SOUND & LIGHT / aka KIDS ON SHOULDERS

We were freezing our noses off in Huddersfield last night,watching the annual Christmas Sound & Light Festival. After negotiating the crowds of parents not giving a toss about anybody but 'their little darlings' - you know the types, bunches of them lifting their kids onto their shoulders in front of everybody instead of doing it behind everybody (doh! I'd like to think it's because they were thick, but in reality it's because they are thoroughly modern British people who couldn't give a f*#k - sad really) - the parade of light started and all was good.



After the glorious 'lion building' (sorry,I don't know what it was built as.. but will find out for a later blog with better daylight pictures as it is one of the not so hidden gems of the town in my opinion) was lit up with a violin player in the central window the parade moved into one of the north's greatest town squares, in front of the railway station.

The parade gave way to a French son et lumiere display which was pretty good, a strangely haunting operatic female singer with strings suspended 100+ feet above the square and being swung round above the crowd - in a slightly reassuring twist of fate those kids on shoulders would have been first to die if anything bad had happened - and an accompanying rock band.


Fireworks set off from behind the railway station finished the night well. All went home happy.


My local village light switch on follows hot on the heels of this event tonight. One thing is guaranteed - well two actually!

It'll be less dramatic as the village self-funds the lights and festivities through a volunteer operated village charity shop where all the money goes back into village events - a sort of local interest co-operative charity shop (everywhere should have one!)...

...plus, there will be fewer of those idiots creating what we have now termed 'walls of brats' in front of everyone.

NEW DAY.. NEW BLOG..

Thought I'd spice things up in my blog life by changing the layout and colour scheme a little.. just a little.. but still in is the #FF6633 bright orange scheme for links and the light text on dark background that I like so much..

Hope you like it!

THINGS JAPANESE..

A random and meandering blog (sorry) that is inspired by an in-joke between my and my partner -
that will necessarily be less 'in-' and more 'out' after this blog..

So, here it is world.. dah, dah da da (cue drum roll and all that).. I have a thing for Japanese girls. Not a dark secret, not sinister. In fact, something I'm quite proud of really!

It all started in 1986. I hot-footed my ass down to London in search of golden pavements. In a way, I found mine for a while - working in the City in a new trading department dealing in Government Bond Futures contracts.. Japanese ones to be exact. New instruments. New world. Loadsa dosh etc etc and all those other 80s emotions!

I worked for Diawa Europe, a Japanese Securities House. As their current website states, your insight to asian financial markets..

During my time there I had ample chance to learn a bit about Japanese culture, food (as we regularly worked late nights to settle trading positions with Japan overnight we had fresh Japanese food in the office each evening for free - heaven!). And the best bit was yet to come.

All of the Directors were Japanese imports. Unsurprisingly. But their daughters (never did see any sons - but maybe I wasn't looking?) often dropped by the office to grab Daddy's gold card (when gold cards were only for people who were earning the really big money not just anyone who wanted one). As an 18 year old kid from a 99.9% 80s white town my eyes were truly opened! For me Daiwa Europe was more like my insight into asian females. Don't get me wrong, I don't like other Asian looks at all but Japanese girls hold a special place for me.

In the Wag Club with a friend one Saturday I fell over myself and fell in love with one Japanese girl in particular. Truly beautiful. My only problem was that she had only just hit London, her dad was an investment banker or some such and she had moved over to attend the esteemed Japanese College in London. I managed to be able to buy her a drink - which turned out in relative terms to be as expensive as the drinks are nowadays in Tokyo! Well, the Wag Club was THE place to be at that time. Derek B and Yazz on the turntables. Gilles Peterson with his new Talkin' Loud sound. House music exploding all over the place etc.


One problem. My Japanese language skills in those days didn't extend much further than a few numbers, yes, no and ham and egg sandwich (honestly - hamu eggu sandoicchi.. see it's not that difficult!). Ishiko or Michiko (whatever!) knew less English than I did Japanese. Not surprising the conversation didn't go very far. But hey! I have the memory!

After that, Japanese life was a barren desert for many a year. I moved back up North, to a city with very few Japanese faces in it (in those days, less so now after a few successful inward investment projects). I quickly forgot about my Japanese fetish (apart from sporadic Yohji Yamamoto clothes purchases) and got on with my life. Probably for the best!

Then, recently I re-visited early 90s band Sultans of Ping on my mp3 player (and went to see them too - which I can't recommend highly enough). Their song I Like Japanese Girls reminded me of the old days and my partner has wound me up about it from time to time in our healthy rivalrous way. It is funny. It is a fetish. It is, let's face it, part of what makes Polko Polko.


So, there it is. It's out. Polko likes Japanese Girls... Cool cool cool cool Japanese Girls...

vid link here if you're interested!

and this is just funny!

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

I am an economist, just like the Chancellor and now Prime Minister Gordon Brown (though thankfully a very different flavoured one than him)..

Today's news on the BBC website carries the story that Mr Brown has promised the UK economy will not only recover but will return to growth in 2010..

Who does he think he is? That kind of talk gets economists and economic theory a bad name. We do forecast variables from time to time, my favourites being population numbers, but are never as blasé as to think we can know what will happen in the future. Maybe Mr Brown has had a visit from Marty McFly or a replicant from the future? Maybe, as is more likely, he's just in denial of reality.

Whatever Mr Brown.

What I know for certain is that we wouldn't be in our current situation and would certainly have been better off if you and yours hadn't handed the banks money on a plate just to get your ugly mugs in with the electorate (which didn't work anyway). The bankers must have laughed their socks off when they got away with that kind of treatment last year. Brown & a bunch of former teachers and union reps meddling in international financial markets like they were some sort of financial guru's. I know plenty of other people with strong views about life in the City that have never been within a mile of the Square Mile (in my defence at least I used to work there but I still exercise caution when criticising traders lifestyles and pay rates)..

Yesterday's FT Weekend carried an interview with George Soros, someone I trust to know what is going on in the world of finance a lot more than some baggy suited, overweight Scottish geek. This is someone that landed in the US post-war with less than $5 to his name and is now one of the richest men on the planet. All through gaining a deep psychological understanding of how humans and therefore groups of humans (i.e. markets) work.

So, in closing I am happy to quote 'The Man':

Soros characterises Wall Street profits as 'gifts' from the state
"those [bank] earnings are not the achievement of risk-takers, these are gifts , hidden gifts, from the government, so I don't think that those monies should be used to pay bonuses. There's a resentment which I think is justified."

Soros is giving a series of lectures in Budapest next week in which he is developing these thoughts. I may well step on a plane if I could only get a ticket!

MOO!

One of my facebook friends is more of an active environmentalist than me - given she runs a very reputable environmental economics business.. I used to be but these days have fallen into the shameful world of property development. Somebody has to. Actually, most of the people I work with are very much into green buildings these days and there is a lot to be said for building places where people can work. It'd be a strange world that was thriving environmentally and on its knees economically?

So, in a vain attempt at trying to offset my actions in a carbon-neutral kind of way (tongue firmly in cheek) I am posting a link to an excellent blog that everybody reading this should go and check out. To be honest, it's better than spending your time reading my twoddle!

http://cowburps.wordpress.com/

In other news, I have just come back from a most enjoyable weekend away in Birmingham.

Once a city that nobody wanted to go to (and I should know, I spent two or three years travelling backwards and forwards to work there during the week - not once did I even think about moving permanently and I only ever spent one weekend there in that whole time) it now makes for a very enjoyable weekend away. Good shops, Illy coffee bars in art galleries, great food, hotels and - something I've always strangely found about the city - it was warmer and sunnier than from whence I had come!

I still wouldn't sell up and move there though?

PEACE?

Don't get me wrong.. I'm not a man of peace. Far from it.

But.. Nobel Peace Prize?

What's this guy done?

Odama does not equal Peace. Yet.

MO' MONEY THAN BRAINS?

This beats my entry last year about the Candy Brothers...

By a long way!

WHAT A WASTE..

Re-branding has been seeping through the whole political dung heap for a while now, often under the guise of real restructuring... but in the main what has really been happening has been a complete waste of taxpayers money on new logos, new stationery, making government e-ready, etc etc. spin spin spin.. Look we're really busy restructuring.. what? we are supposed to deliver policy? No mate. Do something mate? Not me mate. I'm in New Labour. I mainly just talk about it.

Here's just one among a myriad of examples. Hold on tight to your seats as it gets extremely messy.

But first, switch on your speakers and click here if you want a nice soundtrack to the whole sad sorry affair.."

In a feat of mayhem mathematics when Gordon Brown came to power in 2007 he re-branded (sorry 're-structured') two government departments in the name of streamlining into three. See diagram below. The DES and DTI were re-divided into DCSF and DBERR with a third department created from the University and Skills functions (of DES) and Science and Innovation functions (of DTI) to be known as the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills, the DIUS.

Now DIUS went about their business getting ready their new logos, stationery, website, the mechanisms of modern government... getting exciting isn't it?


Everything was going to be different from hereon in. The country was heading into the brave new modern world of 'knowledge transfer', 'innovation', 'competitiveness', even 'advanced manufacturing'.. (Q: what do these spin concepts really cover?)

Only in June this year Gordon decided to stop the process, disband DIUS and create a new department.. the Department for Business Innovation and Skils.. clearly the University bit was getting in the way of acceptance by business.. surprise, surprise.

Trouble is DIUS has spent £953,911 on building their website alone and god knows how much more on the other goodies of empire building.. Leaks are coming out of the DIUS Commons Select Committee that the final bill for DIUS alone is around £7.1 million. And thats a minimum estimate.

Worryingly, this is just one story in the naked city of New Labour..

Continuous rebranding is clearly a waste of money. If politicans took the time to stick their head in the real world they'd notice business doesn't rebrand or restructure itself that often.

What has been happening in these latter days of the New Labour 'modernisation campaign' is a concentration on selling the product rather than having any decent product to sell. When you really dig deep it appears that most of it is generally about selling a con (spin) or wishlist rather than being based on anything solid. There appears to be a belief in the present government that if you say something often enough it will become true. And Gordon this week is repeatedly saying 'it's not over yet..' From where I'm sat he appears to have fallen foul of his own spin machine.

God Bless New Labour and all who sail in her.. only to the other side of the world please!

THE CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE..

I have had an entertaining yet mildly worrying exchange of emails with a friend of mine who runs a business not dissimilar to me.

He and hiw wife are now to have their second child, after rearing the first to 16 years old.

Our emails went something like this (the names have been changed to protect the guilty)..

>>From: A September 22, 2009
>>There's going to be a little addition to the (family) next March.
Yes, we are having a baby! F had the 12 week scan and all's well, so it's going to be a busy 2010 (actually make that 2010-2028!)
A

>>From: Polko September 22, 2009
>>Congratulations, and make that 2010 - 2031!!
Polko

>>From: A September 22, 2009
>>Maybe, but I reckon by 2028, that 99.9% of the population will be going to university and therefore our latest addition will have a free choice of decent jobs without the need for us to fund 3yrs drinking!
A

>>From: Polko September 22, 2009
>>I think you may be right. I even had a conversation with [my son] about the validity or otherwise of even getting a degree now that you can readily become a BA in Cultural Media Assorted World Studies easily enough. There is a strong argument for simply learning from those around you and start your own business at 15.. Get on with it whilst the others are mounting up their debts and forcing themselves to become wage slaves forever..
Polko

To put it another way.. University education gives you knowledge sure enough. But it doesn't provide much by way of attitudes and competencies that are then directly useful in the world of work. Through my day to day experience with plenty of people from diverse backgrounds in property, business and even to some extent the public sector, it is the people who have the right attitude and can readily apply modern competencies that get on and enjoy professional success - be that making money, managing people or organising organisations.

There will always be a need for core degree subjects - not many doctors, lawyers or civil engineers can get away without a College education I guess (but you know, some can!). For the rest isn't it what you do with it rather than what you know at the end that defines the benefits of a University education?

On the money side of things, as an economist I am familiar with all the econometric studies that show a positive return on a First Degree education and the even higher return to continuing this into Masters levels (the biggest leap in lifetime income potential is recorded there), but many of these studies are now being outmoded based as they are on old data series and a continuing structural shift in the modern labour market and skills demands of employers. The world is changing. And fast. There are now many disparities in income generating potential with plumbers and tradesmen often earning way in excess of somebody with a degree, even a good degree from a renowned University. And I personally know people in business who began very early, failed a few times, learned a lot and are now sat very comfortably indeed.


Just a thought.

And if you just can't be bothered click here and print out whichever degree certificate you want..

AUGMENTING REALITY..

Years ago (and it is years now) if you used a computer, you sat at your PC desk somewhere at work or at home and typed away, pushed your mouse around and generally enjoyed face-to-screen interaction. And that was it.

Early adopters or people who were always pushing boundaries then bought a webcam and in the late 90s a whole host of websites sprang up using cameras to show a virtual peep-hole into another users world (actually webcam sites were among the first things I was turned on by on the internet back in 90/91 when the web was little more than an academic network - in those days it was all weather cams and vending machines). I had lunch with a friend of mine last week and he told me he'd still got the webcam on a stick that we used to set up our first rooftop cam site in 1997.. fond memories..

Then came the rise of the notebook and portable was everything.

Then mobile cellphones appeared and data was inside them too, directions to the nearest pizza takeaway beamed direct into our hands wherever we may be.

And then we get to Augmented Reality, AR, a concept that started out in high end research in the early 90s, mostly engineering applications - overlaying data onto schematic drawings or photographs to label up parts, explore design adjustments, etc

These days augmented reality is fast becoming part of real reality, so much that most people haven't stopped to think about this. Layers of data and information are where it's at on mobile phones, Google Earth applications and even on adverts where computer generated images blend seamlessly with real world car adverts or children playing alongside animated characters on ads for crisps or drinks. In my business we could overlay data onto property development photos in an interactive format - now there's an idea! Kids know all this stuff already of course. Playstation and Wii cameras allow them to drop into the game as if their middle name was Tron (not that they know who he was!)


Eat your heart out Roger Rabbit!

So, where is it going? The marketing field is all over augmented reality, launching Doritos packs in Latin America with codes to a website where you upload your image and choose a Chilli Lover that then plays around on the image, gets stored on the website and even interacts with other's uploaded photos (click here). Car ads are liberally splattered with animated sections of cars, cut-away computer generated engine parts. In this world a company called Total Immersion are the undisputed kings - click here and take a look at an example if interested.. You'll be 'seeing' a lot more of them.

The best development I've seen (and best is a very very subjective word in this blog - see my final comments) is this: Mattel is using the same type of 3-D imaging augmented reality in “i-Tag” action figures for James Cameron’s new movie Avatar. The toy includes a card containing a marker, which is projected as a 3-D action figure on a computer. This way, children can battle each other’s virtual characters on a computer screen.

And look out for AR in your mobile phone soon. Apparently, “In 2010 every blockbuster movie is going to have a mobile AR campaign tied to it.” Mobile treasure hunts linked to the latest movie when walking around a city?

Future? Glasses or mobile phones that constantly alert you to your surroundings by using pre-loaded data or downloading augmented data as you move through real reality. Go shopping, wander past people and see their facebook profile as you pass them, have animations spring to life and alert you to offers as you pass that aisle, the uses are endless. (Here's a great youtube app demo - available now. if you live in Amsterdam that is)

I have only one question.

Will our brains be able to take this level of overload? For years we have been feeding ourselves an abusive mixture of pesticide and additives in our food and we wonder why kids are larger, why cancer and other invasive disease rates are higher, why stress levels and associated medical conditions are costing us our future. Crime rates on the person higher than ever before.


While all this technology is leaping forward and we 'interact' with it in ever newer ways I can't help but notice that as a society we now interact with each other less than ever before. We love our technology and twitter and facebook away to lots of online contacts daily, but how many of us really take time out to be with other humans, to interact with people rather than 'contacts'. If we did more of that it's my belief that we'd be a better society for it.

And the ultimate question must be: What is Augmented Reality going to do to the one most important thing that regulates our body and health?

Asylum anyone?

BLACK STEEL IN THE HOUR OF CHAOS..

I got a (email) letter from the government (well Business Link anyway)
The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers

They wanted to know..

Does Government Do Enough for YOUR Business?

..and then went on in a diatribe about the various forms of help we could possibly access through becoming members of the local Chamber of Commerce, booking a meeting with a Business Link advisor etc

Now, that's all well and good. But, another part of government - central government this time - has recently cheesed me off good and proper.

I use a lot of official data in my work. And I mean a lot. Like the other day when I tried to download a national dataset from a well known database and it stopped me telling me I couldn't carry on as I was asking for more than 1,000,000 cells of data. Oops. But I really did want the lot as I was mapping something across the entire UK at VERY high resolution!

Anyway.. I also needed to assemble some schools performance data and it would be easier if I had the latest dataset for the whole country - every single local authority area across 12 or so variables. Not a lot to ask for really (4,380 or so items or cells). I have the data in official Excel tables and a lot more besides for each year since 2000 as I have a friend in the central statistical office who helpfully and cheerily sends me the files. This year for some reason I forgot to ask for them in January when they were refreshed.

So, I browsed the usual website (Department for Culture Schools and Families is its name this month - the government may well decide to change it soon.. they do that you know! gives em something to do and creates new linkages between 'joined up government'). The dataset was not there - unhelpfully the only schools data anyone can get to is individual schools or individual Local Education Authority areas.. not useful if you are working on a national level unless you have a full day and nothing to do but transcribe numbers between web pages and Excel!? Which I am assuming nobody does?

I called DCSF direct. I say direct. But what I mean is I called the company that holds the contract to disseminate DCSF data. Prolog they're called. Unhelpful is not the word. After the fourth call back (first time I was placed on hold for 23 minutes and decided enough was enough, second I got cut off and third the woman was very bad mannered and told me she didn't know what I was going on abarrrrt.. with a long East Midlands drawl of an accent) was told by a very young contact centre agent that the data I wanted didn't exist..


Now I know it exists given that I have it for every year since 2000 and have been using it professionally since around 1994!

I blasted off a request on the Prolog website detailing what it is I wanted.

I got the auto-response saying it was being dealt with after a few hours.

I got a second one saying it was still being dealt with after three days.


I then got another response saying they had dealt with it. They had forwarded my request to another (this time government) department and I should get a response within 15 days. Note should not would?

15 f*king DAYS!!! I am in the real world here people. The private sector. The world where a report takes a few days to write and clients need it to use in their real world decisions. 15 days is just ridiculous!

So, I am still waiting for the response.. Approaching 10 days now.

Lucky I have the intelligence to use the telephone and call that friend in the central department that do know what they're doing. She emailed me the full national tables (all 24 of 'em) within the hour on the day when I was told they didn't exist..

Is this government doing enough for my business?

You decide.

T

A very long time ago now I knew a girl called T. She went to the same school in fact. Not in my usual group of friends. Not in my form. I cannot even remember now how the following happened. But it did. And in some ways I'm glad it did - all of life's experiences make you what you are after all. In another way it left a stale odour. Read on.

I was about 15, in what I call 5th year and what is now referred to as Year 12. Or something. In fact, I'm still confused by the new school year naming system even given that I have my own son who is - i think - in year 8.

Anyway.. I was out and about in my town with a friend of mine. A seaside town so I was probably hanging around at the arcades? Not a wild guess given that I spent most of my evenings down there. So, arcades it is as the backdrop. I trust you are confortable with that? I met a few girls from my school that I knew - one shared the same form as T and we had been boyfriend/girlfriend for a while in the summer between 3rd and 4th year. J - who we might just visit at a later date in my 'blog series of girls I've known' - but who must be thought of as J1 since there have been a few J's - introduced me to T. Nothing odd there. Seemed pretty nice as a person. Not really my type, certainly not particularly attractive as a 15 year old girl goes, but I wasn't fishing for anything in particular. One thing led to another and I arranged to meet her the next evening. The often repeated ritual of a boy sneaking round to her neighbours house where she was babysitting..

Jilted John comes to mind Going Steady. The lyrics include:

On Wednesday Sharon goes babysitting
For her mum's friend Mrs Higgins
I go with her to watch telly
The kids are horrible and the house is dead smelly
But it's all worth it 'cause when they've gone to bed
We start snogging on the sofa

So, there we were. Smelly house. Kids nowhere to be heard. And T makes the first move. I had been told she was a bit of a one. I discounted all the rumours as a good boy should. Fool. She was very forward for my previous experience - but I got the idea quickly enough. Big tits she had. I remember them well as they were probably the first truly big ones I'd experienced. They may have been the first I had experienced? I was nearly 15 after all.

Only thing was she had terrible BO. Now all my best friends at the time had been quick to tell me that she was a bit of a goer, bit of a sl*g some said, but nobody told me I needed to bring a fucking gas mask? She really did have a problem in the underarm area and I couldn't really get into it at all. This being the 80s and us being still kids deodorant wasn't in massive supply I guess. I remember making some lame excuse after an hour or so of holding my breath and diving into romantic embraces.

Evening over as quick as it was arranged I'm afraid.

Now the funny thing is that T and I spoke no more from that day on. Do you blame her? I can barely remember her at school to be honest. No shared lessons and certainly very few mutual friends. I didn't feel guilty. I'm sure it didn't change her life either.

What the hell is interesting about that you cry? Well, some years after I left school a friend of a friend (honest) updated me on Ts progress. Only seems this girl had bizarrely travelled the waters from England and found herself in Los Angeles - by what route I know not. San Bernadino valley to be exact. And she was now, whilst we were all toiling away in the usual range of jobs and signing on as early 20-somethings, a pretty popular (I am guessing not so pretty still? though the ugly ones at school do tend to turn out ok in the end?) porn star of some repute. Fuck me. Not just one or two bit parts either. A real life proper 'name in big font size' porn star! Retired now I suspect. And I hope still healthy for it all - of mind and body. Turns out I had a chance at a minor walk on part in a real life porn film of sorts and I let a bit of a stink come between me and my smalltown teenage fame?

But the obvious question does arise.. What the hell did she do about that BO problem in LA of all places. I've been a few times and it isn't really the sort of place you flock to if you have a problem with sweating in hot weather! Plus it's not like she chose a career where she could hide it? I've seen one or two scenes (in the interests of research.. honest..) and the blokes don't seem to be too bothered!

I will not divulge her real name - that wouldn't be on - but what a strange and bizarre life for a girl from a nondescript town in the middle of the North East-ish of the UK. My school really did turn out some freaks. And I'm clearly not the only one!

Maybe next time I go to LA I'll try and look T up.. if only to see if that smells gone?

C

I used to know a girl called C in what I like to refer to as my formation years. Where I grew up people were formed rather than grew up. It wasn't a tough place by todays Johnny Too Bad stabbing and robbing standards but it was cold, windy and you could get a right good kicking if you were unlucky. I was mostly lucky most of the time.

Anyway, C was not the prettiest girl on the block by a long way but made up for it by wearing skimpy mini dresses, being very slim, having long legs and the largest tits you can ever imagine being squeezed into 1 and a bit square metres of clingy stretchy cotton tube dress (it was the 80s).

She was one of life's enigmas, people used to stop their conversations when she walked in and follow her every movement. Well, I say people, I mean mostly blokes of course. Not so much an enigma as a bit of alright.

I used to know her quite well and for some reason she took to me as a confidante. One of my first lessons in patience and playing a long game in life. Only the game went on and on and we were alas only ever friends and nothing more. She had a pretty rough upbringing, lived between two parents who lived on the roughtest estate in the town and the roughest estate closest to the docks in the town. Being from a split home in those days wasn't that common. Which added to the roughness i guess. And to top it all off her dad was a complete psycho who when he'd had a few drinks used to follow her around town and beat people up if they were speaking to her. In short a former seaman turned cunt. She loved him all the same.

I saw her recently. A year or so ago when I was back in my home town for some occasion. She hadn't changed a bit in the way that I haven't changed a bit even though I have shorter hair, less of it, am unable to run miles and miles effortlessly and am in one sense generally a former shadow of my then forming physical self. But hey! I'm a towering giant against that thin personality of a kid I used to be, right?

I recall one conversation clearly to this day. C was telling me about her latest conquest in a long line of men who she'd slept with. She seemed to hate them all as soon as the sex was over. She just did it to gain instant respect. Love you might call it. Confusion was probably more to the point. Once or twice in the past I've thought about her and wondered if she ever did take her time with someone, get to know them before advancing things further and have what most people have in life - at least once or twice anyway - a true loving relationship. I hope so.

Either way, I bet she's still got those gorgeous tits and looks great in a mini-dress.

Forgive me, I am a man after all.

POLKO.. WINNER!!

I just got back from an afternoon trip to the village Post Office, rudely interrupted by a pint of wheatbeer in my local pub too. Well, you would, wouldn't you?

Whilst there I bought a copy of a classic car magazine, to while away the minutes drinking my beer.. honest.. that and the fact I am a bit of a classic car enthusiast to say the least (well, I own one so that counts towards a lot!)

Jovially chatting to my partner whilst sat enjoying aforementioned beer I invented a new pub drinking game. Ingredients: set of friends around a table, one drink (each - unless that is you are very strapped for cash), a classic car magazine and a dollop of imagination. All not too hard to come by (except, for some people, the latter).

Now, invent an imaginary lottery winner budget to spend on a car or cars and get leafing through the copy of the magazine with imagination running wild. What would you buy?

I was set a budget of £33,300.

Here's my choice:


Let's just take an imaginary walk through of my new garage shall we? I must first add the caveat that I already have a 1962 Daimler SP250, in my opinion the finest British sportscar to come out of the 60s (but then I'm biased - me and everybody else that has sat in it and heard that V8 engiune roar!). So, really, I am a very hard man to please and this would simply be icing on an already tasty cake.

First up is a maroon 3.4 litre Jaguar S Type. Made in the year I was born, in possibly the best colour for this car (but see later!). This is an entirely useable car that if you won the lottery you could quite happily drive the length of the country's motorways - even in the depth of the winter - to meetings in. Perfect.

Second up. Yet another 60s Jaguar saloon. An earlier Mk 2 this time. Reason? I just love the shape and this is the smaller engined 2.6 litre that would happily receive a 2.5 litre Daimler V8 engine in the bay (same engine as my SP250 sportscar but mated to a stronger gearbox). Light blue with a dark blue leather interior. And this currently for sale vehicle is a one owner, full service history, all logbooks etc!! Ministry of Defence car - basically had everything done as and when it needed it, very very low mielage for less than any medium sized brand new car. You've got to be joking. Perfect x 2.

Oh look, I've only spent £26,945.

Car number thr33. An early 1980s classic executive coupe. Opel Monza 3.0 litre, this one in a sexy dark metallic grey (way ahead of the trend for such colours in the late 90s) and at 42,000 with less miles on the clock than either of my two usual (much newer) road vehicles? I have fond memories of an old friend of mine from schooldays whose dad had one of these and we drove to Devon one summer in complete luxury - against my own dad owning a very luxurious Rover SD1at the same time. And all with two doors and a slinky coupe back! £3,950. Done.
Perfect x 3.

Last but very much not least I find myself with £2,405 to spend. A punt I must admit, but I would also have a Morris Oxford Series III. Though with only a couple of grand left I'd have to stump for this complete restoration wreck of a car with hours more to work on it.. but I can't honestly think of a better car to plonk my son in the passengers seat and drive to the local newspaper shop on a Saturday morning for the FT Weekend, parking outside the village coffee/ice cream shop and watching people admire such a great British legend. These - as Human League might say - are the Things That Dreams Are Made Of... I even have £455 quid left over for more wheatbeer (or maybe in a fit of madness and desperation 455 lottery tickets this weekend?).

..and all the time while writing this blog I've been listening to The Stone Roses drifitng up from down below singing Made of Stone, "sometimes Iiiii.i.i. fantasise..."

Perfect x 5

M

I used to know this girl. I've not seen her for about 20 years and nobody I know (except possibly a few people on my facebook account?) now has ever had anything to do with her so it's probably safe enough to talk about her in the way that I'm about to. I'll just refer to her as M to be on the safe side.

A little bag of skin and bone she was, all wrapped up in a nervous ball of cigarettes and joints really. Strange creature. Highly intelligent with a very good degree from the right London College but a right snobby little thing. Not my type. I don't know why I got involved. But I did. And it was fun while it lasted. Which wasn't very long in the scheme of things.

And then 20 years on I woke up thinking about her in the middle of the night for absolutely no apparent reason.

Anyway, she was as thin as a thin thing then. Only when she took off her top one night I got a bit of a shock as she had these huge tits. Where she managed to tuck them away in the daytime I will never know. One of life's fashion secrets. The only trouble was that even with her being only in her early twenties gravity should not have been exerting such a force on those things. They were my first and last experience of saggy breasts and I must say I'm happy about that. What do you do with something that doesn't obey the usual laws of physics and seems to slip through your fingers rather than sit in them?

Twenty years go by and we all inevitably change. She's probably married and had kids. Filled out a bit by now. Probably stopped smoking. And filled out a bit more. I bet those tits are massive these days?

POLKO'S BOWL...

...is full of Fudge

ILLUSTRATING

On a non-political and lighter note than usual.. this morning I stumbled on a website page about creating charts in a more professional way. I'm a real Excel veteran, given that I started using spreadsheets back in the days of Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS based PCs with only a keyboard and no mouse in sight - no really! But, those Excel charts can only be pushed so far - and modelling the whole of the UK's water resource flows and stocks was about as far as you could go! I do use dashboards and can create interesting effects in Excel, such as this..


..but their presentation is growing tired I must admit. Enter three options. First is to use an add-in to Excel to increase its design look and feel. Already noe that though, and regularly use Xcelsius. It's ok, a little lcunky but good for 3-D'ing charts I guess.

Second is to ditch Excel (or rather use it to do the heavy computing and modelling) and use another output format such as Business Objects standalone packages. Expensive. Good output, but still not that pro edge and editability I want.

Third is to go to a full fledged vector graphic format. Cue Adobe Illustrator. We use Creative Suite 3 in the office and it is installed on my PC. But I tend to stick to the web-design bits of CS3, Dreamweaver and Fireworks mainly with a (very small) bit of Flash thrown in. Illustrator doesn't fill me with dread but I haven't a clue what I'm doing in it! Anyway, I stumbled on a page about 3D graphs and using Illustator's in-built charting tool.. which led me to doing this in around 5 minutes..


So, be prepared for more to come as this is seriously easy to do, can be applied to a full chart, has lots of options and can use any graphic to overlay and create a really professional look and feel.

More later. Illustrator is about to take up a good few days of my time!

PAY DAY OR NOT?

Sorry, am I going mad?

Are we rapidly heading towards Winston Smith's future world of getting up, doing our exercises in front of a big flat screen on the wall, trudging to work for little or no pay that is dictated to by someone else with little or no chance of doing anything different, all the time watched by CCTV cameras and being pacified by cheap alcohol and films about a war somewhere else where some unknown figure is trying to harm us all?

ah..

but today's BBC carries the news that more "public figures" have added their name to a list of campaigners for a cap on relative wage levels and rewards for people who earn more than the average.. I quote, "The government must now take decisive action on excessive pay at the top when it has had such a damaging and corrosive effect on the real economy and wider society."

In the same way the Low Pay Commission was set up in 1997 to advise on the minimum wage, a High Pay Commission was needed to introduce "a wide-ranging review" of pay at the top and bring in new measures to curb excessive remuneration, it said."

Excessive pay? What does that phrase mean exactly? One person's excess is another's normal isn't it?

Don't get me wrong, rewards going to those who mess up I'm certainly against. I have one or two old friends - shall we call them acquaintances? yes, that's better - who earn 6 figure salaries with final salary pension schemes that will be larger than any of my other friends standard salaries and they certainly don't deserve them just for echoiing what others have said to them and generally licking butt for a few years before moving on ahead of the shite hitting the air con unit. But, let's just break this beying for high paid blood down a little shall we?

The Low Pay Commission and thereafter the Equal Pay Commission was based on a sound psychological and equitable basis that a minimum level of pay for anybody is a just and grown up thing to strive for. The psychology is simple, pay that is too low creates a vacuum among people that are not working who basically think, "I can't be arsed working, after all what additional benefit is there in it for me?" To a point I would agree and thus a minimum wage is something that makes sound economic, ethical and psychological sense.

Now maximum wage levels? What piece of psychology or market efficiency is that based on? Tell you what, why doesn't everybody get up today and work as hard as possible for their employer in the knowledge that you'll only ever be able to earn a fixed amount. It won't put you off working harder tomorrow or the next day 'cos you love your job and the company.. I think not.

Maximum pay has of course already been experimented with in a different economic system, in the former Soviet Union. Factory Managers and the equivalent of our Fat Cats were paid bonuses according to quantitative targets (in a similar vein to the financial scene of the City of London). However, targets were set with the bosses around the table and whilst discussing the resources needed to achieve them (ring any bells?) and so targets were not particularly demanding. The other aspect of the system (and the one we should take heed of now) was that it didn't matter whether a factory hit 101% or 1001% of its target, the bonus was the same amount. Fixed maximum pay, fixed bonus structures. There are many documented examples of factories working until target +1% then all the workers downing tools and drinking cheap alcohol (or more often making something else that wasn't in the plan for the factory boss to sell out the back door).

Maximum pay? Kiss goodbye to the work ethic then. Kiss goodbye to building a better Britain. I run my own business. What point is there in doing any more for it than reaching the maximum return point for my own salary? No more employment for others, no re-investment into the economy. Sod England, I'm off elsewhere Jack. Nice society. Not. I think Compass (the pressure group behind the calls) have got their needle bent, else they are being pulled by a different magnetic field to everyone else. Which might well be the case.

So, what should you make of maximum pay schemes?

You make of it what you will. Me, I feel like Winston pushing his chin further into his jacket as the chill winds of 1984 come in faster than anybody expected at the turn of the 21st Century... Please strike out at any hint of a totalitarian society coming to a pavement near you today.

NEXT GENERATION

The BBC is running a story of a reporter who has sat with some nine year olds and asked them about money and their future. Interesting enough. Worth a read. It's here.

The final section is very illuminating though. A question is asked about what would you do if you didn't have enough money to live.. The responses are worrying. Click here for the entire page but here's the end section:

If you had children but not enough money to feed them, what would you do?

V: Go to my parents, or an older brother or sister, or a good friend.

E: I would first of all start begging on the streets, secondly start praying, and thirdly, ask my friends for some money.

G: I'd make sure I looked good so I could get a very rich husband who could pay for things.

Not one mention of going out and getting a job, working harder, buying and selling anything, going off and getting training to earn more in the future. Three responses that are, from where I'm sat, all too typical of the generation that is coming up (and I don't just mean 9 yr olds). That's where I'm going wrong. I'm still sat here in my pyjamas and need to go and make myself look good so I can get a wife that has loadsa money.

I can't help but think the BBC edited this section, but if they didn't God help us all. Whoever he is.

PRISON SENTENCES

A few sentences I found on an unrelated Forum site i was just using to get a spare part number for my car. Not my words, but words to think about and raise debate nonetheless.

>>>I was dismayed the other day to read of Ronnie Biggs' release on compassionate grounds , in the wake of news that the same dispensation is being considered for the Libyan intelligence officer convicted in connection with the Lockerbie bombing

I found the picture of Biggs sitting up and smiling in bed , as his train driver victim lay in his grave , highly offensive .

This completely undermines the judiciary who hand down 'life' sentences and makes a mockery of the whole criminal justice system with no real deterrent against committing serious crimes as criminals can count on being 'let off' eventually .

At least the Germans got it right the other day by handing down a life sentence to a ( edit 90 year old ) former German soldier who was involved in the murder of a number of Italian civilians during the war ( albeit a number of years after an Italian court had found him guilty in absentia of the same charges ) and , at least , in Germany life means life .

In this country the politicians who overturn the judgements of the judiciary should hang their heads in shame as they send out entirely the wrong messages to the criminal fraternity .

Another post said:

>>>.........and televise the sentences being carried out .

Showing a few murderers , rapists , drug dealers etc being hanged , shot , electrocuted , lethally injected ( not neccessarily in that order ) might deter others from offending in the same way .

Likewise , public floggings outside the courthouses for less serious , but still nasty , offenders would be an effective deterrent as well as being less costly to the taxpayer ( giving someone 20 lashes has to be cheaper than even a weekend in jail ) .

So, there we have it. A few sentences. A lot to think about. The way the economy is going I may just go out and 'do a robbery' myself! At least I'll only be gone for a few years before coming out to my ill-gotten gains (if nobody finds them and digs them up first!)

Good job I'm only joking. For now.

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.