The Da-doo-dah Code

So, I had an interesting Twitter conversation last night with one of the few left-leaning coves who follow me. (I’m surprised I don’t have many more – oh well…) He is on a mission to convert me – gawd bless him – from my right-thinking view of the world and embrace his compassionate and bountiful vision of the left. He’s a genuinely nice guy; I’m sure he means well. But…

Among his arguments are that I am “just a tool of the rich”, a “cheerleader for the very people that are raping you” and “one of the cattle”. Well at least he agrees with me about the last one. People are very much like cattle – a few bulls, a lot of cud-chewing cows and plenty of short-lived juvenile bullocks. (That’s steers to my American readers – oh yes I have some… Okay, I have one.)

My guardian angel firmly believes that the right-wing elite operates some darkly cynical mechanik to keep the masses down - not educating them, deliberately creating a welfare-dependent underclass for the tax-payers to despise (although I’m not sure how that helps the cause of either side) and controlling the media to spread its poison.

But, you see, that’s far too complicated, just like religion. It requires an enormous effort of faith to maintain a belief in something that presents no actual evidence. Of course, maybe it’s me that’s wrong, but you’d have to convince me that my wielding of Occam’s razor has been wildly off-target.

Let’s take a couple of points.

Under-educating the masses – I see forty-plus years of removing the rigour of basic education, largely pushed through by the overwhelmingly left-wing teaching unions, leaving students incapable of learning effectively. Being cruel by trying to be kind and yet, despite all that, some still manage to get off their arses and succeed.

Welfare dependency –By removing the stigma of not paying your way in society, the left made it acceptable to sponge off others - and look how quickly the unemployable took to it. Something for nothing? Who wouldn’t want some of that?

Media manipulation – Rupert Murdoch doesn’t actually control the world. Leftists just think he does because The Guardian and countless other branches of the left-wing propaganda machine tell them so on a daily basis. And of course the most pervasive medium of them all – the BBC – is largely regarded by those on the right as a left-wing tool. It’s prurience, not politics, that sells ‘news’.

If the conspiracy theory of right-wing overlords manipulating and controlling on such a colossal scale were true it would require an effort of coercion only hitherto seen in closed, despotic countries or cults. But these days we have the Internet and nobody gets away with anything for long without some little put-out snot-nose blabbing to all the world about how unfair it all is. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Winners and losers, that’s what it all comes down to. Simple as. The winners want to hang on to what they’ve fought for. The losers want it for themselves. Anybody ascribing anything other than selfishness to human motives in general is deluding themselves that we transcend nature itself merely by being the great ape, Homo Sapiens. 

Humans are resourceful and opportunistic and make a living however they can. If the state lets them scrounge, they will scrounge. If the NHS offers wider and wider treatments for more and more nebulous imagined ailments, people will develop those ailments. And if an opportunity arises to make billions out of the hard work of those who will work for subsistence wages, both sides still make a living, however uneven. I just do not see the hand of conspiracy in any of this; like I say, too complicated for mere humans.

So, it comes down to what you want to believe. Do you go for the possibility that hard work and thrift will reward you in the end and that anything is possible – the politics of hope? Or do you go for the low-hanging fruit of egalitarian, re-distributed wealth – the politics of envy?

The rhetoric on both sides is appealing at times and it’s the interplay between the two that broadly maintains the status quo. I could go on for days on this theme, but as far as the electorate’s position goes, I can think of no better simile than Indecisive Dave from The Fast Show:

Ring a Ring o' Roses

For my sins I'm a trainer of supposedly already qualified electricians. Next time you have any electrical work done, ask your sparky about ring final circuits. For starters he'll probably call them 'ring mains' to which you can react in alarm and say, "Surely you don't mean the 11,000 Volt supply to the local substations?" (That will unsettle him straight away.) Next, he won't be able to put into the correct order the words "ring", "final" and "circuit", transposing the first two, principally  because it's a phrase he really doesn't understand.

And do you want more to worry about? Okay, here goes: he won't be able to justify why he prefers a ring to the much simpler radial configuration. He will never have read - nor will he truly understand - the single regulation that allows their use provided certain conventions are observed. And finally, even if he is one of the small percentage who know how to test the circuit, he won't be able to explain what is fundamentally wrong with the procedure. (For the record it's only the UK and some former dependencies that install ring circuits as standard in domestic properties.)

It's not for nothing that a popular joke amongst electricians is, "Red to red, black to black... blue to bits!"

"What?" you will exclaim in horror "That level of incompetence is a potential killer!" You will, no doubt, go on to opine that, "If I was that bad at my job I'd be fired!" What the f...? Why's he writing about this now? Where's the political stuff, the pejorative condemnation of the human race? Well, calm down, it's coming right up.

You see, I'm not singling out electricians, it's the same for plumbers, builders, bus drivers, accountants, opticians, tax officials, doctors, lawyers, software engineers, hardware engineers, designers of every persuasion. It's true of law-makers, politicians, economists, churchmen, policemen, pilots, warriors and even, yes even the government. Especially the government... every government that has ever existed. My theme today is the general, all-pervading incompetence of most people and one of the biggest problems is that the incompetent are usually blissfully unaware of their ineptitude. In every branch of human endeavour the vast majority operate at well below 'average'.

The article linked to (above) attributes to Bertrand Russell the quote that, “the trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

And yet we sort of get away with it; we muddle through. One of the good things, I suppose, is that we cover for each other and sweep a lot of fucked-up stuff under the carpet, but is that good enough? In the tough times we currently face it strikes me that if we could just raise our game a little we'll be through the worst so much more quickly. Because it turns out the cure for unconscious incompetence is to face up to it and take steps to improve our own abilities.


Take the NHS for instance; instead of bitching about whose fault it is maybe everybody involved, from politicos down, should just take a minute to look in the mirror.

I started out talking about electricians and rings: some sources (almost certainly incorrect - incompetent historians, perhaps?) associate the children's rhyme Ring-a-Ring o' Roses with the Great Plague, the Black Death. Well, if we don't get with the programme and educate our way out of incompetence we might just all fall down.

This cartoon is for John. (B6 7BU)

(Read the caption again... properly this time! )

Life's a Drag

Life has a habit of getting in the way of whatever it is you feel you're supposed to be doing. Don't you just hate that? Lately, for me, life has been full of work; not the kind of work that fills your days and makes you content, but the kind of uphill trudge that makes you long for retirement. Or death. Whichever comes first (and at times either option seemed equally attractive).

I have a ‘friend’ who’s been having trouble getting it up lately, so I said I’d give him a hand. Well, as with so many things it was simple, really. We worked up a bit of a sweat with the preliminaries as I checked out his package. It was quite small at first, but once he got it out I could see what a handful it was going to be. Anyway, I watched while he had a go and I could see the problem straight away. Mindful of how huge and unwieldy it was, he’d been yanking away far too vigorously and that’s never going to get you anywhere. So, with my help and a couple of gentle tugs we had it all the way up and he went off like a good ‘un with a big smile on his face.

To relieve the stress and soothe the fevered brow, I like to toss myself off as often as I can. If the weather is nice I will go to a local beauty spot, whip it out, get it up, turn into the wind and gently toss myself off in full view of the gathered crowd. Oh yes, sometimes there’s an audience. Just as with dogging, there are only certain places you can do it without being chased off by angry landowners or gawped at by roving bands of rowdy ramblers.

But once you’re up it’s fine and on a good day you can stay up for hours. Sometimes you’ll be up until the setting sun brings you back to terra firma, where you’ll often get a full video debrief of your activities. You do have to be careful you don’t get sunburn though – it’s not normal to be exposed for such long periods.

So, yesterday I got it out at the Long Mynd in Shropshire. It was pretty stiff, but I managed to handle it and tossed myself off for over an hour. It was pretty intense – slowly pushing forward then slipping back, occasionally trying a new position or a different grip (your arms do get tired after a long one) all the way up to the climax, when I embarrassed myself and made a horrible mess. 

It’s a shame when you get dragged like a rag doll after a perfectly good landing. Still, you can’t win ‘em all. So I picked myself up, dusted myself down, packed up my paraglider and went home for a well-earned wank. 

Solar Senility

The Ides of March are almost upon us. Beware.Waking in a cold sweat I stop breathing and listen. I swear I can hear them climbing the walls, crawling over the roof. Legions of slithering milibands and other creatures, who would harry and harm a man. I pull the blankets closer and begin my new morning routine, visualising my stores and counting the hours before I have to go out for supplies.

I listened to the wireless again yesterday. There are reports of suffering from all over the country; helpless people crying out for deliverance. Some are having to do without their chauffeurs and nannies, or having to keep their car for a third year. Some are even being asked to work for their living. It's terrifying. I radioed out for help, "Can you hear me, motherfucker?" I asked. No reply.

Nope, no good. I reckon it's the solar flares. I've been cooped up in here for days now. It's so long since I heard or saw another human and now I'm running out of soup. I like soup. Soup is good. It protects you from all manner of things... but now I'm running out.

The horror.

For all I know, civilisation is on the brink, or over it. I had a power cut the other night and strange, alien noises started up outside my window. An unholy clamour of sirens, alarms... the dying howls of long neglected sentinels. They persisted for a while but then they stopped. It's silent out there now, but I dare not look to see if the danger has passed. To do that I'd have to scratch a hole in the black paint on my windows and then 'they' would be able to look in. For all I know they are listening right now... I'm glad I'm not paranoid.

It's time to act. I need to get away before it's too late. I need more soup. I'm going to leave the safety of my blankets, put on my hat and venture outside.

 I fear I may go mad if I stay here any longer. (link)

Go on. Hate me...

Oh, I adore Melanie Phillips. Really, I do. She is like the living embodiment of my ideal woman... 'cept, maybe, I wouldn't. (Soz Mel, you know how it is, right?)

Ever since, as a very young boy, I used to go to the Council Offices to collect what was then called 'Family Allowance', I have railed against the sheer, unmitigated stupidity of paying unfit people to breed. Well, I am posi-lutely, abos-tively 100% behind Ms Phillips' unarguable thesis that this is a payment that benefits nobody.

Cut child benefit. Cut it absolutely and cut it now.

If you can't afford children then - by every rational measure - you shouldn't have them. If you create children for whom you can create no future, you are a selfish monster . How dare you blackmail me into supporting them?

I have nothing more to add - you can't argue against the truth.