Why mankind must be destroyed

Is there any sight that fills you with greater sadness and anger directed against your so-called "fellow" humans than this?

Sure, there are plenty of other things that might convince you that humanity is not fit to exist – but few things sum it all up more than a dog turd in a plastic bag discarded in a field.

To anyone who does this: if you're going to pick the turd up, put it in a bin or dispose of it at home. If you just dump it in a plastic bag somewhere, IT IS WORSE THAN JUST LEAVING IT.

Dog shit biodegrades after a week or so, and is gone, back into the circle of life, along with all the fox shit, hedgehog shit, bat shit and owl shit that's already in the field there for the little kiddies to pick up. Plastic bags don't degrade. They last forever. So the turd will be there forever too.

That's the best possible outcome. More likely, the bag will sooner or later get torn, so the turd will degrade, but more slowly than before. So it sits around in the field, attracting flies, spreading disease, getting stepped on etc etc for months. And then, there's still a plastic bag blowing around the field.

Who do you think is going to take away your little dog poo bag? I'm not. It's one thing to pick up your own dog's shit, but I draw the line at someone else's (photographing it, however, is a different matter...).

To anyone and everyone who has ever done this: You deserve to be sealed in a plastic bag, with a dog turd and left in a field.

A constructive use of time – learning German, pt 2

Michel Thomas and I have been getting along great. I think that I'd probably be his favourite pupil if (i) he were not dead, (ii) we'd ever met and (iii) I was being taught German by him along with the other muppets on his foundation course CDs. I'm way better at it than them.

I reckon he'd say "Right!" to me quite a lot. Which leads me to an early problem in writing about learning to speak German, as opposed to writing German. I can't find any satisfactory way of transposing how Michel says "Right!" due to his Franco-German accent. At best, it's kind of like:

Ggggcccchrrriiiiight!

His "r" is that sort of throat clearing sound that language learning books will (lazily) tell you time and again is like the "ch" in the Scottish "loch". Put aside the fact that they are referencing a different language in order to explain how it's said in English AND the fact that "how to learn Spanish" books use the same simile for pronouncing "j" – it's not ggggcccchrrriiiiight.

The closest I can get to it is the growl Tigger makes after he's finished singing his theme song in the Winnie the Pooh cartoons. Unfortunately I can't find a link which includes it, so you'll have to imagine it.

However, while searching for the above I got this AWESOME Swedish version of the song. And this version in Finnish is even better.

Anyway.

The Michel Thomas method is a very unusual way of learning.

I'm 4 CDs in to the course, and we're probably using no more than 200 different words – and yet building up long sentences like "I'm not going to give it to you today because I don't have it now." It's all about grammar and word order, with vocabulary almost being ignored.

Why don't they teach like that in schools? Why do they confuse kids with terms like "dative" instead of saying "to me is mir, me in any other sense is mich"? [Pardon me if it's not quite that simple]. Why did I bother learning the German for "pedestrianised area" (Fußgängerzone – I'll never forget it) at age 14 instead of a rather more useful word like "because" (weil) which I have no recollection of ever coming across before?

And why do we emphasise WRITING in foreign languages at the expense of SPEAKING and LISTENING? The way that Michel has it in his course seems ggggcccchrrriiiiight to me.

Postscript: Please excuse the irrelevant image. I am following the longstanding tradition of newspaper business editors and putting an exciting picture on a boring story.

Beware the crows

You can break down the UK into three kinds of environment, defined by the prevailing forms of bird life.

Number one, urban areas – pigeons overrun cities and town centres like a swarm of leprous medieval beggars.

Number two, songbirds definitive of nice suburban and rural areas, characteristic of places like "leafy Surrey" and villages full of holiday homes with names like Cricklewickle-on-the-Dinglywingly.

Number three – the crows. Denizens of places most simply defined as "bleak". Stick up a housing estate on some moorland, the crows don't go away. Because it's still bleak. They remain, eye witnesses of ancient human sacrifice and the horrifying rites of our ancestors. Today, they hunch sneering down at council estates and wind-battered farm houses, miserable dog walkers and the crap-strewn gardens of residential A-roads.

Crows don't just look creepy. They are creepy, as this article I read in a local paper about a "crow court" makes clear. A group of crows is called a "murder" for god's sake.

Wherever I go (outside areas 1 and 2 above) I can be sure that if I look around, I'll spot a crow, watching me. At least, it looks like it's watching me. Against the sky – even the fart-grey skies of the Yorkshire autumn – the silhouette of a crow is like a black hole, sucking the light from around itself to achieve an almost reflecting darkness.

And this is why I believe crows are not birds at all, but rather extra-dimensional entities. That's not a bird watching you from on top of that lamppost while you wait at a lonely bus-stop as the last of the sun's rays fade away. It's a window straight to hell, and something's peering out at you from in there. Read anything on here and you'll know what I mean.

Imperialism begins at home

If I had huge amounts of debt in personal loans, which I was struggling to repay, and yet every time I saw a charity collector I gave them whatever was in my pocket, you'd think I was an idiot. Not only an idiot – as a husband to Elvira of Castille and father to Roger Jr and Tancred – you'd think I was irresponsible.

So why is it that at a time when the UK has the biggest peace-time deficit in history, the decision to ring-fence international development budgets is not being treated with the scorn it deserves? People in this country are about to have their benefits cut (whether they contributed to them via National Insurance or not), services cut, lose their jobs etc etc – but it's a question of "morality" that the UK continues to hand money over, more often than not, to corrupt, incompetent and barely democratic regimes in the developing world.

Doesn't charity begin at home? For the religious moralists, isn't there something in the Bible about removing stuff from your own eye before worrying about other people's? For the liberal universalists, if the principle of equality demands the relief of absolute poverty wherever it occurs, (i) shouldn't we give vastly more and (ii) why are we so selective in who we give to?

In my humble opinion (which, while you are here is what you will be subjected to, like it or not), the idea that the government can make a "moral" decision to dole out taxpayers' money overseas while taking away services from people in this country, is just more evidence of the fundamental misconception of the role of the state that pervades our political class.

By which I mean, they think it's their money, not our money, that they're spending. They think the state has a status as something more just a means to the end of facilitating our living together in harmony and comfort.

Which brings me onto defence spending. And if you thought from the above that I'm a right-wing maniac, you may begin to realise that my general position does not quite fit onto the simple left-right spectrum.

The UK is currently engaged in one foreign war in central Asia, which has been going on for nine years. Until its recent glorious, spectacular withdrawal – reminiscent of Dunkirk in its heroism - it was involved in another one in the Middle East. British forces were in that one for seven years.

For what?

I think even the most rabid supporter of The War Against Terrorism (hereafter, TWAT) acknowledges that two wars with a combined duration (so far) of 16 years have not made the UK safer. So, the state has failed in its primary function there.

Is there any other justification for the UK being involved in these foreign wars or laying off teachersandnurses (not a typo, simply a portmanteau concept for the "good" public sector) for the sake of having a new aircraft carrier in six years' time?

You know what it is? Let me tell you. Imperialism. The UK just can't let go of it.

We are a medium-sized country and economy with a colossal debt. Why on earth do we need to spend billions on nuclear weapons everyone knows we'll never use?

Forget about the past and any justification there might have been for them during the Cold War – that has NOTHING to do with upgrading Trident today. Are Germany, Japan, Canada, Brazil etc etc any less safe, any more vulnerable to invasion or foreign subversion or any threat that exists in the real world today than the UK because they don't have nuclear weapons? Is Britain taken any more seriously anywhere because we do have nuclear weapons? I don't think so.

Having armed forces that can (on paper) be projected around the world, like giving away charity, is at the grubby level of Realpolitik about nothing more than securing influence. Getting favours by bullying, protection racketeering or bribery.

At the psychological level, both are about willy-waving. About being seen as the big man. The USA can do it because they are the big man. China can do it because they are the big man. Everyone else – including Russia – mistakenly believes that the 20^th century never happened.

Let's finally drop the 19^th century imperialist notion of the "nation state" as something with any justification or mission outside its borders. Look where that got us in the last 200 years. States exist to serve their own citizens and nothing else.

Postscript:

I readily acknowledge that there are counterarguments to the various things I've said here, and that my position simplifies things. Who knows, maybe something I said sounds a bit like something someone else who I wouldn't agree with once said. But if wars can be started because one man thinks "it's the right thing to do", I don't see why I should have to give all viewpoints an equal airing. This is my bloody blog.

A constructive use of time – historical guesswork

There's a war memorial near where I live, in a place called Greengates. Whenever I drive past it, I see the bit relating to the First World War which says:

In grateful memory of the men of Greengates and district who gave their lives in the Great War 1914-1919

I find this very odd. I've never seen a war memorial that claims the First World War ended in 1919, apart from this one. This memorial was put up in 1921.

This has been puzzling me for a while. I doubt that it's a typo and that I'm the first person to notice it in 89 years. I thought maybe it was talking about soldiers who died of their injuries after the end of the war, which seems rather modern and a bit of a dig at all the other war memorials if it were true.

So, it struck me (while I was writing this, in fact - I started off thinking this post was going to be funny) that in 1921, the idea of "the First World War" we have today – with clear beginnings and ends – probably didn't exist then.

Turns out from my extensive historical research – that is googling "greengates war memorial" and reading the end of the Wikipedia entry on the First World War - that a lot of memorials put up right after the war said 1919, because that's when the Treaty of Versailles was signed. I suppose that even in 1921, one couldn't have been sure it wasn't all going to kick off again, what with fighting going on in Turkey until 1923.

Seeing the Battle of Britain 70^th anniversary commemorations this weekend, and seeing how few people who fought in that are left, it's shocking and strange to think how living history turns into book history.

In 1921, they weren't sure when the First World War ended. Now there is pretty much no one left alive who experienced it and people like me can't work out why they got the dates wrong.

That 1919 in Greengates might be a typo, but if it's not then it's quite a vivid little historical detail.

[The picture above is (c) David Spencer, from here. That pub in the background is up for sale, by the way, if anyone's interested]

It's ALWAYS inconvenient to be late

I believe that everyone has a nemesis, and I think I have pinpointed my own.

My nemesis is someone who works in some kind of policy/public relations role at Northern Rail – specifically, whoever is responsible for the wording of announcements.

I caught the train to work today, which is always a bad start, insofar as paying cash up front for the privilege of going to sell my labour empties me of whatever joy may have been present earlier.

I used to do this every day, when I caught the 7.20 train to Leeds. Please note, I have changed the name of the train to protect its reputation. Anyway, this train was delayed by approximately three minutes every single day. Without fail, I would reach the platform only to hear the announcement.

I made me wonder why - if it was genuinely impossible to keep a train that only runs a route of about 30 miles to schedule – they didn't just change the timetable and make it the 7.23 train. Then they could boast about it being on time every single day.

It may seem petty to complain about three minutes. In reply let me point out:

• It rains here every single day, so three minutes seems like a hell of a long time.
• Three minutes, times 250 working days per year, for around two years, is 25 hours I was waiting that three minutes.
• Four posts in and you still think "it's petty" is a reason why I'm NOT going to write about something?

Anyway, getting to the point...

Let me say this clearly: a recorded apology that you play on endless repeat, only editing the details of exactly which train is late and how late it is does not come across as at all sincere. It's not an apology.

I don't believe for one second that you are "sorry" that the 7.20 train for Leeds is delayed by approximately three minutes, and it demeans both you and me that you (Northern Rail) even pretend to believe that your announcement is anything other than irritating. Just tell us how late the train is going to be. Don't tack on an insincere apology.

But if that was the sum total of my complaint, I'd hardly be justified in calling the announcer my nemesis, would I? There are thousands of irritating little things like that thrown in everyone's way every day. What's so special about the relationship between him (I think of my archenemy as a fat man with cold, dead, insect eyes) and me?

Here it is.

The announcement used to say "we apologise for THE inconvenience this may cause to your journey". Now, it says "we apologise for ANY inconvenience this may cause to your journey".

That's not a coincidence. At some level, a conversation took place which went broadly like this:

"You know, I don't think we should just assume that the train being late is inconvenient for passengers. It might not be. They might like it."

"Hmmm...you're right. We don't want to take on any more blame than we have to."

"Yes, so we shouldn't just presume that there is 'the inconvenience' – we should leave it open, and say 'any inconvenience'."

"Great idea. That way, we're only apologising to people who are actually inconvenienced, and not apologising to those who aren't. Nice one boss."

"I don't give a shit about apologising. It'll be a recorded message anyway. The point is, we take on as little blame as we possibly can."

"Ahhh...I see. Hang on, isn't that all already covered by the word 'may' when we say 'may cause to your journey'? We're not saying that it 'will' cause inconvenience. We're saying it 'may'. We're already disavowing responsibility, aren't we?"

"Maybe, but I think changing 'the' to 'any' is a business-critical step."

"Isn't this all a bit trivial?"

"You're fired."

What possible reason could there be for changing "the" to "any" other than something like the above? And how could it have happened without some thought process like that above taking place and a decision being made to change it?

Why do I care?

It's the sort of linguistic weaselry and low-level attempt at mind control that I can't bear – and as you can see, I can't help imagining that there's someone just as pedantic as me out there working for the forces of darkness.

A constructive use of time – learning German, pt 1

Having recently seen "Julie and Julia" I have decided to insert a theme to this blog over and above "whimsical misanthropy", with the hope of getting my work made into a book and major Hollywood film.

Naturally, I would like to be played by Leonardo Di Caprio in this movie, with whom I share certain irreparable facial creasings between the eyebrows, due to prolific frowning.

Anyway, I want to share with you the experience of learning the German language by way of the Michel Thomas foundation course. Eight CDs and £27 from Amazon, as opposed to the usual RRP of about £80. Not a bad start!

Just learning a foreign language would hardly be gripping enough for a major motion picture, unless of course I arbitrarily impose a deadline – probably of a year. That will undoubtedly give rise to all sorts of dramatic ebbs and flows which will allow compression into a gripping 90 or so minutes.

What I like about the Michel Thomas method is that he asks – nay, demands – that you don't try to learn or memorise anything. I can assure the late Mr Thomas that I will abide scrupulously by that injunction!

He sounds like a fairly interesting character and comes across as very funny on the CDs (he is extremely intolerant of the two students he uses as a teaching aid) ... I will elaborate on my (entirely fictional) relationship with him as we progress.

In the interests of full disclosure: I did three years of German at school, and I watch a lot of programmes on the History Channel, which seem to feature rather a lot of certain aspects of 20th century German history. I am also good at making German-sounding noises.

So I start from a reasonably strong position. In the wise words of Jimmy Nesbitt in an old Yellow Pages ad about yoga: "I see myself as more of an intermediate".

I'll fill you in with all sorts of detail about why I'm doing this and the hilarious and moving experiences I go through in the course of this over the coming weeks. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll give me a load of money and learn more about the medieval High German consonant shift than you ever thought possible.

Bis Morgen!