People, I have seen it! "The Interview" - the film that North Korea tried to stop! The film that caused Sony to defy the nation's constitutional right to freedom of speech! The film that...is just another Seth Rogen vehicle: puerile, childish and scatalogical. I can't believe that Pyongyang was so offended by this pile of weak-assed frat-boy gags that it supposedly resorted to cyberwarfare against Sony to try to stop its release. This film is as subversive as having afternoon tea at Fortnum's. I really am bemused if such tecnological expertise was employed to counter such a dud, unless the Supreme Leader really does have so fragile an ego that he would be offended by his portrayal as a bit of a brat and a bully (albeit with nuclear weapons at his disposal).
The current hit musical in the West End, The Book of Mormon, offers better gags great songs, better acting AND a good bit of fun-poking at the Mormon religion. What was the response of the Church of the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ? They took out advertising space in the programme for the production. They also ran ads on the side of London buses when the production opened. They understood that by flapping their arms and gnashing their teeth and trying to ban the production, it would merely serve to heighten the digs that were made in the musical. Instead, they used the energy generated by the show to their advantage and rode on its coattails for a while. By pompously threatening retaliation on the nation that spawned 'The Interview' if it was shown in cinemas, North Korea have played up to the stereotype of humourless Stalinists and confirmed the impression that virtually every American citizen holds about that country.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I smell the nasty odour of PR: Seth takes the completed film to Sony who take one look and are appalled - not by the potential for upsetting Pyongyang but because, in keeping with the Thanksgiving release date planned, it is a turkey of gigantic proportions! How to salvage something from this vanity project gone wrong? Make it the film that 'they' don't want you to see. Play up the image of North Korea as the bogeyman, claim there have been worrying threats and pull the film from its initial release date. Then, when there has been sufficient time for sympathetic journalists to help fan the flames and the film has become a cause celebre, the forbidden fruit the consumer craves, offer a limited release in a few cinemas and online. Et voila! - suckers like me want to see what all the hype is about and find that it is...the emperor's new clothes, but big style!
I wanted it to be something worth getting worked up about. I guess the words 'Seth' and 'Rogen' on the poster should have told me that that was never going to happen....
Saturday, 3 January 2015
Friday, 2 January 2015
Don't tell me your resolutions, please...
I don't do New Year's resolutions. Never really have and I am not about to start now. Don't get me wrong - in the past I have had a vague thought somewhere around midnight on several 31sts of December that in the coming 12 months I might stop smoking/drink less/exercise more/learn to meditate etc. etc. The reality, however, is always the same: I was smoking again by the second week of January, exercise and meditation remained stubbornly unticked in the 'To Do' section of the diary received as a Christmas present and as for drinking less, well somebody has to deal with that EU wine lake for heaven's sake!
So, at the start of a new year with all the possibilities that such a blank canvas provides, we too often set ourselves up with a big stick to beat ourselves with. By taking on resolutions that are full of good intention but without the will or strategy to see them through to completion, we are heading towards a big, fat downer when the failure happens. We can then beat ourselves up about it, promise to better next year and start the whole sorry cycle again. Why inflict this on ourselves? I have found that most often, change happens in ways that are nothing to do with resolutions: I quit smoking because I started to smoke fewer and fewer cigarettes each day until I found that having one or two cigarettes a day to remind myself that I was a smoker becaume a silly thing to do - that action of inhaling the smoke from burning vegetable matter became absurd!
If you are going to set resolutions make sure thay are few in number (having a list a mile long guarantees that some will be failed - why not set a list you can achieve?), your goals are realistic and achievable and - really important this one - have a deadline attached that is not some vague notion of "by the end of the year": you will kid yourself that you will get around to it at some point in the next 12 months, but you won't. And there is one more thing: you really need to want to achieve this goal. A friend has been trying to quit smoking for some while without success. The trouble is though, he enjoys it. Leaving aside the known health risks (we all know 'em), why is he going to deprive himself of something he enjoys. An attitude has to change before a resolution can be fulfilled.
So, I am avoiding the possibility of failure by not setting myself any 'disappointment targets' (or resolutions, if you prefer) for 2015. Apart from one. I'm not saying what it is but it should be come obvious as we progress through the year. Let's see if I can stick to the task, shall we?
So, at the start of a new year with all the possibilities that such a blank canvas provides, we too often set ourselves up with a big stick to beat ourselves with. By taking on resolutions that are full of good intention but without the will or strategy to see them through to completion, we are heading towards a big, fat downer when the failure happens. We can then beat ourselves up about it, promise to better next year and start the whole sorry cycle again. Why inflict this on ourselves? I have found that most often, change happens in ways that are nothing to do with resolutions: I quit smoking because I started to smoke fewer and fewer cigarettes each day until I found that having one or two cigarettes a day to remind myself that I was a smoker becaume a silly thing to do - that action of inhaling the smoke from burning vegetable matter became absurd!
If you are going to set resolutions make sure thay are few in number (having a list a mile long guarantees that some will be failed - why not set a list you can achieve?), your goals are realistic and achievable and - really important this one - have a deadline attached that is not some vague notion of "by the end of the year": you will kid yourself that you will get around to it at some point in the next 12 months, but you won't. And there is one more thing: you really need to want to achieve this goal. A friend has been trying to quit smoking for some while without success. The trouble is though, he enjoys it. Leaving aside the known health risks (we all know 'em), why is he going to deprive himself of something he enjoys. An attitude has to change before a resolution can be fulfilled.
So, I am avoiding the possibility of failure by not setting myself any 'disappointment targets' (or resolutions, if you prefer) for 2015. Apart from one. I'm not saying what it is but it should be come obvious as we progress through the year. Let's see if I can stick to the task, shall we?
Thursday, 1 January 2015
The stroke of midnight
I'm definitely getting too old for seeing in the New Year. For the second year in succession, the chimes of midnight and the cries of "Happy New Year" were probably drowned out by our snores as we slept our way into 2015. The musical delights that make up Hootenanny were, once again, insufficient to stave off the tiredness resulting from wine at lunchtime and meeting with friends at the pub earlier in the evening. Alcohol, a warm room and a comfortable sofa combine to make a powerful natural sedative that gets me every time...
Lunchtime, on the other hand, more than made up for missing out on toasting in the New Year. For the first time in forever, Elaine did not have to work on New Year's Eve so we decided to treat ourselves to a few tapas at Levanter, a little gem of a place in Ramsbottom. Aubergine fritters with saffron and honey, chorizo cooked in sherry and Moroccan-spiced belly pork ribs were among the dishes that we saw off with gluttonous gusto. I love that place: the food is heavenly and the atmosphere is perfect. It could do with being just that little bit bigger as, by the time we left, customers were waiting at the bar to be seated to eat. Perhaps if they expand some of the magic will go. It is a fine line between intimate and impersonal.
On balance, I'd call it a good New Year's Eve: no, we weren't awake for the midnight toasting, but we were together, happy and full of nice food and laughter shared with friends earlier in the evening. I'd definitely call that a "glass half full" situation. In fact, it literally was glasses half full of flat champagne in the morning. Didn't stop me finishing them off though...
Have a happy, healthy and peaceful 2015.
Lunchtime, on the other hand, more than made up for missing out on toasting in the New Year. For the first time in forever, Elaine did not have to work on New Year's Eve so we decided to treat ourselves to a few tapas at Levanter, a little gem of a place in Ramsbottom. Aubergine fritters with saffron and honey, chorizo cooked in sherry and Moroccan-spiced belly pork ribs were among the dishes that we saw off with gluttonous gusto. I love that place: the food is heavenly and the atmosphere is perfect. It could do with being just that little bit bigger as, by the time we left, customers were waiting at the bar to be seated to eat. Perhaps if they expand some of the magic will go. It is a fine line between intimate and impersonal.
On balance, I'd call it a good New Year's Eve: no, we weren't awake for the midnight toasting, but we were together, happy and full of nice food and laughter shared with friends earlier in the evening. I'd definitely call that a "glass half full" situation. In fact, it literally was glasses half full of flat champagne in the morning. Didn't stop me finishing them off though...
Have a happy, healthy and peaceful 2015.
Saturday, 26 April 2014
Breaking up with Breaking Bad is hard to do
Like the West Wing before it, I had completely missed out on the phenomenon that was Breaking Bad as its story unfolded over five seasons. As I notice that friends have only recently caught up with it, I can only assume that this was the reason no-one in my acquaintance was telling me about this much-watch program from the US. Better late than never I say, so, over the course of a couple of weeks enforced TV consumption facilitated by a broken ankle, I positively gorged on BrBa, gulping down episode after episode. And now, here I am on the other side of the journey and, I have to say, what a journey it was!
In Walter White, his creator, Vince Gilligan, has found a character that, whilst growing more ruthless, more egotistical, more selfish as we traverse the arc of the story, still retains a massive attraction for the viewer. Whilst Walter becomes a monster, causing heartache, destruction and death all around him, there is still something recognisably human there: even when he has just lied or sold a friend out to the 'bad' guys (a very relative term in BrBa), I still never completely lost sympathy for Walter. He is a modern-day Frankenstein's monster, whose genesis (it would seem) lays in his memory of a youthful indiscretion where he sold a future fortune for s few thaousand dollars in rent money and whose growth is triggered by the diagnosis of terminal cancer: years of frustration and bitterness held in check through respectable normality suddenly break loose and Walter sets forth on a mission to reclaim the crown.
Whilst amorality - or, at least, severely twisted morality - seems to run throughout the story, most of the characters are not completely bad, but instead find themselves wrestling with their consciences when they should be truly 'bad'. Nearly every character will make at least one very key wrong decision during the story because of a sudden burst of humanity or because they let a trait such as pride or greed influence their choices. Similarly, there are no simple 'good' characters: the real world is too complicated for anyone to simply don a white hat and be the hero. Even the figures of authority are shown to be flawed and conflicted. I guess it comes down to 'compromise': whilst a character should fully commit to certain actions, too often, they take into account other factors and try to implement a compromise action. As the dead-eyed Mike observes, you need to be going in full measure, not half measure. Compromise causes so many problems…
Apart from Walter, there is a truly great bunch of key characters involved in the story who all have proper meat on their bones so as to make them integral to the richness of the story-telling and not mere cogs designed to propel the story forwards: Jesse, Walt's right hand man, all cocky and full of bravado but, as we find over the course of 5 seasons, is actually sensitive and not cut out for the world that Walter creates; Gus, the drug kingpin who appears calm and calculating with a backstory that is hinted at but never fully explained (the scene which involves him getting undressed before donning protective gear is absolutely riveting in its precision - what is about to happen?); Skyler, Walt's wife who is, in turn, kept in the dark, then finds out about Walt's 'other' life as a drug lord, becomes a participant in Walter's world before, finally, rejecting Walter and choosing to protect her children; Saul, the clown-like but effective lawyer who keeps the shaky enterprise and warring factions on course throughout. The list goes on…
On top of the great writing and the great characters, however, I have to mention three other aspects which make BrBa very special. The production design is brilliant - use of different colour pallates for different characters at different points in their stories or to signal their emotional state at a point in time. The direction and editing are top notch with many memorable set pieces and use of objects to frame the action. Special mention here, too, for the pre-title vignettes, some of which were straightforward, but others were absolutely and gloriously out there (I'm thinking especially of the narcocorrido about Heisenberg - genius!). Which brings us to the music used throughout the series. The choices used for various scenes were almost always spot-on and often used tunes that are a little more 'off the beaten track' rather than using overworked standard selections. Tommy James and the Shondells "Crystal Blue Persuasion" anyone?
All in all, a very involving and satisfying story which for me, in it's 4th and 5th seasons and, especially, the finale, demonstrated a brilliance that came across like an explosion happening in ultra slo-mo: an inevitable conclusion, but a thing of terrible beauty while it unfolds before our eyes. I'm really glad I finally caught up with it but, as with most things that are enjoyable, there is a sadness that it is now over, even though it was right to stop where it stopped and in the way it stopped. Pretty much perfection.
In Walter White, his creator, Vince Gilligan, has found a character that, whilst growing more ruthless, more egotistical, more selfish as we traverse the arc of the story, still retains a massive attraction for the viewer. Whilst Walter becomes a monster, causing heartache, destruction and death all around him, there is still something recognisably human there: even when he has just lied or sold a friend out to the 'bad' guys (a very relative term in BrBa), I still never completely lost sympathy for Walter. He is a modern-day Frankenstein's monster, whose genesis (it would seem) lays in his memory of a youthful indiscretion where he sold a future fortune for s few thaousand dollars in rent money and whose growth is triggered by the diagnosis of terminal cancer: years of frustration and bitterness held in check through respectable normality suddenly break loose and Walter sets forth on a mission to reclaim the crown.
Whilst amorality - or, at least, severely twisted morality - seems to run throughout the story, most of the characters are not completely bad, but instead find themselves wrestling with their consciences when they should be truly 'bad'. Nearly every character will make at least one very key wrong decision during the story because of a sudden burst of humanity or because they let a trait such as pride or greed influence their choices. Similarly, there are no simple 'good' characters: the real world is too complicated for anyone to simply don a white hat and be the hero. Even the figures of authority are shown to be flawed and conflicted. I guess it comes down to 'compromise': whilst a character should fully commit to certain actions, too often, they take into account other factors and try to implement a compromise action. As the dead-eyed Mike observes, you need to be going in full measure, not half measure. Compromise causes so many problems…
Apart from Walter, there is a truly great bunch of key characters involved in the story who all have proper meat on their bones so as to make them integral to the richness of the story-telling and not mere cogs designed to propel the story forwards: Jesse, Walt's right hand man, all cocky and full of bravado but, as we find over the course of 5 seasons, is actually sensitive and not cut out for the world that Walter creates; Gus, the drug kingpin who appears calm and calculating with a backstory that is hinted at but never fully explained (the scene which involves him getting undressed before donning protective gear is absolutely riveting in its precision - what is about to happen?); Skyler, Walt's wife who is, in turn, kept in the dark, then finds out about Walt's 'other' life as a drug lord, becomes a participant in Walter's world before, finally, rejecting Walter and choosing to protect her children; Saul, the clown-like but effective lawyer who keeps the shaky enterprise and warring factions on course throughout. The list goes on…
On top of the great writing and the great characters, however, I have to mention three other aspects which make BrBa very special. The production design is brilliant - use of different colour pallates for different characters at different points in their stories or to signal their emotional state at a point in time. The direction and editing are top notch with many memorable set pieces and use of objects to frame the action. Special mention here, too, for the pre-title vignettes, some of which were straightforward, but others were absolutely and gloriously out there (I'm thinking especially of the narcocorrido about Heisenberg - genius!). Which brings us to the music used throughout the series. The choices used for various scenes were almost always spot-on and often used tunes that are a little more 'off the beaten track' rather than using overworked standard selections. Tommy James and the Shondells "Crystal Blue Persuasion" anyone?
All in all, a very involving and satisfying story which for me, in it's 4th and 5th seasons and, especially, the finale, demonstrated a brilliance that came across like an explosion happening in ultra slo-mo: an inevitable conclusion, but a thing of terrible beauty while it unfolds before our eyes. I'm really glad I finally caught up with it but, as with most things that are enjoyable, there is a sadness that it is now over, even though it was right to stop where it stopped and in the way it stopped. Pretty much perfection.
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
The sins of the father
Unsuprisingly, I have never cared for the Daily Mail. It is not just about its politics, it's about the whole package, the whole ethos it seems to embody. If the Telegraph is the house magazine of the Tory party, the Mail must hold the same position for UKIP supporters. It epitomises Little England values, pining constantly for a world it believes is slipping away although, in fact, it probably never existed. The Mail has probably been complaining about the loss of 'traditional British values' since the Normans invaded - it certainly feels that way. More recently, it has become like every other tabloid: completely obsessed with 'celebrity', especially in its online incarnation. The infamous "Sidebar of Shame" is filled with pictures of actresses from US soaps displaying their "beach-toned" bodies in bikinis, lovingly relayed to middle-aged middle class voyeurs - sorry, 'readers' - via multiple luridly papped photos. The Mail just never appealed to me. Its rubbishing of any politician anywhere to the left of Genghis Khan was to be expected and pretty much par for the course.
However, on Saturday, the Mail ran a piece on the late Ralph Miliband, the father of the Labour party's David and Ed. Under a lurid headline (The man who hated Britain...So what did Miliband Snr really believe in? The answer should disturb everyone who loves this country) it went on to denigrate the service of a man who fought for this country in WWII on the basis of a quote made ina diary written when he was 17 years old. The quote read:
'The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world . . . you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the Continent . . . To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation.'
That this is the 'evidence' that Ralph Miliband 'hated ' Britain is spectcularly piss-poor. What makes it better though is to replce the word "Englishman" with "Daily Mail" - that is almost a perfect fit! The little Englanders who still belive that we have some Imperial 'right' in the world and haven't noticed that we have, indeed, lost the empire. That is not 'hating Britain' - that is telling some difficult truths to people who refuse to notice that the world is changing. And what does attacking the (dead) father of the Labour leader prove? a) Political ideas are genetically inherited? b) Jewish contributions to the war effort count less than others? or c) the Mail is worried that Labour and Ed Miliband are pulling ahead in the polls? Hmmm - I'll choose 'c".
The Mail's conviction that Miliband has embraced his father's politics wholeheartedly also needs to be challenged. Ralph Miliband was an awowed Marxist. Whatever Ed may or may not be, he is NOT a Marxist. A standard tactic of the right is to refer to anyone with a view to the left of theirs as a 'Marxist'. Wrong, wrong, wrong! And insulting to boot! I'm absolutely certain that Ed learned much from his dad, but he is certainly not a radical Marxist and anyone who thinks he is must surely write for the Mail. What Ed belives is what Ed believes and citing the father as a guide to that is, at best, a pretty hazy connection. After all, absolutely no-one has pointed out that the great-grandfather of the current owner of the Mail thought Hitler was doing great things in Europe and loved the idea of the Blackshirts in Britain! So, it seems that if you are Marxist, you are cursed and your progeny are to be derided, but if you are Rothermere, your buddies in the Establishment turn a blind eye to the views you espoused before the war and you get to keep your newspaper which you hand on to your progengy to carry on the dissemination of poisonous bile.
In the course of a few days, the actions of the Mail and their apologists (yes, YOU, the guy on Newsnight tonight) have turned me from a "Oh, the Mail - so what?" kinda guy to a "This shite should be swept from the face of the Earth" kinda guy. Journalistically worthless, whay does any thinking person buy it? One more thing: I hate passionately the stance that the Mail takes on "our" values. It constantly refers to "our" values as if they speak with the voice of Britain. Let me tell you, Daily Mail, I love my country, but I hate you with every fibre of my being. You represent nothing that is good about Britain. In fact, you are contributing to the meanness and bigotry that is dragging this nation down. If it wasn't so tragic, it would almost be funny...
I wanted to dissect more, to rail further against the blithe assassination of a man's character that this filthy rag thinks it can get away with, but it is late and I'm tired. In the meantime, this is interesting (or is it terrifying?) food for thought http://t.co/BTm5lNc4oc. The Mail is firing the first salvos in a war to destroy the Labour party by any means possible and that means it is scared. Take heart!
Edit: I forgot to mention one further piece of crap in this whole 'story'. Ed Miliband was so upset by the denigration of his late father that he asked for a right of reply in the Mail. They duly allowed him the space to give us his version of his father. This prompted the Mail to reprint the offending article and to run a piece that staunchly defended character assassination whilst further rubbishing Ed. Also it veered off at a tangent to note that Ed supports statutory press regulation, another reason we should all hate him as it means the end of free speech. Well, if free speech is to be squandered on the politically-motivated smearing of a dead man and the snide and cynical hijacking of the defence of that man's reputation by his son, then the Mail is doing a brilliant job of pissing it away and further cheapening the British 'values' it bangs on and on about.
However, on Saturday, the Mail ran a piece on the late Ralph Miliband, the father of the Labour party's David and Ed. Under a lurid headline (The man who hated Britain...So what did Miliband Snr really believe in? The answer should disturb everyone who loves this country) it went on to denigrate the service of a man who fought for this country in WWII on the basis of a quote made ina diary written when he was 17 years old. The quote read:
'The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world . . . you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to show them how things are. They have the greatest contempt for the Continent . . . To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation.'
That this is the 'evidence' that Ralph Miliband 'hated ' Britain is spectcularly piss-poor. What makes it better though is to replce the word "Englishman" with "Daily Mail" - that is almost a perfect fit! The little Englanders who still belive that we have some Imperial 'right' in the world and haven't noticed that we have, indeed, lost the empire. That is not 'hating Britain' - that is telling some difficult truths to people who refuse to notice that the world is changing. And what does attacking the (dead) father of the Labour leader prove? a) Political ideas are genetically inherited? b) Jewish contributions to the war effort count less than others? or c) the Mail is worried that Labour and Ed Miliband are pulling ahead in the polls? Hmmm - I'll choose 'c".
The Mail's conviction that Miliband has embraced his father's politics wholeheartedly also needs to be challenged. Ralph Miliband was an awowed Marxist. Whatever Ed may or may not be, he is NOT a Marxist. A standard tactic of the right is to refer to anyone with a view to the left of theirs as a 'Marxist'. Wrong, wrong, wrong! And insulting to boot! I'm absolutely certain that Ed learned much from his dad, but he is certainly not a radical Marxist and anyone who thinks he is must surely write for the Mail. What Ed belives is what Ed believes and citing the father as a guide to that is, at best, a pretty hazy connection. After all, absolutely no-one has pointed out that the great-grandfather of the current owner of the Mail thought Hitler was doing great things in Europe and loved the idea of the Blackshirts in Britain! So, it seems that if you are Marxist, you are cursed and your progeny are to be derided, but if you are Rothermere, your buddies in the Establishment turn a blind eye to the views you espoused before the war and you get to keep your newspaper which you hand on to your progengy to carry on the dissemination of poisonous bile.
In the course of a few days, the actions of the Mail and their apologists (yes, YOU, the guy on Newsnight tonight) have turned me from a "Oh, the Mail - so what?" kinda guy to a "This shite should be swept from the face of the Earth" kinda guy. Journalistically worthless, whay does any thinking person buy it? One more thing: I hate passionately the stance that the Mail takes on "our" values. It constantly refers to "our" values as if they speak with the voice of Britain. Let me tell you, Daily Mail, I love my country, but I hate you with every fibre of my being. You represent nothing that is good about Britain. In fact, you are contributing to the meanness and bigotry that is dragging this nation down. If it wasn't so tragic, it would almost be funny...
I wanted to dissect more, to rail further against the blithe assassination of a man's character that this filthy rag thinks it can get away with, but it is late and I'm tired. In the meantime, this is interesting (or is it terrifying?) food for thought http://t.co/BTm5lNc4oc. The Mail is firing the first salvos in a war to destroy the Labour party by any means possible and that means it is scared. Take heart!
Edit: I forgot to mention one further piece of crap in this whole 'story'. Ed Miliband was so upset by the denigration of his late father that he asked for a right of reply in the Mail. They duly allowed him the space to give us his version of his father. This prompted the Mail to reprint the offending article and to run a piece that staunchly defended character assassination whilst further rubbishing Ed. Also it veered off at a tangent to note that Ed supports statutory press regulation, another reason we should all hate him as it means the end of free speech. Well, if free speech is to be squandered on the politically-motivated smearing of a dead man and the snide and cynical hijacking of the defence of that man's reputation by his son, then the Mail is doing a brilliant job of pissing it away and further cheapening the British 'values' it bangs on and on about.
Saturday, 31 August 2013
A dysfunctional relationship
On Thursday, the British parliament did something wonderful: it not only put the brakes on the juggernaut trundling to war, but it went further and forced the PM to concede that, certainly at this time, the British people did not want to get involved in another ill-thought-through Middle Eastern escapade. Since then, some people have been banging on about the damage done to the "special relationship" we supposedly share with the US. The Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, was among this sorry chorus chanting "Woe, woe and thrice woe!". But hold on - if we have any kind of 'relationship' and if we are supposed to be friends, doesn't that mean that we should be able to speak openly, to disagree, to hint pretty loudly that we think the route being pursued by our friend is wrong? Surely true friendship isn't about the bigger, richer friend being allowed to make all the decisions while the weaker, poorer friend merely tags along for the ride, hoping that, if things turn out well, some reflected kudos will maybe come their way? In my book, a true 'relationship' or 'friendship' would mean that each party can say what they feel without fearing that a wrong word will cause a spiteful reaction from the other. If we are in a 'relationship' of any sort - special or not - with a power that might arbitrarily cut us off because our elected representatives had the temerity to listen to the people who put them there, then that is no relationship that we should want to be part of.
The other thing to come out of the vote in Parliament was the story that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, stood and hecked the Tories who voted against the government by screeching at them "Your'e a disgrace!". No Michael, actually, they are a refreshing change: MPs who were not prepared to cow-tow to the party whips when their constituents had voiced concerns over our getting involved in another war while our troops are still being killed in Afghanistan. What those MPs were doing, Michael, was called democracy as it should be: we, the people, elect representatives to represent our wishes in Parliament. MPs are elected by people within a constituency. Due to the complexities of the British voting system, most people end up voting along party lines but but they are still voting in the belief that, whoever they elect, that person is going to look after the interests of their town, to promote and defend it at a national level. When those MPs voted against the motion last night, perhaps they actually showed that some in Westminster still understand the relationship between the electorate and the elected. Mr Gove's relationship with the democratic process in pouring scorn on their actions would seem to be just a little dysfunctional.
The other thing to come out of the vote in Parliament was the story that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, stood and hecked the Tories who voted against the government by screeching at them "Your'e a disgrace!". No Michael, actually, they are a refreshing change: MPs who were not prepared to cow-tow to the party whips when their constituents had voiced concerns over our getting involved in another war while our troops are still being killed in Afghanistan. What those MPs were doing, Michael, was called democracy as it should be: we, the people, elect representatives to represent our wishes in Parliament. MPs are elected by people within a constituency. Due to the complexities of the British voting system, most people end up voting along party lines but but they are still voting in the belief that, whoever they elect, that person is going to look after the interests of their town, to promote and defend it at a national level. When those MPs voted against the motion last night, perhaps they actually showed that some in Westminster still understand the relationship between the electorate and the elected. Mr Gove's relationship with the democratic process in pouring scorn on their actions would seem to be just a little dysfunctional.
Friday, 2 August 2013
Wrong Comparison
Recently, the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Bruce Keogh, published his report into what might be done to turn around 14 hospitals deemed to be 'failing'. It was a very good report: clear, concise and featured eight actions that, if put in train, might improve not only the 14 hospitals in question, but many other providers that are teetering on the brink of joining them. Then, a few days later, he said this about the need for the NHS to do more with less resources:
“If you go down to PC World or Dixons, each year you would expect to pay less for a PC and you would also expect the specifications to improve. I have all sorts of people [in the NHS] saying to me: ‘Give me £1,000, give me £200,000; I can improve our service’. My challenge is: every other aspect of industry has to improve the quality they offer for less. So we need to change that mindset.”
Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with his stating that we (the NHS) will have to do more for less: that is, like it or not, a fact. With savings of £20 billion already fracturing the service and a further £30 billion that wiil, potentially, need to be found down the back of the sofa coupled with increasing demand, the NHS is going to have to do more with less. What I find a bit misguided is his use of the 'PC World and Dixons' analogy. Dixons disappeared from our high streets some while ago (are you trying to tell us something, Bruce?) and PC World...well PC World are hardly the business that I would like to be compared with. PC World is staffed by too many people who know little about the products they are selling, they are just interested in shifting units. On top of that, their aftersales service, unless it has vastly improved, is awful. As I say, it's about shifting units, not customer care, entirely the opposite to the model I would hope Sir Bruce would want the NHS to employ.
In addition, PC World merely ells the gadgets: it is not responsible (in the main) for the unit cost of those gadgets. That the cost of computer memory has dropped like a stone in the last ten tears is not down to PC World. The technology that PC World sells is getting ever cheaper. The technology that the NHS employs, whether it is drugs, devices, scanners of radiotherapy units, is getting ever more expensive. The costs of training the doctors and nurses to deliver healthcare is, I would suggest, increasing at a rate that far outstips the rise in the wage bill at PC World. To me, comparing the NHS to PC World and Dixons is about about as useful as all those people who say "Running the economy is just like managing a household butdget". It isn't, not even close. And the coming/current NHS funding crisis is going to take rather more to solve than staff rolling their sleeves up and 'piling it high and selling it cheap'.
“If you go down to PC World or Dixons, each year you would expect to pay less for a PC and you would also expect the specifications to improve. I have all sorts of people [in the NHS] saying to me: ‘Give me £1,000, give me £200,000; I can improve our service’. My challenge is: every other aspect of industry has to improve the quality they offer for less. So we need to change that mindset.”
Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with his stating that we (the NHS) will have to do more for less: that is, like it or not, a fact. With savings of £20 billion already fracturing the service and a further £30 billion that wiil, potentially, need to be found down the back of the sofa coupled with increasing demand, the NHS is going to have to do more with less. What I find a bit misguided is his use of the 'PC World and Dixons' analogy. Dixons disappeared from our high streets some while ago (are you trying to tell us something, Bruce?) and PC World...well PC World are hardly the business that I would like to be compared with. PC World is staffed by too many people who know little about the products they are selling, they are just interested in shifting units. On top of that, their aftersales service, unless it has vastly improved, is awful. As I say, it's about shifting units, not customer care, entirely the opposite to the model I would hope Sir Bruce would want the NHS to employ.
In addition, PC World merely ells the gadgets: it is not responsible (in the main) for the unit cost of those gadgets. That the cost of computer memory has dropped like a stone in the last ten tears is not down to PC World. The technology that PC World sells is getting ever cheaper. The technology that the NHS employs, whether it is drugs, devices, scanners of radiotherapy units, is getting ever more expensive. The costs of training the doctors and nurses to deliver healthcare is, I would suggest, increasing at a rate that far outstips the rise in the wage bill at PC World. To me, comparing the NHS to PC World and Dixons is about about as useful as all those people who say "Running the economy is just like managing a household butdget". It isn't, not even close. And the coming/current NHS funding crisis is going to take rather more to solve than staff rolling their sleeves up and 'piling it high and selling it cheap'.
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