you a swelling in your throat (which is clearly true given I'm losing my voice). The next page flashes up in red and tells me to dial 999 immediately?? By the time you read this I'll either be dead of some rare emergency case sore throat disease, or the throat will just be subsiding? Either way, I'm not the type to call for an ambulance and waste your tax money on a minor irritating illness. Lesson is if you do use the NHS tool, you are quite likely going to convince yourself you have early onset signs..

So..

Do I Believe?

flu pandemic. scaremongering the population. restriction of travel? I hope not. It didn't work for the Soviets when they tried it to stop the exchange of ideas and a flu virus is more easily exchanged with another human being than an idea I believe? It seems to me that a lot of what's been going on with flu news has been to keep the population focused on other things than the fact that the UK along with many other countries isn't as well endowed in the research and medical containment departments as we might like to believe. Great Britain is no longer as Great as it was. We all know that. Why do some politicans, noticeably at present one particular (Scottish) one with ill fitting suits, still act as if it is?

..which neatly brings me to that other politically driven news item..

Constant shelling and bombing offshore and at some unknown distant location. Continual reports of deaths of 'our people'. Incitement of hate among a population against an enemy that has never really been witnessed by them. Sorry, I've read this somewhere before? George Orwell's 1984 happens to be one of my favourite books, having had to read it first for my O Level English way back when. It has become the most worn out well-leafed book in my library since that time and I must have read it around 10 times in my adult life.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no conspiracy theory loving ignoramous, I'm not easily sold on sinister plots, but I don't believe everything that I see coming out that three foot tube in the corner of the room (ok, I know most people have flatscreens these days and they're a lot bigger than 3 foot and, just to kill this thread off, tube technology is well and truly out.. but hey! indulge this child of the 80s a little).

I Believe..

There's a lot of evil and sorry shit going on along the 3,550 mile long black line in the pic below, but the one thing I firmly believe is..


..there's a whole heap of shit happening at one end of it. Now I'm not a big military type (unless you count my near addiction to Call of Duty 4 on Playstation 3) but my thoughts are increasingly with the people over in Helmand. When will it end? Hopefully soon as if you look at the stats and what's happened in other 'escalations of activity' (that could only be a politicians phrase), the rate of deaths is growing very fast indeed.

Believe.

* footnote. Don't think I'm that clever! The scaling down in this blog's subtitles from Who Do I Believe... to Believe.. is not my clever literary invention. If you want to know more google 'Heaven 17 Do I Believe' and consult their excellent lyrics. A track from their Bigger Than America CD.

STATE OF THE NATION..

Back from holiday in Central Europe. What a nice country Slovakia was. Refreshing change from the dirty streets of anytown, UK (and the Hungarians won't like this but far cleaner than the streets of Budapest too). Even the poorer gypsy villages are still clean and orderly.

So what of the UK?

At the moment I am involved in a piece of work that means I am researching the UK government's (and various regional partner's) role in attracting more companies, more jobs and more prosperity from overseas. It doesn't bode well when I am having a devils job even getting hold of anybody from the central government department charged with inward investment promotion! This is an ever expanding public sector employee problem - mails returned with "I am now away on annual leave until..."

I copy here an e-mail I just sent to my brother that says it all:

-------------------------------
From: ------
To: -----
etc

dial this number 0207 215 2471 (with your phone on speakerphone)
This is the published direct line to UKTI (UK Trade and Investment) - the central body charged with a) promoting the UK as an inward investment location internationally, b) promoting all UK business to export more and therefore earn more money and jobs...

put your phone on speakerphone and let everyone within earshot hear the state of the nation...

then pack your bags as quick as you can!

P
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End of today's blog. I have a bag to pack.

Unfortunately, I have a few more years to wait until my son is through school.