Separated at birth

Eurovision Song Competition

I was surprised to read this week one erstwhile commentator  state that the Eurovision Song Contest has evolved; I’m not sure on what premise they base this observation. As far as I can see it is still as safe, staid and homogenised as the monarchy. The only thing that intrigues me is that it still has the ability to attract such a huge viewing audience in days when there are so many alternative sources of entertainment.

I grew up during a period when the competition was still in its infancy. I was never a fan of the music but since when has the competition ever been about the music. Perhaps part of the success stemmed from the naive belief that anything foreign was seen to be exotic, and I question whether it would ever have attracted such interest were it not for the fact that there were only two  television channels in this country at the time.

It is surprising just how little has changed over the years, albeit that there are more countries than ever taking part.  The show’s presenters still have that pained expression of ‘what the heck do I do next’ and ‘how can I be spontaneously witty in 20 different languages’. There is still a lot of chiffon, dry ice, pyrotechnics and enough makeup to keep Boots stocked for a week. By and large the songs still follow the same formulaic pattern of plinky-plink catchy or folksy ballads. Then  there is the proud procession of musical arrangers / conductors who queue up for their 15 minutes of fame with optimistic (smug) grins before the annual farce of political point scoring that is supposed to produce a worthy winner. 

If one was to be kind you would have to say that the judging is about the only thing in the competition that has evolved, mainly due to changes in the political climate and the expansion to include more countries. These days it is little more than an opportunity for allies to exchange favours no matter what quality the performance, or settle old scores with enemies that have lasted for centuries.

Each year seems to throw up one  or two oddities where some brave country  tries to step away from convention by entering  a gimmick rather than a song. In the past we have had mime artists, jugglers, punks, dancers,  groups of old ladies and a band that looked like they had come straight from the set of a ‘Mad Max’ movie.   This year  we are to be treated to  a bearded lady from Austria and a boy band on a trampoline from Greece.

Maybe it is a sign of age that I quite liked the unpredictability of the early years, the fact that  it was in black and white with cameras a fair old distance from the stage and the uncertainty of telecommunication links. I can’t say that I am a great fan of modern camera techniques and I don’t really want to see an artist’s nasal hair in high definition on my TV screen.

 I remember back in the 70s and 80s when contestants needed to release versions of their entry in several languages in order to benefit from international sales following the competition. Nowadays a great number of the entries choose to perform their songs in English, which seems to be the lingua franca. This I feel is a pity because I quite liked it when there were so many other languages to listen to. Part of the appeal to me was not understanding the language and having  to create my own words to the song based purely on intonation and facial expressions. I would have loved to have seen the ‘’Finnish’ entry win with what I took to be  a durgy ode to a lettuce or the ‘Turkish’ duo whose ‘ballad of their lost dog’ would have received my vote.

As far as I can see the greatest evolution in the 60 years of this competition has been the level of hype. Though this may increase year on year sadly the quality of the entertainment  has not improved significantly and I for one will be reaching for a good book and giving the TV a wide berth tonight.

Strictly on ice

So Torvill and Dean want  to do ‘Strictly’, a bit of a shoe- in I would have thought given their qualities as choreographers and the poise and elegance they still exhibit on the ice.

I can already imagine the frantic conversations in the BBC production office. Undoubtedly there will need to be some form of handicapping to give other celebrities a chance. Perhaps they will have to do lifts and throws – They already do lifts and throws. What about spins on the ground, or in the air? They already do those. How about  no hands? A regular part of their routine. Well they will have to dance backwards then. Done it, and at speed. We can't have them do it blindfold, health and safety will be on our backs. Oh well, we’ll just have to pair them off with Ann Widdecombe and John Sargent.

Sweet dreams are made of this?

Not for the first time I have found my domestic routine plunged into turmoil by my neighbours. From time to time I am required by my employer to work anti-social hours, meaning I do not get to bed till sun up. It has been many decades since I routinely stumbled into bed at that hour and I still find it difficult to fall asleep at that time of day, even if I have been on the go for 20 hours or more. Given that background you can perhaps understand that I was not overjoyed to be awoken at 10 am by the vibration of the wardrobe. Either the neighbour’s garbage disposal had gone into reverse or their teenage son was taking advantage of his parent’s absence to play his latest ‘musical’ acquisition on the stereo at full throttle. I thought the current thing was to wear expensive headphones (or are they just for showboating in the street?).  Given that I possess a modest collection of vinyl of fairly diverse nature you would think I have a certain empathy with the eclectic  however, there is only so far that taste will permit me to go and sadly that does not extend to listening to what I could only describe as a group of kids clog dancing in custard  while having your head immersed in a fish tank.  Not content with bunking off school for the day I am ‘treated’ to further renditions of the same track, over and over again. Eventually he bores himself into oblivion and disappears off to the shops to see his mates. No sooner has the front door been slammed shut behind him, than the family’s odious pooch starts yapping. I wonder how they would like 300 watts of Stockhausen at 3 am? Probably enjoy it, I’m guessing – only joking, I wouldn’t inflict Stockhausen on my worst enemy.

It dawns on me that there is a thumping pain in my lower jaw. A delicate pawing with my tongue confirms my suspicions that one of my back teeth is playing up. Yup, that nerve is definitely not happy. Did you know that it is possible to estimate a person’s age purely by looking at their teeth. During the 1960’s dentists were paid according to the number of fillings they made, hence I have enough shrapnel in my mouth to make a small saucepan. For over 25 years I suffered the same dentist fervently drilling into each stain or shadow on my teeth as if his life depended on it while bemoaning the fact that dentistry is such a poorly paid profession – then the bugger has the gall to retire at the age of 45! He swans off into the sunset while I am left to ponder his handiwork and await the onset of metal fatigue.  To say my views on dentistry are somewhat tainted is an understatement, after all the film ‘Marathon Man’, with Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier, was released in my mid-teens and if you can sit through the dentistry scene without wincing then my guess is that you don’t have a single nerve in your head.

It’s no good I am awake now – eventually my mind turns to the reasons why I am in this position in the first place and why it was so necessary for me to have to work through the night in the first place. My mind has still been trying to get to grips with the fallout from this week’s budget so it was not long before both strands of consciousness inter-twined with mixed consequences. Being one of  ‘the squeezed middle’ in ‘press-speak’ I don’t feel that the budget has done much to help me (has it ever?). Maybe it was the pain of the tooth but for some reason my loathing was particularly directed towards accountants – why couldn’t they go on strike for a change?  I find it hard to take any figures quoted from government sources seriously given that the economists and accountants who have invariable supplied this information have proved so incompetent in the past. Is it any wonder given that this country is so bad at maths. It seems to me  that most of the figures banded about by politicians are guesstimates, statistics which are then selectively manipulated in whichever direction desired to convey them in the best light to support your point of view – this is modern day accountancy which is very different from the number-crunching role that was the original credo for accountants.

In my youth an accountant was someone who in basic terms added up 2 columns of numbers and ensured that they balanced. Most companies had an Accounts Department which consisted of a couple of earnest looking gentlemen in Arran cardigans and Hush Puppies who beavered away in a smoke filled office surrounded by racks of dust covered ledgers. At my first job after leaving school there were 2 such senior accountants with 1 junior accountant, a trainee accountant and an account’s clerk – within 9 months the department had grown to 60 staff and to this day no one has been able to tell me why.

You could always tell when one of them was on the move because a haze of Old Holborn would waft down the corridor. I can still see their fingers stained in equal measures of nicotine and red ink when they used to hand me their paperwork. A very  different proposition from the Armani clad army of today in their £500 designer shoes.

These days the term 'creative accounting' seems to equate to anything that the company believe they can get away with. A term which the old pencil pushers took to mean switching the ledger from portrait to landscape, or at a pinch embossing the year on the front of the ledger is now an art form for misdirecting and concealing funds so complex that even an accomplished magician would find the processes hard to track.

Obviously there were other areas of accountancy besides simple book keeping but in those days things got done. People who ran departments or companies were allowed to do what was required and the accountant tied up the loose ends, dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s.      

If you wanted to take on a new venture you would go ahead and do it; if you felt you needed more staff you would hire them or if you needed new equipment then you would go ahead and buy it.

Remember the advert of the ‘Bank Manager in the closet’, that was my understanding of their role in life, if I need an accountant I want one in the wardrobe, not one in my face.

These days accountants rule the world, they are no longer number crunchers and hold more sway in the boardroom than many CEOs.  Their involvement in the decision making processes of many companies is quite frightening. How many projects or innovations have been scuppered at the stroke of a red pen?

It would seem that every decision from the 10 year business plan to the choice of coffee stocked in the vending machines has to be signed off by an accountant. The chances are there is some unnamed accountancy spy in your office counting the number of times people fart, while his colleagues investigate whether there is any opportunity to make these tax deductable or pass on the cost to the customer.  The fact that we are still in a global financial crisis is largely due to accountancy ‘oversights’ in the banking sector.

Accountants may understand numbers but few of them have any knowledge of the requirements of the industries they represent, or if they do, they choose to ignore the core principles and focus solely on the process of creating profit for the shareholders.

Companies now employ teams of accountants and lawyers purely to exploit loopholes in the tax system. Is it right that the likes of Starbucks, Google and Amazon should be able to avoid paying tax in certain countries because some smart-arse accountant has found a way to reduce the bills by channelling the figures through countries with a more beneficial tax system?

Accountants everywhere are trying to shave margins off the running cost of their companies, who in turn need to employ more managers to apply these decisions and ensure that targets are met. Life is not all about margins – many companies have already trimmed back their workforce to the bone during the recession yet still the accountants are looking for greater savings. You cannot get blood out of a stone. How many companies are able to provide the same level of service they were 5 years ago? Maybe 4 people could do the work of 5, but are they going to be able to provide the same level of service? Probably not. Maybe skilled workers could be replaced with cheaper, lower skilled staff – can a labourer do the job of a master craftsman? What are the skilled workers expected to do? Employers don’t want to train up new staff, they don’t want to pay for experienced staff – let’s create another ‘squeezed middle’ and see what happens when they become too expensive to employ.

How many opportunities have been passed up because the funding has not been available for investment? How many medical or technical breakthroughs have been missed because the plugs were pulled on the finances? How many jobs have been lost or careers destroyed at the stroke of a pen because it looks neater on the balance sheet? I watched a documentary recently that discussed the number of musicians and entertainers who would never have seen the light of day under present economic pressures. Would the likes of Bob Dylan or The Rolling Stones ever been given a recording contract if they were starting out today? Would shows like ‘Les Miserables’ or ‘Cats’ ever been staged? You only have to look at the number and the types of films and TV that are being made today to see who is holding the purse strings.

No one is prepared to take risks any more yet the government keep harping on about ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘competition’ and ‘pioneers’. It is incredibly hard to get any new idea off the ground when it is so difficult to obtain the necessary financial support and it is so easy for predatory companies to step in and buy up a new company as soon as they feel that the competition might be threat to their share of the market. And who is normally the biggest fly in the ointment? The accountant.

The fact that we have so many ‘Science Parks’, ‘Technology Parks’ and ‘Enterprise Parks’ around the country is symptomatic of the lack of invention demonstrated by the land developers in the naming of their cash cows. Most of the Science Parks I have visited consist of a collection of empty offices, a few call centres, a double glazing company and a tyre / exhaust replacement centre, while the most enterprising thing you will find on many an Enterprise Park is a snack van selling venison and peanut butter burgers.

In this country we have teachers, doctors, nurses, and many other skilled staff leaving their professions because they can no longer tolerate the financial pressures being forced upon them. Many industries report difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified staff, yet few employers are willing to train staff or pay for these skills. It is essential for us to maintain these skills for the future if the economy is to grow otherwise the work will disappear to other countries who have invested in the development of these skills  and we will be left with a nation of baristas, part time shop staff and call centre workers.

The problems back in 2008 should have been a wake up call for everyone but the only thing that seems to have changed is that those largely responsible for the financial turmoil through their lust for profit have learned nothing and are now even more determined to recover their losses through even greater greed.

And after all that you expect me to get out of bed? To hell with it, a couple of Nurofen for my tooth and I’ll take my chances with the neighbour’s ‘backed up disposal unit’.

Sweet dreams.

Winter woes

Is it me or has every third person I meet suddenly become a meteorological expert over the last month? It stands to reason in a country where predicting the weather is virtually a national sport. And if you can`t predict it  accurately then you can always moan about it, which is just as well otherwise there would be no point to me writing this blog.

Once again the Somerset levels has taken an absolute battering, but this year so has most of the country. With Winter, albeit mild, still upon us there is little chance for the water to evaporate soon so it could be months before there is any respite for those who have been worst affected.

In amidst stories of the carnage was the much hyped coverage of what was expected to be an exceptional Severn Bore, due to the flooding and a high Spring tide. Dutifully the BBC sent their camera crews to watch the surfers ride the wave down the river.  A crowd turned up at the crack of dawn to witness the event and the police turned out to watch the crowd. Maybe the high tide and the flood water canceled each other out because nothing seemed to happen, it was all over in a matter of seconds and I have seen bigger ripples in my bath.  

Who would have thought that the main topic of general conversation in the west country pubs and cafes would ever be Dredging - clearly not the numb-sculls who sold the dredging equipment for scrap 20 years ago when they decided to let the land sort itself out. The Somerset levels are below sea level and as such have been managed as wetland for the past 800 years, with the exception of the past 20 years when it was decided that maintaining the land in the tried and trusted manner was too expensive.

There are plenty of candidates who should hang their head in shame for the way this tragic nightmare was allowed to happen, and their failure to respond in a timely fashion. Not least is the mindless spokesman who clearly befaddled by the situation reached for the official government  excuse book and dredged the first stock statement he turned to - “The drains have overflowed because we have have been deluged with the wrong type of water”. Well, slap my thigh and call me Noah, there may be those that would argue that there are different types of water but to do so would be missing the point. It would not matter if what has fallen from the skies was water, blood, champagne or molten gold, the bottom line was that the drainage system was not up to the task of dealing with the huge amount of water. Water, no matter what type it is, will do what it always has and find the path of least resistance.

My property was once flooded when a local fast-food outlet, despite numerous warnings from the council, continually poured their used cooking oil down the drain causing silt to build up in the pipes. Thus the entire street awoke one morning to find raw sewage seeping up through the pores of their property. It is a very unpleasant situation and my heart goes out to those that now find their properties under feet (not inches) of filthy water.

To add insult to injury, as one commentator was quick to point out, the rivers in David Cameron's Oxfordshire constituency were dredged less than 2 years ago. Furthermore, it  is believed that the flooding in and around Staines and Maidenhead was made worse by changes to the waterway system that were made in the area as part of the Queen's jubilee celebrations.

Being British those that have lost their homes and their businesses will undoubtedly pull through and rebuild  their lives as they usually do, while the politicians waste even more taxpayer's money organising countless inquires as to how such devastation was ever allowed to happen. Then having decided on an option to prevent a further recurrence they will realise that there is no money to fund these proposals so they will then set up a series of reviews before kicking the matter into the long grass, which was a contributory factor to the problems in the first place.

I would prefer to hear answers and solutions though I doubt there will be many to come. What I expect to hear is a plethora of tall tales, and not just from the politicians.  Once the water has subsided I fully expect to hear tales of basking sharks being sighted in Taunton High Street, livestock being stranded on roof tops, cats that have taken up residence in tree tops for weeks, 'My 40 days adrift on an airbed', Rick Stein's book of seaweed recipes, mutant crabs the size of footballs, etc.

The further west you go in this country the more far fetched the stories get. Let's not forget that the South West has given us the Beast of Bodmin, The Hound of the Baskervilles, clotted cream mines, a fair sprinkling of Arthurian and druid legends and a wealth of smuggling myths. It is hard not to be sceptical when 1 in 3 of the residents in this part of the world claim to be descended from a Piskie.

There have already been stories of farmers abandoning arable farming and turning their land over to paddy fields. I have also heard rumours of plans to populate the countryside with a network of huge umbrellas – why not get a sponsor to pay for it all? Dream on, maybe they could partially open and close them so that the rain could be spread more evenly across the land. Why not go the whole hog and build flood defences on the Severn Estuary or install a massive Archimedes  Screw (no madam, it is not a sexual practice - Oh, it is in your household) to pump the excess water back into the Atlantic, or better still in the direction of France.

A bad Christmas for cats and cricketers

'An Englishman's home is his castle' is a creed that I was raised on, so I have long viewed a moat and drawbridge as some sort of aspirational ideal. Trudging up the garden path this week, ankle deep in muddy water, wisps of grass breaking through the surface as it wraps around the extremities of my humble semi was not quite what I had in mind. It is hard to recall that only 3 months ago the ground was so dry that the cracks in the lawn were large enough to allow even the most inept English spinner to turn a ball at right angles.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty surreal, even by my standards, and I am not just talking about the appalling weather and the capitulation of the Ashes in Australia. Anyone who has read any of my previous witterings will know that I am less than enthusiastic when it comes to Christmas festivities, life with my current employer is one eternal pantomime so any pretence of merriment has been bludgeoned out of the system long before the first tinkle of sleigh bells.

As someone who often has to force themselves from a perfectly good bed at unearthly hours I took the opportunity of a lie in on Christmas day and awoke naturally at a more respectable hour of 09:30. Hearing my aging limbs being cranked into action my wife bounded into the bedroom to inform me that she, and my stepdaughter had decided to get up early on Christmas morning to open their presents. They are both ‘night owls’ so I know that they will not have come to bed till late. They both also happen to be habitual late risers so for them to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning would require something fairly climactic. Certainly my gifts to them this year were not climactic and maybe I would have felt more empathetic had I been talking to a 5-8 year old, however both my wife and stepdaughter are graduates and I couldn't find it in my heart to break the news to them that there is no Santa Claus. It was the least I could do since they had allowed me to sleep through their nocturnal foray beneath the Christmas tree.

This year being one of the rare occasions when I have not been required to work I chose to use the break to visit friends who I hadn't seen for a while (as opposed to drawing up my imaginary drawbridge). If Christmas Day had been an inauspicious start then the past week became more surreal as it progressed. It would appear that one of my friends has turned her home into a menagerie, with cats and dogs of all shapes and sizes running wild. My wife and I had popped in to say hello and were unaware of the number of animals at the outset. As we sat, drinking coffee and catching up on events I kept seeing these cats flying across my eyeline. For a moment I though something suspicious may have been added to my coffee but soon I realised that it was my host scooping up these creatures from various work surfaces and 'hurling' them to safety. If it wasn't her shooing them away in one direction it was the cats themselves leaping from one surface to another in the opposite direction. I wasn't sure whether I was watching a troupe of Chinese acrobats or a bizarre variation on a dwarf throwing competition. The ease with which the cats were lifted and dispatched in one sweeping movement would suggest that an element of practice had been required though none of the cats seemed remotely phased by the ordeal. Personally it is not something I would want to do or recommend but clearly some of the cats viewed it as a challenge and would head back to the same spot as soon as their feet hit the ground.

The following day I was sitting in the lounge of our bemoated semi trying to come to terms with yet another England batting collapse when the cat that rules the house strutted into the room wearing a bright blue dog coat that would just about fit a Chihuahua, which is about a third the size of an average cat. From his expression it would have been hard for anyone to tell which of us was feeling the more distressed or disillusioned. My enquiries as to the origin of the coat prompted the scornful response that it was his Christmas present, to which I suggested that a set of water wings would have proved more useful. A suggestion that elicited further scorn on account that I had not bought a present for him. And why should I, he isn’t even our cat!

There is no way that I was ever going to win an argument over the cat, nor is there any chance that I will be buying him a matching lead and set of wellies. Fair to say the cat and I co-exist in a spirit of mutual disregard. While the rest of the family may choose to lavish him with affection and inappropriate gifts I keep careful tally of the number of lives he has used.

That he is even in our house is due to the fact that he made a habit of appearing in our midst at odd times having found a way of entering through the small window in our upstairs bathroom. When his owners who lived a few doors away decided to move and abandoned him he decided to move in with us despite my protestations. It is not that I have anything against toothless, old moggies who have clearly done battle with many of the other cats in the neighbourhood, and has the scars and a dickie ticker to prove it, but I don’t think it fair to keep any pet if you are not in a position to look after it properly.

England’s woeful performance was still hurting, time for a consolation mince pie and to remove the offending dog coat. The gummy grin suggested that my gesture was appreciated.

I had an aged aunt who used to stare at me with a toothless grin, didn’t like her much either, though to her credit she didn’t sneak in through the bathroom window unannounced.

During the week we played host to friends of the family who decided to celebrate New Year with us (A brave decision since my personal preference is not to celebrate this occasion, however the rest of the family were still in celebratory mood. The decision to extend this invitation also meant that the 'drawbridge' would be lowered to accommodate a 3 year old child). It is not that I dislike children but on the one occasion that I did go to see 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' on stage I did find myself in the minority cheering on the Child Catcher a bit too enthusiastically.

People keep reminding me that children are our future, this may be true but I choose to think that it may explain why so many people prefer to reflect on the past.

Based on previous experience I would conclude that a 3 year-old is about my intellectual match – we can communicate (to a fashion) without getting in to the realms of awkward questions and generally spend most of the time giggling, even if neither of us know what for.

Perhaps it was a salutary lesson in how time has moved on through the decades. In my days I would probably have ripped all the Christmas wrapping paper to shreds, played with my toys for 5 minutes then spent the rest of the day using the discarded packaging to create my own imaginary world of cars, spacecraft, planes or whatever.

On this occasion, once the novelty of the toys wore off anything was fair game, including the decorations, the food and anything that moved, had a flashing light, made a noise or had a knob to twiddle.

The cat soon realised that not all affection was welcome and chose to make himself scarce whenever possible. After 4 days of torment I was even beginning to feel sorry for the old fella, it can’t be pleasant to be chased around the house by a 3 year-old intent on ‘feeding’ assorted nuts or small sweets into your every orifice.

I put my dislike of children down to the emotional trauma of countless birthday parties in my formative years. Anyone who has hosted a birthday party for a pre-pubescent child will know that it is the equivalent of opening your doors to a herd of stampeding wildebeest and ravenous termites at the same time. Even a 5 year old can work out that ‘Pass the Parcel’ is usually fixed, cut out the pretence of fair play, give the little blighter the prize and go get a life.

Being a shy, quiet child I couldn’t relate to this world of self-inflicted chaos. Stuff your face full of crisps, jelly, and cake, wash it down with lashings of fizzy drink then jump about playing party games until you all turn green from nausea. Should that not be sufficient then there is always 'the bumps' for the party host. In the ultra-safety conscious, politically correct climate they now pervades society it is a wonder it is not obligatory to provide on site paramedic cover.

I should remind you that I was part of the Bri-Nylon generation - 30 of us playing 'ring-a-ring a roses' could generate enough electricity to power 4 houses, 50 and there was a serious risk that one of us would do ourselves a mischief through spontaneous internal combustion.

 
Unless there was a game of football in the offing a glass of milk and being left to read a book would have suited me fine. Why did we always have to dress up for the occasion just so that we could get filthy dirty? If my parents didn’t want to give me ear-ache for getting muddy then they shouldn’t have dressed me in such ridiculous outfits – I wasn’t brought into this world  to be a tailor’s dummy. I have never felt the need to learn how many balloons I could shove up my jumper, how many cream crackers I could fit into my mouth in one go; I have never had a party trick and never indicated any desire to be the centre of attention.

By the time it came for our houseguests to leave England had managed to lose the 4^th Test and the cat had found a reverse gear that enabled him to back into a corner at speed whenever he heard the patter of tiny feet approaching.

England have since managed to lose the 5^th test in spectacular fashion, the water is still lapping around the extremities of the house, panto season has resumed at the office (Oh, yes it has!) and there is more bad weather forecast for the UK.

I am still none the wiser as to how professional cricketers can be selected to play at test level when they don’t even know where there stumps are. It was never a good idea to play 2 test series with only a 3 month break in between. Poor shot selection and a lack of technique has exposed weaknesses that have been evident for some time in the England team. Credit to the Australians for playing the better cricket throughout the series but let’s not get carried away there are very few players in world cricket today who would merit inclusion in an All Time Greatest XI for their country let alone a World XI. 

Trying to look on the bright side anything other than defeat in all 3 group matches by our footballers in this year’s World Cup can be viewed as a national triumph.

I am now contemplating how to pay for Christmas while the rest of the family look at spending more money on Summer holidays. I had been considering bringing my cricket boots out of retirement but then that would be taking surrealism to a new level.