tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-177781012024-03-05T13:53:12.781-08:00Fred RantsDamp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.comBlogger206125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-31234552612089975592018-02-13T09:04:00.002-08:002018-02-13T09:04:44.941-08:00Was it the Wilson Stains or the Thatcher Breeze Block Universities?Was it the snobs at Oxbridge who saw 'stains' of the Harold Wilson as devaluing the whole Unversity system or was it Thatcher and her Breezeblock universites?<br />
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The cynic in me writes- what use a university degree?<br />
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Well Wilson's children who went to the 'red brick' universities got to lick the cream of a rapidly growin economy in the majority of the seventies and the need for better qualified managers, administrators, technocrats and engineers. They got their choice of jobs, often without a vocational degree, and managed to hold onto their career paths while my generation fought against downsizing and delayering, and ended up what we are - lost and up to our eyes in debt.<br />
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I take my Mr Average five career changes now out of necessity to have a local job. Most of my friends have ended up in something they didnt study for, alhtough the entry often did require that bit of paper. Financial advisers, accountants, jobbing General Practictioners, personnel managers.<br />
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If you take all the arts degrees and life sciences, then really you can look at a degree being a bit of a waste of time, in light of the fact that very many have done a masters in a vocational subject or significatn training and extra studying on the job to pass professional exams like financial advisor or within insurance or other areas like IT. Management and economics degrees fair better, while those sought after IT graduates are actually the new assembly line grunts and only in demand so that there is over supply!<br />
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The 'professions' and real engineering fair much better out of it all, with the working class lad or lass made good a very true thing for my generation. Now that is evapourating a little at least.<br />
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Career wise for my school mates and fellow graduates, well it has been reaching middle age and not even in what used to be middle management, We are coal face 'managers' with the baby boomers our line bosses until death do us part.<br />
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I am just a little resentful, but I have no debts from my studies what so ever. Imagine being a decade younger and laden with all that, and exposed the the UK or US rentier economy, where you basically need to take out more loans just to rent your life and keep moving on the career ladder? It is that bad for some, those without rich parents.<br />
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That is the clue. None of my compatriots had parental networks. The old boy thing disappated for a while, to then reassert itself even more insidiously and politically too in many organisations. Little hand picked fascists. We never had power and influence, those who came after us realised that it had to be fought for tooth and nail, as did their 70s urban upwardly mobile parents too. The formula for success changed, not what you know , but who you can influence!<br />
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<br />Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-12286428948135334932017-09-11T17:39:00.001-07:002017-09-11T17:39:49.668-07:00Neuro Needs A New Name..<p dir="ltr">Neuroticism has a bad press. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Without people being neurotic and doubting and questioning, we would never have allowed science to take us to the moon, nor offer our own destruction in a single war it has to be said. Being concerned that things are not going to go well and need further work and investigation holds back the exceesses of flagrant abandon and 'it will sort itself out'.<br><br></p>
<p dir="ltr">If you read Fredrants then you will know I am a good old neurotic yet extravert. But the name has a negative connotation which is most unfair. It is there with the picky, insecure old maid, or the over protective mother, or the ball breakingly pedantic boss no one likes, or just losers in general. But the reverse is true. Many people who suceed in their chosen fields, esepcially science and technology, or in furthering other professions like law are what you would describe as neurotic, but dont have the failings of not being able to act upon their doubts, concerns and questioning. </p>
<p dir="ltr">It is in fact linked to creativity and great achievements. Self doubt is in the picture of course, because we neuros dont soak up praise very often, in fact we are invariably suspicious of praise, However we may well seek approval and recognition, we rarely are satisfied by it. There are some crowning moments when we bathe in accolades, because in fact neurotic people are often the most successful. Why? Because they dont accept things the way they are!</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/confessions-of-a-neurotic-extravert/">In this Am'Science Article the author gives an</a> amazing, candid and easy to read summary of the extravert-introvert, stable-neurotic type axis and shows they are not really truly mutually exclusive nor are they always polar.,</p>
<p dir="ltr">But back up on they write. Neurotic people, or a branch of them, do indulge in risk tak,ing behaviour. They have an internal angst, a dissatisfaction which they have to exorcise in the real world of people. </p>
<p dir="ltr">So when I was wee, I was bashful. I would run in and grab girls breasts as a three year old when my brother had visits, much to embarresment and amusement. This type of crass behaviour continued, even including meeting my spouse! I had to kind of strike out at the world to see if it moved, to feel I was engaging with it, to overcome my own massive inhibitions with some seemingly uninhibited outbursts. </p>
<p dir="ltr">This now explains me as I reach old age at a rapid pace it seems, just over the hill of life really, Yet it also confirms I am damn right about my career choice and hobbies and so on. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I have learned my way out of the crassness and attention seeking because of so much negative feedback from being like that, I have meta inhibited the angst driven routes to overcome my deep inhibitions. </p>
<p dir="ltr">So I go well tooled into the last third of my career life and the second half of my fatherhood and the last half of my entire life quite well equipped with self knowledge and some tools. </p>
<p dir="ltr">For example, I never did get shy people and thought they were just boring. Nor did I understand that life is full of bullies, idiots with no doubts and that they are looking for weakness in others all the time to make up for their emptyness. Now I get shy people and am prepared to stick my chin out and laugh at or with bullies., </p>
<p dir="ltr">So Neuro is a bad old label, We could be called Pedantos, or Questionos, We are seekers who never find quite what we set out to look for. Some of us are more social and extravert, some are more seclusive and shun company. But it has to be asked are we first neurotic worriers whcih brings us foreceably out of our shells in trying to resolve the angst of being locked up alone? </p>
<p dir="ltr">Certainly I lack some of the socialk antennae skills which many people have, and I worry about things, and even avoid eating the peach.<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">Recently for example I decided to stop being crew on boats and go back to more helming. It is a tough decision in one way - I have to turn my back on an interesting bunch of folk. But there is no point in hanging on to it if I want to practice helming and being in command of a vessel! You have to just eat the peach if it is there for you, and I got loaned a boat. <br></p>
<p dir="ltr">Also at the weekend I decided to stop worrying about a lot of job related things and just said fuck it, I will get something better and I will just tell them that I am highly competant in my profession. I know I am, I have been battling demons in only my own mind. I just dont get on with everyone or fit into very admin heavy specific jobs.. So yeah, I have been fired and I have resigned but I just have to grab the bull by the horns inow and say, fuck it , I am really good at this but hey guys, here are my shortcomings and I will have it in writing that they are accepted and taken and not to be used against me in a review. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Life goes on then to get better because I have a stonger self assertion, and can work on or around weaknesses of being the way I am and reacting to the world the way I do. So I cans stop crassness, develope shy friends, and realise that me being a Questionos as I would prefer, makes me a little superior to those who take things at face value or rush in.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In many ways I feel now wise, almost 50, and suddenly wise. <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br></p>
<p dir="ltr"> <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br></p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-90304548425823470412017-05-28T08:51:00.001-07:002017-05-28T08:51:41.948-07:00FODMAP - Keep It Up!<p dir="ltr">If I have done one thing for my health in the last five years, then it is the low FODMAP diet.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I am just going into week 5 and i can say it is good to be a little constipated a few times a week, to be honest after years of bad old jobbies. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Apart from splendid stools of solid substance, I also have a better satiation at dinner times, all less hunger pangs ie longer 'satiety'.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The clues have been there for a very loing time, way back before I had a nasty dose of presumed campylobacter way back in 1995.  When i was training a lot in cycling and mountain tours i would do huge logs before or after, and often struggle to eat enough energy to keep going. I was basically avoiding dairy products and strong coffee from cafetieres or cuppachinos, a double bad. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I put on my first big weight gain around the same time I got food poisoning. My appetite got bigger and i started getting the pavlovian munchies with beer which i hadnt had before. I exercised less, drank more. 15 stone. Then by 1996 I was 18 stone. That was three stone in two years. I had been around 13 from age 16 to 24, and that is thin for my height and build. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I was a bit of a beer monster in those years, it has to  said, but I really didnt drink more than many of my thinner buddies. I did eat a bit more and was less satisfied with ordinary portions. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I only lost weight in 1996 by some pretty hefty training and dropping of beers to just a few a week, and a couple of chinese starters as a weekly treat. I was miserable too! Edge of hunger for months on end.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I put on a bit of weight back on the summer of 96, with sailing being 5 days a week usually a beer of an eve' there with of course. Then I lost weight again when living in a B&B , pub dinners and only an hours walk or swim each day. Something odd was going on!</p>
<p dir="ltr">Beers and big eati in 98 -99 and despite a lot of exercise some weekends, i was by 2000 at a massive 20 stone.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Back to the gym and i was down to 18 snd quite muscly but still a peristent beer gut and w worseing 'toilet habit' with several visits a day, stress jobbies and intermittant constipation. The need was often and what came out varied. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Once again, big mountain tours and big bars resulted. I thought maybe my cuppacino habit was to blame, but in fact it was my healthy eating which was in part to blame, with piles of fermentable fruits and sulphurous onions and garlics on top of my frothy coffee dependency. Off these and especiaøly milk and red pasta dishes, and i would normalise and reabsorb obviously a lot of water.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I started getting bloaty days back in the early 2000s when my gut and side wings seemed to be extra wobbly, often during sport. I should have maybe connected this with losing s lot of fluid in my stools. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Now thisnhas changed, dramatically. Week 1 was awful, lots of diarheoa dribbly crap, but after that , hey presto. Onions and more than a glass of full lactose dairy and i am back to square one. </p>
<p dir="ltr">At week six i can start reintridocing food types to see how i get on, but also i am a bit inspired to diet. I stead of bread i have been having half a packet of crisps with lunch or as a snack when dinner is going to be late. I do allow myself a small dose of wheat, wholemeal per day. </p>
<p dir="ltr">All because i happened to listen to a BBC radio 4 inside health on the issue, and knwew it couldnt hurt to try, since rice, potatoes and a small amount of oats are all allowed !</p>
<p dir="ltr">For more serious IBS then i guess it may tske longer for the 'flora of the gut' to rebalance. For most of us it means no return to some foods which are triggers, like lactose milk products. </p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-16498602838018703602017-05-21T14:44:00.001-07:002017-05-21T14:44:43.964-07:00Talking Shit...FODMAP diet three weeks on<p dir="ltr"> More talking shit then.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Let us get the dirty stuff out of the way, shit lovers, haters, proctologists.</p>
<p dir="ltr">For years and years I have had variable loose, runny shit, pelllety shit, fruity smelling shit, irregular shit, three times a day shit, uncomfortable must shit now shit, farty shit, and the odd bit of constipation amongst this. Also I have a decided issue with appetite and losing weight, being about three stones over where I should be or about 20kg.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As in the last blog, I never ever saw the link between a day in 1995 when I bit into a burger to find it stil frozen in the middle and had a bad dose of food posioning as they call it, most likely campylobacterial in basis. After that time I started to put on weight and certainly my appetite altered.  In 1996 I forced myself to do a lot of exercise in the winter and spring while unemployed and working part time. I used to work out at the gym with aerobic 20 mins to half an hour some weight training, followed by a mile swim in the pool and then I would walk home. I crept down in weight a little avoiding beer and maybe having a chinese take away once a fortnight. I was miserable and had an odd kind of hunger. I lost maybe 3 kg in 3 months and started to put it back on.  I Some years later with a relatively high level of activity in 1997/8, i lost very little weight at that time too, and I really eat pretty normally. I did put on some muscle in these three years with weight training, but my trouser size of 34/36 went soon up to 38 by 2000 and has kind of sat there ever since, with the gut being a bit tighter sometimes than others on the waistline. </p>
<p dir="ltr">A couple of years ago, or maybe longer than that actually, I started to notice that my middle aged spread went up and down. I could get quite bloated during exercise or after of course meals, but a while after. I thought back and could remember feeling very flabby during long tours in the mountains. Ah, maybe I was retaining water. Well as Billy Connolly says, " Retaining Pies and Pints of Lager"  more like. I eat well you may say, and I drink well. In fact though, I do quite a lot of exercise too. However I did put this all down to just my roaring appetite, and that a two week shift to cutting way down on extras, beer, wine and upping exercise from 4-5 hours a week to 8 hours.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I did the latter and felt that I was a fair bit healthier for it, but old summer shorts were dug out and were just as tight as the last time I tried them, and also those photos of me in a tight grey t-shirt!  Flabby. But a beer gut and odd, high side wings around a pretty solid guy who exercises a lot. Then I heard a BBC Radio 4 science programme about FODMAPS, and thought well there could be something in this. I have essentially a mild IBS or abnormal bowel behaviour as you read above. I dont have pain, just lots of trips the loo for #2s and discomfort with urgency you could say. So what the hell?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Now I am three weeks into the low FODMAP diet - that is avoiding fermentable oligosaccharides, and some di- and mono-s too. According to some researchers into the Gut Biome, our bacterial populations are severly disrupted from that which is healthy by too much of in particular, fructose and lactose in our diets. There is then an extended list of other saccharides and the sulphurous onion family is to be avoided.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I found a list on a pdf from a reputable source, with recommendations for daily intakes of low and medium FODMAP foods. Basically it sticks around what you might expect. In essence it is a gluten free, very low lactose diet with avoidance of those smelly farty foods like cabbage, onion and garlic. In fact there are some recommended daily 'doses' of the bad or medium bad stuff too. In the table it is not fully clear though on some low fodmap is how little of some things you may be allowed to eat. </p>
<p dir="ltr">It meant not such a huge change in fact, the biggest things being cereals, fruit juices *apart from some tomato- and of course, the biggy here for Norway especially,  bread. Ok you can have gluten free bread and cereals but they are a bit mediocre. One thing which is allowed is a bowl of common or garden oat porridge, which is a saviour, although without the dried fruit I prefer. Oddly sucrose and glucose are ok in the scheme of things, but not in large amounts. Apples and pears are out, bannanas and a small amount of milk chocolate is in. I use lactose reduced milk and the odd expensive lactose free milk, both of which are long life incidentally which is handy. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Three weeks in? Well a week in I noticed the difference, I had four days of very diarrheoa like stool followed by a little constipation and then more ordinary stools there after by in large. I kept on checking my menu in the house. Some more things went out.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Things went well then. I felt less bloated too, and also I started to notice I was more satisfied from food and a little bit less hungry in general. Stools getting by in large bigger and better, a little hard occaisionally. And once a day's worth you may say, more if it was a little constipated and I gave up pushing.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Then in week 3 we have national constitution day in Norway, and I said, what the hell,  patients had talked about ' lettiing loose' once in a while. The day is an onslauight of refined wheat and most of all lactose. Ice creams all round,  at every opportunity and cream cakes, and strawberries and cream, and coffee with cream for once not black.Also we had our traditional beef cakes made with onion and bit of garlic, so it really was a test. Right enough, squits and more trips to the loo for two days.</p>
<p dir="ltr">After three days of being a good boy, and moving to lactose free milk, I was back to better stools and less trips to the loo. My appetite is lower and most of all I feel I can avoid the daddy dreadful eating up what is left because it is less than a portion for anyone tommorrow, or eating up after the kids refuse one more bit. I do get hunger pangs and then there is  no biscuit to take them up, just bananas which in moderatioon of up to three a day, are very low FODMAP friendly apparently and good for fibre and potassium. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I feel now that I can concentrate on actually calorie counting because I am less hungry already and hope that some of my flab was indeed water retention due to a disturbed gut and years of excess fluid excretion. Energy is up and down a bit, especially week 2 was tough but going into week 4 it seems more normalised. </p>
<p dir="ltr">What is stil naughty? Well portions of dinner were a very, very big issue for me, and that is reduced. Also snacking or need a starter is reduced. But because I can eat crisps, potatoes are way ok, then I do, so that has to be cut out. But I feel empowered by a new, natural STOP sign on my appetite. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Now by trade I am actually a molecular biologist, which included a lot of biochemistry and microbiology , so I will have to look more into what fermentation reactions are being avoided and how the bacterial population balance is maybe being achieved, out of interest. For you dear shitty reader with IBS or working out but not losing weight nor appetite, a low FODMAP cant really hurt anyway- consult your doctor of course disclamier discalimer. </p>
<p dir="ltr">When I was a kid, there were very very few folk who were on gluten free diets, while lactose was a minor issue you heard of once in a while. We just arent supposed to drink cows milk really, lactose is not something we can metabolise or readily digest,. Bacteria though can metabolise lactose directly. There have been studies which show that cows milk can actually lead to opiod biproducts which would certainly explain some of my drowsiness in the mornings post breakfast. Between lactose and Casein, cows milk just isnt for us in the amounts we consume it in, and a mixed diet with oily fish and vegetables can supply enough calcium. I still eat cheese which is nearly all low lactose, because those said bacteria consume the sugar in producing cheese after most of the lactose is actually seperated away in the whey from the protein rich curds. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Our western diets are an odd cultrually influenced mix of foodstuffs which reflect mostly our farming heritage and supply chain which provides infact, if you look at the figures historically and relative to family incomes, extremely cheap commodity food, and very affordable small luxuries. IBS is a very major cause of ill health and sick leave in otherwise healthy living people, and as with myself being a little atypical in not having pain and discomfort, but typical stool disruptions, are going under the radar and possibly building up problems for the future.<br><br></p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-85559500507105215342017-05-19T00:00:00.001-07:002017-05-21T13:15:31.459-07:00Talking Shit, FODMAP Crap that is<p dir="ltr">After sitting on the shitter while shitting out a shit, I came up on a ditty as you should </p>
<p dir="ltr">I realised that in fact I have been shitting out bubbly , fruity craps for years and they have become the norm instead of a once a week annoyance. I have in fact a form of irritable bowel syndrom and I can trace this back to of course me getting a dose of food poisoning from a frozen in the middle burger up in Aviemore in 1995. I was ill for months with it and had to go on a simple lemonade diet and semolina for weeks, but in fact I never recovered</p>
<p dir="ltr">It can be said that about the same time I started to put on a lot of weight, but it can also be said that I was partying more and cycling a lot less, while retaining my appetite from that, Howevver it still has to be said that from 1995 to 2000  I put on loads of weight in successive bouts, losing some maybe in 96 and then 97, but after Ireland just getting  a bit big and tittied, I was a bit cgubby for years and then only thin with the stress of moving to norway, which may actually be a fact that the new water and gut bacteria thing here helped me get thin</p>
<p dir="ltr">Research in this area has been poo-pooed a bit, pardon the shitty pun, Many dieticians will point to the solid fact that obese people eat a lot more and a lot more fatty and sugary foods, than ordinary BMI folk, However I am quite active and dont eat all that much more, and have tried dieting and atkins without a lot of success, I have varied from 108 to 122 kg for years now,</p>
<p dir="ltr">I did say fuck it all, so what, eat and bevvy and as long as your heart rate is ok and your waistline doesnt get bigger than 40" fuck it, I am healthy, Only I am not, I have an acid reflux problem which has come back and I have irritable bowel witout the pain, just the bloating and potential water retention and tendency for something worse to develope,</p>
<p dir="ltr">I heard about FODMAPS, fermentable sugar species not that long ago and how they are thought to generate the symptoms of IBS by altering the proportion of the bacteria in the gut to a fraction where disease is the result. If these fermenting bacteria were doing somethign else then? Making more simple sucrose or actually starving the body all the time so that it on the one hand stays hungry while on the other hand it lays down fat in contemplation that starvation may get worse?</p>
<p dir="ltr">I will have to see if my theory is borne out in any of the research, but it has a nagging little ring of truth to it. I find that my appetite is bigger now and I am not as satisfied with my food,.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Or rather I did because now I am nine days or so into a low fodmap diet. I have gone for the near total exclusion of gluten and lactose as two prime culprets, but aslo a pile of other things like pears and apples. I allow myself a couple of rye wheat crackers with lunch most often and the odd white flour based thing if I am on the move or ;rude not to; sitiuation., The first few days I had diarheoa, but that I think is to be expected. Suddenly the bugs used to nice fermentable mono, di and poly saccharides are starved, and kick up a fuss as they maybe die back, while others caused commotion, After a week though I was down to a little hard stools but much more even shitting it has to be said, although I am only a few days into that. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I wonder also if this has affected my energy levels for years too, I have been up and down this last week or two but before that I was often vapourised in the afternoons and mid evenings, only to regain a kind of high later on in the evening to my annoyance. Perhaps all that sugar fermentation lead to a sugar rush, or perhaps I was a little drunk on alcohols produced from the fermentations? </p>
<p dir="ltr">It is recommended cutting drastically down on coffee which I have not yet managed, but my bowels dont seem to be going at 100mph like they used to, Often I would be shitting three times a day at the worst times. </p>
<p dir="ltr">It isnt a drastic diet, and I have allowed a major unhealthy thing in - chocolate. The key carbos are oats, bannanas, rice and potatoes, so you cannot go wrong there. Fruits are limited it has to be said. All meats and fish which is not processed is admissable, and simple sucrose is also ok. It is glucose and fructose you should avoid apparently, they get more easily fermented in their basic form rrather than the disaccharide made up of the two. 'Corn syrup' is very high in fructose and it is used as a sweetener increasingly this side of the atlantic, having been long established in the USA.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">Wheat starch, gluten and lactose are the other big evils and you hear more about this generally with food allergies to them a bounding in the under 30s. I wonder then if the big change in the generations from eating potatoes as the staple, to eating more pasta based dinners and more auxilliary dairy like yoghurts and refreshing drinks are a big cause for the jump in IBS? or was it one of those diseases people didnt bother going to the GP about before, or just it wasnt in the media? My dad had some form of IBS< but that was in part from poor nutrition and a shrapnel injury during WWII. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Historically sucrose, glucos and fructose have been very low constituent parts of mans diet, as can be seen from the evidence of tooth health in ancient remains through to the early 19th C, where after dental caries starts to predominate in autopsies. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I would like to feel more satisfied with my food, have less in between meal hunger attacks, have less bubbling down there are generally reduce my appitite while increasing my exercise levels a bit. This diet now is going to stick for the forseeable,. when you can then reintroduce slowly and to a lower level, some FODMAPS and see which ones in isolation by reintroduction, really kick you off. I am a lot less farty and have regular solid stools for the first time in years, while also going to the loo lest often for those no.2s, I have still attacks of the tireds, but now I felt today that my hunger attacks were much abated. There is probably a pyscho somatic thing there two, which is good, because it will keep me off snacking and help me push trhough to the controlled portion meal times, which is my next challenge in terms of taking this further and losing some weight.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I am trying to do 8 hours exercise a week, although our 57' N spring is doing its worst to get in the way of this. I kicked this all off with what turned out to be the biggest day out in the hills for well over a decade for me, and it went very well, a couple of concentration exhaustions that was all, on a perfect day bar the huge patches of snow we had to wade through. Health is important, and you cannot ignore an long term altererd bowel issue and just carry on regardless. The same with mental health, sleep, aches and pains, that bad back from sitting in the office too many hours, and of course finally kicking smoking or three nights a week down the boozer. It is never too late and it is not that huge an effort for the benetfits, particularly if you involved more exercise. For me that meant upping my 4 to 5 hour a week to 8 hours , not always making that target, but that being there and much higher, so that I get an average maybe of about 5 or 6 in reality over a month. </p>
<p dir="ltr">If you are lucky your GP or dietician will know now about FODMAPs and the exclusion diet, and I have no doubt that this will be first line treatment for IBS because there is no other proven treatment so far, apart form perhaps faecal implants *repopulating the microflora from another, healthy person" or a total antibiotic kill back followed by what would be effectively the same FODMAP approach more or less., with a simple diet building up until you hit a trigger foodstuff. IBS is very disabilitating in its moderate to severe forms,  with people being embarressed to go to work, on the one hand, while on the other hand being in so much pain and discomfort they take their own lives. I have done that dastardly of anti intellectual, stupid society things and self diagnosed myself but of course there is really no risk what so ever, beacuse the low FODMAP diet is really very healthy and probablyy lower calorie in the course of a day. I could say that taking multivitamins is a good idea because you do miss out on a lot of fruit in the first six weeks which are super low FODMAP weeks. </p>
<p dir="ltr">If you have IBS< or are over wieght, or have unusual variable bowel movements, or are too thin, or suffer from sudden tiredness with no other symptoms, then give it a  go, the low FODMAP but also of course, disclaimer disclaimer, visit your doctor for advice,. <br><br></p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-52345597510462407672017-05-10T05:51:00.000-07:002017-05-10T05:51:07.619-07:00Career Advice -Addressing the MSc Masters in Marketing from Strathclyde UNiIt has been a long time since I blogged about career advice for graduates from Strathclyde Uni's MSc Marketing, whcih I completed myself back in the early nineties.<br />
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There is a good reason for that - print media falls away, PR has changed to sound bite and fakish news, and online digital is a different beast from where even I was 7 years ago when I last worked in it.<br />
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So detailed advice on career paths is not something I can advise on, and unlike the old tweed jacketed fuddy duddies who worked in careers services 25 years ago, I am not getting paid for this, and you can take it or leave it as more general advice!<br />
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From hard, bitter experience and on the other hand many high points and having met a lot of sort of Euroyuppies, what do I advise now?<br />
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<h3>
1) Get on the Ladder And Jump Up Rungs on The Ladder Sooner Rather Than Later</h3>
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A thing I noticed was that a lot of people I met in marketing from around 2002 onward, had a recipe for success. Nearly all had treated their first graduate job as initial work experience, and bailed out pretty early if they were not on a Blue Chip career path internally. Even then they had moved up asap.<br />
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I always was under the impression that you had to get a year on the CV, but that is really wrong. Now more than ever what you need to be doing is looking for the opportunity to advance your career in its early stages before I would advise strongly, settling down for 3 to 5 years work at a company. I have been stung several times, even as a grey haired old timer, by accepting jobs to keep me in work, and then finding out that they were not as committed to me as I was to them, and being left in the lurch.<br />
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I was at the executive job club on St Vincent Street twice in the 90s, both times asking to be on it after just a couple of months unemployment. There the leader said a strange thing i thought was very odd or off-hand at the time - " When you get a job, keep looking for other jobs". He obviously knew even then in the mid 90s that work was a lot less stable for those coming new to the market and those getting a little long in the tooth on the unemployment statistic. The point for you is that there is always going to be a better opportunity for the vast majority of graduates sitting in their first, often rather tedious job they think as a good career step. Get the Hell Out of There if you can get something which works better for you!<br />
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Looking for the opportunity means yes applying for other jobs, doing plenty of open applications to while in a job, and getting used to doing this. In the UK especially, the disposable, project telated worker is a thing which is spreading upwards in society as the entitled boss and owner classes can use the minimal legal requirements and treat staff even in intellectual value added positions, as a commodity, or as something whcih can be hired in and out. You should be very aware that companies expect on the one hand loyalty and hard work, while on the other they will dispose of you very rapidly when they see that there can be some 'down time' or a chance to stress the organisation and get higher productivity with fewer staff.<br />
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Opportunity also means conversely to this last statement, being open to running with the ball of new projects to taking new career directions. It means a deal of networking, which just means circulating yourself a little and asking people about their work, their companies, their needs for solving problems and completing tasks. You should I think take the option of something like project managing a new building or working as a quality manager in high tech if that is there for you for some reason. You need then to see what the opportunity is and how your personality and abilities could match it, rather than thinking within a small box of job and marketing. This goes internally and externally to where you work.<br />
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2) Relocate<br />
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This is the big bug bear for many folk from Scotland. We love where we come from and we hate the idea of working in the big smoke, London and the SE.<br />
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Basically unless you have a first class honours from your previous degree or a job in Scotland is tailor made for your combination of BA/BSc and MSc, then you are up against huge competitiveness in the market for marketing jobs. Nepotism is rife in marketing and Scottish private business, so if you don't have that on your side, then you are competing with folk that do.<br />
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When relocating then, dont think of London and the SE as all bad. I actually love the area, but then again I only ever stay in Hotels or with friends it has to be said. It is highly expensive but there are solutioins to that and in any case if you try hard. <br />
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Dont forget that the Manchester - Liverpool area is home to a lot of major brands and on line retailers, and in fact is only 3 hours from Scotland on a sunday night.<br />
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It took me five years of temp jobs and rubbish in Scotland to realise that I didnt' have a nice unique combination of qualifications which was so very sought after, and I was competing with old school ties, positive discrimination for women, nepotism and uni' hack networking. I moved to Manchester and never looked back, had a fantastic time. After two and a half years I had my pick of jobs and was able to move from mostly trad' marketing over to internet projects in 1999 at the right time for this.<br />
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3) Get Blue Chip on the CV<br />
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It is very hard to get into many blue chip organisations in marketing, because they often have a weird formula for success which has nothing to do with marketing qualifications. Quite a few major brands recruit only from Oxbridge and take people like English graduates who were in the debating society or so on. However it is worth trying and worth re-trying again with open applications etc. Here you can take that personnel are actually very often your worst enemy, they are gate keepers, You are far better networking your way to bosses in marketing.<br />
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It can be hard for MSc graduates to use sales in corporates as a way into marketing, as many want long term sales people to build "strong and stable" customer relations over many years, or very dedicated go -getting career sellers. However it is not that hard either especially if you can combine your first degree in terms of what you offer a company.<br />
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Also you don't need to work directly for a Blue Chip orgainsistion, you as a marketer may find it easier to get a job with an agency who deliver marketing services, or be in sales and marketing in a quality supplier to the Blue Chip customers, and be able to put those names in what the job was about.<br />
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Blue Chip names really help your personal branding and make you shine. But there are alternatives in the career route.<br />
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2) b) Choose Gazelle Companies and Sunrise Industries<br />
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This is a very fruitful approach, but you can get burnt by bankruptcies or buy outs and down sizing as a result. Gazelle companies are those with high growth rates, often explosive growth but investors refer to them as those with growth in top end sales of over 20%. Very often they dont advertise positions other than senior administrative management, because they are known in their industries and attract talent via open applicaitons and networking.<br />
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This is because they are very attractive to work for . Very often there are new internal opportunites for more interesting jobs and promotion sooner than in lack lustre blue chips, who are always on the look for 'right sizing' and subject to the knives of merger and aquisition butchers. Gazelles are tommorrows blue chip companies, just look at Apple, a quirky home computer company which now is the worlds highest valued corporate!<br />
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Sunrise industries often have many companies who are not on the Gazelle listings you may find for your region or industry. THis is because many of them are in the start up and cash-burn phase rather than actually creating revenue. There are hundreds of app' boutiques, programming away for that next giga-app for mobiles for example. There are the biotechs, there are the nano materials, there are the AI companies. These can be risky to work for, because they run mostly on investor monies , burn capital, and so can have the rug taken out from under their feet and be forced to down size, But they are tommorows Gazelles and nowadays they are often run by people who truly want to build something and not just sell out once they reach a milestone or threaten the market leader.<br />
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These are great for the CV, and if things are going a bit pear shaped, then you have a good excuse for getting out when you go to other interviews.<br />
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2 c) Go Ugly Early<br />
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I have had a good few bosses who have indeed worked for 'blue chip' companies as managers, but not the type of glamerous FMCG ones you might expect. They have worked for faceless industrial supply or finanical services companies, or been managers at lesser known suppliers of marketing services or other supply in the bigger blue chip supply. In effect they went ugly early, they took a management career route in what externally seems a very dull company, a name you see by the motorway in Birmingham or a sign on the main industry area in Slough.<br />
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People management skills are actually quite few on the ground because so many companies are delayered. Many product managers these days have no line management resposibities, no longer do they have a 'gofer' assitant PM. Managing a department takes good people skills, which can be honed out in an area with smaller egos perhaps in a less glamerous company before you move over to something a little more sexy shall we say.<br />
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3) Get Super Qualified<br />
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Dear MSc graduate, you need more education I am afraid!<br />
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For movement into mamagement then you need to have better than that poor old one year MSc. An MBA is still a ticket into management, and the MSc counts towards units for Strathclydes programme last time I checked. Very often you will find yourself being managed by non marketing qualified bosses who got an MBA and decided they liked marketing best.<br />
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A part time MBA is also a good networking opportunity even if you take several years to complete it, or defer it a year or two and so on.<br />
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In a technical area from your first degree or perghaps a route you find yourself in, it can be worth doing further on the job certification or just as many courses as you can. Many marketeers end up on different careers because it can be a bit pyramidal and hard to get a management position as a marketer beyond product manager or say PR manager.<br />
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In the period of transformation from Trad' Marketing to Internet, I realised I was missing out on skills and knowledge in a lot of meetings, and had pathcy kind of IT knowledge. I did some training while working at the Uni in 1996, but also applied for the reknowned MIS (management for information systems) at Stirling Uni with a view to becoming more of a project manager than in marketing, and earn a lot more at that point in time at least. I deferred entry for about four years in a row because I would have to have funded it myself and gave up, but it would have been an excellent career boost for me at a time when the market for skills was changing rapidly.<br />
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Marketing is a very, very competitive career to get into and you will be surrounded often by very competitive people who can have rather sly ways of winning internal trophies and battles. It is a great career, interesting and varied I found. However dont' be precious with it, if you get an opportunity to be a manger in a different direction, or retraining internally as somethign which pays well, then take it.<br />
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I have made the jump over the fence so to speak into supply chain management, which for a marketer is going ugly late ! I still need more courses and certification to really get on, but enjoy it a lot more than I expected and as a middle aged man now, find that the tasks and ways of managing things, and not least the people and their attitudes to suit me quite possibly better than had I stayed in marketing.<br />
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Careers are about two things I think - committing to a route and then being opportunistic to get the best pole position to advance your career, and not being sentimental about jumping jobs or relocating.Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-11685400908243929792017-05-02T14:26:00.001-07:002017-05-02T14:26:26.061-07:00You Are Allowed to Become Different Person as You Age!<p dir="ltr"> Much though some philosophers and uber liberals would like to beleive, we are not actually free thinking, existential beings. We are to some extent preprogrammed at birth, by our parental upbringing, by our childhood experiences (especially trauma) , by our hormones, by our education, by our social groups....and so on. As they say in darkest Aberdeenshire, the "the biy is the faithir o' the man'" </p>
<p dir="ltr">However we have the freedom to change or to perhaps accept that we have changed. The middle aged me is surprisingly different and yet often more similar to the prototype me than the supposedly mature 30 something me. I have changes maybe in some predictable ways, becoming more emotionally stable, more structured, maybe a little more dependable. Also i am allowing myself to be a little less extrovert, a l.ot more sceptical and interested to mirror behaviour rather than run around like a lapping, barking dog looking for company, expecting everyone to be my friend, as I think I could be at times.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Personality is not a very, very dynamic thing though. It can be drastically altered by chance events, such as emotional trauma or of course brain damage. The most well known story is really kind of the birth or root of evidence for neuroscience and epi-phenonmenology. A certain Mr. Phineas Gauge and his dynamite tamping rod accident. This is a fact, his skull is on displlay post mortem, and although you can of course argue about the actual personality changes noted from the accounts of family and acquaintances, he did survive and was changed in personality.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Personality is of course a coping mechanism for the world around us. However just like the new alpha male in the wolf pack, often we harbour ambitions or have ambition and social position thrust upon us by chance events, through which we kind of adopt a new persona and start behaving differently. We have in fact in many cultures, a great deal of restraint placed upon our personalities. We have social norms, religious conventions and peer pressure, all holding us down in the more presbyterian, muslim or jesuit community. We get knocked down to size or kept in our place by the kind of pecking orders which develop through out life, from the playground to the workplace to the old folks home! </p>
<p dir="ltr">Some of us then cope better because we were predisposed or learned enough to get along with our fellow social homo sapiens. I never quite did in some ways, reflected most in work becauuse I like to change job frequently, and also dont fit in in very structured, authoritarian or staid workplaces. I developed a big anger explosion thing, which I think was related to cannibis use in part, and weekly drinking sessions which could go quite large. I suddenly lost the plot in emotional situations or under stress and became angry to the verge of violent. It kind of reflected my past and it kind of carried on, until the fuse actually got shorter! This was explained to me at a management course about anger in the workplace and at home, that really it isnt going to get better without some conscious training to avoid it, becauuse it is a biiological mechanism, fight or flight, which is being switched on. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I realised also that I had spent many years or periods of my life in 'flight' mode. Ready to run. Backing down from fights and conflict. Also I didnt quite trust people or situations to be any good for me, I expected disappointment or was sceptical to values of endeavour. So being able to stop up and be 'mindful' of my current status and why the sitatuiin is eliciting this response, is quite a normal tool for many, but one I had to learn in middle-bloody-age, tail between legs, But at least in terms of the BIG FIVE, I am a seeker, I like and strtive indeed for new experiences and ideas. We are neophiles for holidays, hating to go the same place twice on principle!</p>
<p dir="ltr">In the big five then, which are actually not a terribly good predictor of perrformanc in a job, somewhat better in team dynamics it has to be said, or in particular forms of leadership like the 'transformational' boss, where have I travelled?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Well I am at odds with myself because I have always been looking for the new, enjoying the excitement of the new, while also being quite extrovert I believed, seeking new people too, But in fact my extroversion is probabkly driven by a good dose of neuroticism as well as my open ness and neophillia. I wanted new experiences with people, but in fact I am not v ery externally centred, I am very inner directed in terms of values and expectations in relationships. I have a fundamental conflict there because where I live, in the harbour town, people are a little the opposite of me- stable, boring, and self centred as a social group if not as individuals. They are by in large NeoPhobic. I hate it here sometimes. In fact of course this fundamental conflict only gets amplified here due to the cliques and the flat social norms expected. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Ok let me think then on the big five, each one to ten, where was I when I was say a young man at Uni and a young Graduate?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Openness / Exploration - probably around 8 or 9 </p>
<p dir="ltr">Sability Probaly below five</p>
<p dir="ltr">Conscientiousness Probably about 6 or 7 if you take final year and jobs maybe even 8</p>
<p dir="ltr">Extraversion - well was I really that extrovert, or was I driven to meet people without being that interested in them? I would say I was a six but maybe I was only a 3 </p>
<p dir="ltr">Neuroticism . yep, pretty high up at 8 or even 9 sometimes.<br><br></p>
<p dir="ltr">How then does the old me rate here?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Openness / Well that is maybe even 10 right now</p>
<p dir="ltr">SDtability - is up a bit over 5, but I still have some issues areound anger and tacking rejection<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">Conscientiousness / about 8 I'd say, relative to my age about that. Relative to society and colleagues, I am well over average and that has a negaitve effect on my stress level to be honest. I am not maybe a natural at this, like my daughter. I am quite laid back really and not very interested in more than 'cramming' and getting through, less in doing a good slow job and getting on slowly but steadily.<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">Extraversion. Well here and now I am toning that down, looking to read other people, not rushing in to be in the gang or anyones best mate. I am also looking to get to know shy people more, because before in life I didnt tolerate them well, until Gill came along. So maybe I am naturally actually a 4?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Neuroticsim. Well now I just have bouts of this, and it is a bit situatioin and person dependent, I am also growing out a lot of this on a day to day basis, in parrt due to CBT coursing in rleation to assertive workplaces, and then I took the personal , 3 month course of evening meetings and homework on it. Every manager should do this cognitive based therapy course, it could help them personally and to get much more out of a team, or turn difficult employees around. BTW. I am definetly in a transition between a lot of stress in life and not tackling it very well, and a new slightly laid back, sceptical type I am becoming in respect of many situations which are a nit mundane, like working life to be frank.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In terms of a new partner, and there will be one out there for me believe me, where does this all stand? Well there is truth in both birds-of-a-feather and opposties-attract I believe, alhtough the studies show the best correalation between those lilttle bring matching cardigan types who are highly similar on the big five, or the core three. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I would need an openness lady. 5 would pass if she made up for it in other ways.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I would need a failry stable lady, not prone to negativity or volatitlity. Pretty horizontal that way.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I would need a failry conscietntious, but with the right priorities, bnot nazi about house work`</p>
<p dir="ltr">Extraversion? I dont know, I quite like shy, but they have to be good at putting me first sometimes, and us first most all the time. So shy can be good - it is not a true reflection of extraversion. You may be shy, but actually very empathetic and interested in other people, you just have a social angst from instability or neuroticism, or just lack the tools in extraversion communication.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Neurotiicism. Well a bit is ok, it makes for someone who maybe isnt dull and flat. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Where have i been in my last marriage?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Control , she has a high need for control. This is driven by her conscientiousness and her neuroticism., She is ultra high on both really, although she is quite stable, to the point of arrogance. Openness is also high, on the side of flightyness up at 9 or even 10. Exraversion is higher than mine, she centres around peoplke and not experiences as I do.<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">I need someone with far less need for control, and less neuroticism and conscientiousness. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I could say that Narrie Nar was not really in the picture there, she was too unstable. She wasnt neurotic, but she lacked a stabiklity thing. She had had childhood trauma you see. Sandra, my first love as a young man, was really all that I could want, easy going, a bit consientious, caring and outgoing enouugh without being flirty annoying, and a little new seeking but not much. Gill was the big hit. Shy, but not introvert, oriented mostly around other people, but not a lot to say always for herself. We had a real chemistry, a boind, which was kind of greater than sandra or 'nita narr. Nita was flightly and flirty and super extrovert. I thought I related to her better than Gill but in truth, Gill was kind of a toirch light into the new, mellower future. I ended up with a highly new seeking, neurotic and bossy type who really has some issues now, but has made a good deal of my late 30s and 40s troublesome and unusually hard work, or rather futile in effort. We just couldnt resolve it all, there was too big a different, even though we are quite similar in terms of the big five . She is anxious, negative and very judgemental. I wonder what hobby she will take up now, after perfecting criticising me as a sport for the last 15 years?<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">Now you can of cours plot out the big five to look at behaviours and attitiudes like CONTROLLING or non collaborative or what have you. I have a high need for control, but also am laid back enough to go with the flow. However I have learned to push back on being dominated. I have a high need for newness, or rather trhive with that, but could grow out of it. </p>
<p dir="ltr">In effect I feel just his last couple of months to really have finally grown the hell up, just in time to accept myself and become a horny teenager all over again! <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br></p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-53820623743964072292017-03-18T06:04:00.001-07:002017-03-18T06:04:14.426-07:00No News Is Bad News in the Job Process<p dir="ltr">As a follow uyp to my last bklogg, I would say go with your gut instinct and parrt of manaing that emotional response is being able to move on quickly from rejection<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">Rejection is easy to gauge in the interview and job offer process. No news i invariably bad news. It means that other people are being ivitied to interview or offered the job, and you are on hold. These days very few people will turn down a job, or even an interiew but it does happen. So if they say they will tell you by the end of the week, phone on Friday morning and phone back if they put you on answer phone. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The onlyt thing I can suggest earlier in the internview rounds is that you phone up if you get rejection and tell them you were very interested if they had a cancellation for interbview. I havent in truth done this very often because I hate rejection and get nercvous in that type of situation, but I have been mysterioulsy called into intervbiew at short notice on occoasion. </p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-80634259057606752782017-03-18T05:49:00.001-07:002017-03-18T05:49:47.701-07:00Trust Your Instinct! Gut feeling and the Job Interview/ Offer Process<p dir="ltr">I am currently looking for a job as the climate for consulting is pretty poor for one man bands, and McKinsey, PWC, multiconsult seem to want a double doctorate with ten As at A level.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So a near miss with the public sector this week, often locked by experience in the law-work , a typical chicken and egg thing. However I made a second interview only to be beaten by someone a little better and with no doubt lingo as a native.</p>
<p dir="ltr">However what have I learned from the last three decades of job seeking and indeed, people in general?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Well most of all it is to trust your gut feeling I would say every single time. Nothing has ever, ever gone against my gut feeling , but occiasonally it has been derailled by other people in the interview or being a bit rose tinted spectacles on what was a 'gut neutral' recruiting process.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Gut feeling is an odd thing, because it reflects not only your emnotional response to the external sti,mul;us but also a subtle two way street on that issue. People have a terrible inbuilt instinct to make very rapid decsions based on superficial and immediate impressions. This is based not just on their prejudices but on YOURS, you will give immediate signals which they will immediatlely react to. It is the first thirty seconds of the encoutner which colours what happens next. It is a bit like love or hate at first sight with the opposite sex though, because in the cold lightr of day either or both parties may find they have made a bad initial judgment and reverse that by the new learning, </p>
<p dir="ltr">No such luxury for that girl who couldnt stand the sight of you but then you fall madly in love a month later once the ice is broken with a crash of defences falling, In the typical interview you have only 15 minutes of the hour to actually present yourself and often you are very lucky to establish a dialogue on the actual position, what the focus and demands are, and what your strengths and short comings may be. That is the ideal situation, as in a first date, there is dialogue and not a polite process which has to be gone through. I have never had a job offer when the interview has felt like a cut and paste presentation and standard one way questions, when often they start late, rattle on about the company for too long, and then start watch checking about 15 minutes before the end. Most often this has been associated with a very neutral invitation to interview, more on that below. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Very often the employer will have shaped either a very positive view of you from your CV with preconceptions in a positive light, or they are a little dubious but you seem a good fit on many counts, or they have just had a handful of applications. In my last actual job, they had only 8 qualified candidates apply even though the big down turn in the oil industry had put many like me in SCM on the dole!</p>
<p dir="ltr">The job ad' should though not give you a gut feeling. I find that a standard, good application with some explanation of why the company and or job is appropriate for you and vice versa helps. But setting your hopes on one job in this market is the absolutely wrong thing to do. You are competing with very key competance people who are either unemployed or feel their company or department may go under the chop. So you just have to gett the numbers up and hold a good quality letter with your CV. Open applications are both less effective in terms of interviews per hundred, and you need to do hundreds, but on the other side they are more effective in terms of getting a job which may suit you geographically, This is because employers are loathe to advertise sometimes, they get hundreds of applications and then a lot of social pressure from their freinds and family to employ. They would rather do it a little under the radar, although very often this type of approach leads to a stop-gap temporary position.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So I did the wrong thing this time and stopped up with my other applications and dropped open applications altogether in the push to study for the job and be there for the reply after second interview. I was a bit 'rejection fatigued' anyway, but it made this one a bit harder becauuse my head was down and not up looking at the market. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Now we come to the invitation, it should give you a gut feeling. I guess some professions are a little more neutral and square in their invitation to interview, but you can get a good gut feeling if they bother to phone you up. If they send an e-mail invitation and don't call within a working day of it arriving, then you have to ask yourself how much they care and just how many they are interviewing? A personal invitation in the phone followed by an e/mail confirmation is important. If any significant travel is involved, then you should ask if they cover travel expenses / this gives you a bit of a feel for them as an employer.<br>
<br>
A stratight No on travel expenses can mean they have tight budgets, it can mean they dont care much for candidates or it can mean that they have more than 10 to first interview, or indeed it can mean that they have a high staff churn rate and cant afford to be nice to people because they arent nice to employees once theyre in!! A positive tone in the conversation should be expected if it is the manager who you will be working with, while personnel are more netural or matter of the fact, often verging on the rude because very often they are busy and very often you were not their prime candidate ie the manager did not like their choice. </p>
<p dir="ltr">You should pose at least one question at this point, whcih can be as cheeky as how many are you interviewing? / a very off hand or slightly negative answer to this can be intepreted with your gut feeling. With jobs which are in areas expensive to live in or commute to, I often ask what the wage is, and rarely get an indication to be honest. That is the culture here, but in other areas like the USA perhaps and the UK you should know the wages and some of the conditions from the ad or ask. Where there is a culture for wages in adverts or openess on them, hiding wages is usually a sign to something a little wrong IMHO. All part of the gut feeling.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> For a job which you think will be marginally economic for you ie you have to weekly commute or it is part time, then I wouuld recommend trying to change the time point of the interview just to see how they react. , as well as asking them to cover travel expenses. Some firms say they have a policy of not paying candidates for first interview, so why not have a policy of not accepting such interviews? Think of it this way, if it is a very specific skill set they are looking for, then you are quite likely making way for one of your competing candidates to get that job in that area. You would be better served spending say a 200 euro travel expense on doing something positive in your life or paying debt to be honest. An alternative little wheeze is to say your car is in the garage and can you take it as a phone interview or via SKype since you cannot make it. This all sounds a bit risky, and to an employer reading this, bloody minded, but youu face two big financial risks when you mixs in with a job ouuytside comfortable daily commuting distance. Firstly if you got five interviews 200 miles away, then you would use up all you monthly income in your dole or local waiting job. Secondly the cost of establishing yourself there means you are in negative cash flow for up to two years, which I know to my cost. You are always a monthy behind and needing to use your credit card if you had littlle or no savings to establishy yourself with an appartment or pay for a long daily commute.<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">Due to the fact that so many quality jobs these days can demand very key competances, youu can often get a good feel that you are a good match for that set, and that there will be less than 10 to first interview. This is often in a set whcih includes not only the core skills, but also specific computer systems (SAP being my bug bear lack on the CV) , supply chain and industry, even down to specific customers such as the public sector, or suppliers such as Bayer or GE., or markets say China or Germany. So when you do get a call with a positive tone from the boss who will be employing you, then you it should feel right. Go though back to the job advertisement and get your feet back on the ground every time at this point, and see through which applications you have out, and which you have to do. It can be worth now putting pressure on all the prime jobs you have not heard from by ringing and saying you are in an interview process with another company and would like to hear yes or no sooner, which will indeed get you picked out or dropped sooner. Also get ringing those other jobs which are out there before your apply, because now you are hot property , off the back foot and on the offensive. In this market in most western countries, employers will be sitting with hundreds of applications with a good few dozen or even fifty good qualified candidates, from whcih they may use some arbitary secret filter, including age-ism, sexism, college snob value, and most of all geography and previous employer brand name. So gettign picked out because you are hot, and would rather have that job than the one you are up for is worth a go. With a smaller job application number it can sound a bit pushy, but it means that you are most likely yet another wrung uip the ladder towarrds securing interview. <br></p>
<p dir="ltr">At interview employers and especially recruitment constulants, will nearly always ask if you are in another interview round, or give you the spanish inquisition on why you are leaving. A major hidden agenda which recruitment consultants have as a key offer to clients, is wages control and expectations management via the vaneer of a wide net of screened candidates. Very often they send half the candidates as window dressing for the main product so to speak. i hate recruitement constultants a lot because of these two factors. You often end up being an also ran, having had your hopes up, or being presented with a suprisingly low salary offer or discussion nearer the end of the process. They basically wanted to establish the highest motivbateion, most qualkified candidate for the lowest wage, and today they can often get that even if those candidates quite often are the very ones who will job hop out of those mediocre wages asap. <br></p>
<p dir="ltr">I have had a couple of major mess ups in my career and both times I had my gut instinct a little out of tune. In one I felt the bosses were so odd that this was a bit of a strange department, but I had been out of work over a year. They were odd, I had a dumped marketing assistant called Marianne who no one else wanted to work with because she was a hopeless egotistical spastic who wrote marketing material like a 14 yearr old. It went pear shaped through no real fauklt of my own, and the two bosses even had left within a year if sacking me. Also in another interview some 8 years later, one boss was very bitchy and passive aggressive, while the director was very positive. I went on his side with my gut instinct, but it turned out that she was my boss and she was the fucked up machievellan boss from hell, with no idea how to structiure workflows in an SCM department or how to manage people. She was a bitch delux.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Interviews are always seen as putting all the pressure and focus on the candidate, but in fact the way the employer behaves in an interview and as mentioned, before and after in their approach to you, is very, very telling,. Now to the three Cs= The Cars, the Carpet and the Coffee. A rule of thumb is how are the offices, the parking lots? Are the cars there scrappy or a lot of new cars? Is there a rich-poor car lot? Then you get to reception, for a company with more than 20 employees at a main reception they should have full time work hours reception and/or security gaurd. Then there are the carpets and the decor. Investing in working environment means investing in people, but also investing in image. Crappy carpets and crappy coffee mean in my costly experience, a crappy employer. The opposite is also true, very fine entrances and artwork can be all show, ask to see the 'cube farm' you will be actually working in? I worked for one ad ' agency whose bosses all had flash fully expensed cars, while account managers got nothing but the going rate for the job. They tried hard to make a good environment in an old church, but they had a them-and- us attitude which sucked big time. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Coffee is a bad thing for gut instincts and first impressions. I would always avoid it in interviews, but be polite to say don't let me hinder you if you need one. If the interview start runs late, as they often do when they have 10 or more candidates to get through in a week, then give quite a blunt no thank you and even say, we can start as soon as ytou like. Coffee means a lot of time following someone to a machine or canteen, and they will have their back to you and it is awkward with hot, plastic ups or cups and saucers through doors and so on. So judging the firm by the coffee is worth avoiding in terms of getting up to an extra five minutes face to face time with the interviewers. A polite, no thanks I had a bit of time on my journey to have a coffee break, but dont let me hinder you is a good way of getting on with it. It may be that they are dieign for a coffee after back to back interviews in the stuffiest conference room they got landed with.<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">Post interview you have to both trust your gut instiution and abate it. Do you have evidence to support it? Did you really answer to their satisfaction? Were the slight negatives which gave you a negative taste in the mouth so to speak, actually real or just hiccups or nervousness on both sides? Did they answer YOUR questions to YOUR satisfaction, or even give you time to ask them? A positive gut feeling often cvomes from buying signs which are both verbal,ised or content basxed, and from tone of voice and body language which in turn is conscious and suibconscious. These buying signs often come in first or even second interview because you have matched or exceeded expectations from your CV, and to that point in time are one of the best candidates they have seen. They have the other candidates to go through, and if they have had any training at all, will know to lay subjective thoughts to one side and appraise on a point for point, answer for answer, skill fo skill needed basis. If not then they will colour an interview result, and often a senior manager will wade in with their prejudices from the CV or how they took you on first impressions. Would you want to work for a company with institutionalised racism, sexism, ageism or snobbery? Lucky escape if this happens to you behind the scenes, or well done WASPY Ivy Leagure boy, you landed your first job on the old vine network.<br><br></p>
<p dir="ltr">Post interview these days is not the time to rest on your laurels given a positive interview. Before that beer or wine, put the job behind you and get on with looking for the newest jobs on the market, and the applications you have inevitably postpoined, especially open applications. Do one application before you uncork that Chardonnay, Keep it to one beer or two if it is midweek, it could be they call you back that evening or next morning 8am to ask a supplementary question or offer you a second interview. Once I was offered a job next morning because I was the best of the candidates by head and shoulders above them, and one not bothering to turn up!<br><br></p>
<p dir="ltr">The offer too shouuld give you a gut instinct, but I have had a couple of mediocre wage offers in my life. Mostly thouugh I have established a win win on that front at some point, and pushed a little for information on it. I would say for any job you should ask for a meeting to accpet the letter of appointment and see round the offices. This means that you have them on the spot about a low offer, and also you get to meet some colleagues and gauge the atmosphere of the office. I usually have gone into most any job I have got very up and positive, yet in many cases I have found that this is an odd place to work with some bitchy people with nationalist agendas against foreigners like me. I make mistakes again and again, like letting coworkers get a look at my CV or Linking In with them. Ask your boss specifically not to share your CV and take your Linked In off line is my advice. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Getting a job these days feels like winning the world cup, but come back to earth. I have had a couple of jobs where although I was just qualified enough, I was a bookmark so to speak- holding up head count while they maybe got a better internal candidate to come over after a project. This is a very real phenomenon, and if you are unemployed when you get the job, be aware of this. There can be a rack of better candidates who could not start withouut several months of notice or turn down the job because they have an interesting project to complete. </p>
<p dir="ltr">So when you get an offer you have to ask yourself, is this a keeper or is this a stepping stone? Will you tread water and have this as a wating job? What are the risks your skills will fall a little short? What are your personal financial risks in commuting or relocating? We are back to then getting those other applications forward to a position where we have other options and we can postpone a decision on a job which is a little shakey. I would say a visit to the company is well worht while to meet the team at this point, and worth doing at your own expense to save potentially a lot. Ask some minions and middle managers how it really is in the company and wh\at they expect of the position if you can. Some jobs are very, very different from the way they are dressed up in the advert unfortunetly, For instance a job with 'account manager with responsibillity for major customers' can mean a telesales job trying to win those customers in reality! </p>
<p dir="ltr">At a job club for graduates a long time ago now in the mid 1990s at the end of the course on applications and everything before we got stuck into doing masses of applications, the course leader said "...and when you get a job, don't stop looking for jobs" . I took this as a little trite or even daft at the time, but in fact this is very good advice, especially for us who dont have a golden handcuffed, blue chip career path. </p>
<p dir="ltr">So with people, go with your gut feeling but reel it in a little in terms of being disappointed with a rejection or a job which is not as interesting as advertised, or being thrown into a frying pan of fire fighting and over work as I was in my last two jobs in fact and why I tried consultancy. Take a step back from your gut feeling, and see if the reality of skills match on paper and how they reacted and what they said or asked really supports your positive or negative take out. Cold light of day stuff though is only attenuating your gut feel a bit IMHO, go with it in making your actual decision always!!!! <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br></p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-25169784206540497242017-02-22T17:26:00.001-08:002017-02-22T17:26:59.795-08:00Time to T2 - trainspotting and the visitation to the auld nation<p dir="ltr">Choose Scotland. Choose kalyard kitsch and tartan tinned shortbread. Choose being run by someone in London. Choose being rubbish at national sports, well the ones which people care about. Choose a kilted image of a warrior nation when actually we would most all die from pie induced heart attacks if we ever had to fight. Choose heavy drinking, wife beating, not knowing where your weans are, not caring where your weans are, not caring where you are as long as it is in a pub. Choose waking up in the morning with a warm fuzzy feel that Edinburgh Castle is still there, the mountain tops have snow on them and Euan McGregor is the greatest man to play Euan McGregor on the silver screen ever....</p>
<p dir="ltr">I chose not to choose Scotland, I Moved away.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Then came T2 and I was, by royal invitation, asked to move back, well come back for a week as it would so transpire. </p>
<p dir="ltr">It all went arse about tit really, ,my oldest mate asked me over and having inherited a bob or thousand, said he would pay, The Scot in me at first said no, I am busy trying to start something new, which will inevitably fail, such is life being a presbyterian, self doubting lowlander. Then part of me said this is too good to be true. Then part of me felt guilty for taking advantage of someone who could use the money towards nurturing their cannaboid addiction or paying for the retirement home said misuse will lead to due to the risk of precocious senility. All those typically Scottish thoughts. Maybe I should let Westminster decide for me, BreEntry, personal, not for Doncaster and Sunderland's mumbling racists. I chose not to choose to be Scottish, I chose to come to Scotland on an expenses paid trip to see Trainspotting 2.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I compromised with myself. I had a window, a bit longer than a week. I could stay off FB and shitey SM so no one would really know who was expecting any pish from me in those few days, and claim winter holiday for the next couple as an excuse after the weekend to have some time to recover and see my mate in Edinbra' on the homeward leg  Stretching it to a week brought down the flight and local train costs here enough to rebalance the guilt-benefit equation my inner Scottish wee stupid self was trying so hard to work over to the ' nah, I'm scottish, dont enjoy yourself at someone else's expense". I chose something else, I chose to book the tickets.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Now my oldest pal is a bit chalk to my  cheese . But we have a lot in common, a lot of water under collective bridge of growing up together and growing old apart. We both have moved out of our hometown and started families elsewhere, but he is ahead of me on two counts the cunt. Firstly he has left one already, and had a bairn with another only to be kicked out of her place for his usual self centredness, smart alec ness,  fuckwhittedness and passive aggression. Not always so very passive. He an only child, me practically that too, my brother being more than a decade older than me and off to sea aged 16. Us both facing up to the facts that the world expects more of you as an adult and father than we are fucking well prepared to give back to the cunty cunts. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I did it all wrong just the same, We are small doses with each other, usually his irritation takes about 16 hours and then he starts picking on things and trying to make sure we understand that this is his place or his son should not be told off, or that you may have bought lots of shopping but that bottle of scotch is a gift he will enjoy all the more for not opening before your tail lights leave his gaff or holiday caravan for the last time. I let him however, know that i was comong for longer than a four day weekend stint, and that was saving him money. So he ended up coming down from the darkest and most twiggy bits of the Aberdeenshire sticks to the so called capital with its parliament and shortbread tin castle. Pissing valentines day too, him with the roof down on his saab cabrio, may as well brought a pink, heart shaped balloon and deep throated the wanker with my tongue getting picked up at the Airport.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Like letting your mates tie you to a railway line, I let my mate know where and when I would be coming to Scotchlandshire.He planned accordinglky to enjoy my company to the full, much to my fcuking chagring the cunt, because I wanted to do some clearing out at my mums house in preperation for the inevitability of her entering a nursing home or having a timely demise. I should have lied and arranged to meet him on Friday and done the big night out on what used to be the big night out in Aberdeen, Satruday. I chose not to be smar, I chose to be at his mercy. </p>
<p dir="ltr">It dawned on me that a leopard does not change its spots, they get a little grey and blurred around the edges that is all, some of them fucking well merge it seems too. It took a whole 24 hours before his irritations and irrational 'friends accounting' took hold. As twice before at least I have pitched up with wads of food, I bought a good fifty quids worth of shopping including some ethanol based libationary fluids. And as before he seems to think that staying in one of his hovels is a novelty, kiind of depravitiy tourism, which I should set such a price on as to then transfer the entire ownership of said vittals and alcohol to him. :Two years ago it took my other half to say that he just did not deserve another bottle of scotch for letting us stay two nights at his shitty no longer mobile home rental, no matter how fine the location. It feels like you give someone half the contents of your wallet yet they expect to command its entirity. This has gone on since 2002 I do believe, a fucking decade and a fricking half. Neither of us has sodding well learned. </p>
<p dir="ltr">This time we discussed it though, and I told him to fuck off when he wanted coffee and a sweet after I made dinner night two, having done loads of dishes from god knows when and the preivous nights late night steak, cooked by a smoker who needs a tadd extra salt his nibs  does indeed indeed. He complained about the cheap steak which he had chosen and I had paid for, which I cooked damnable well since it was rump after all, hot pan, let it cool a wee bit after the initial sizzle, rest the fucker after juices rise tropugh on the second turn. I wanted a slosh of wine not to go out and do the coffee at 10pm. Peace broke out as he realised that I wasnt taking his pish seriously, and after some wine and his whining, I waited for an opportune moment to become the immovable object which moved, got hima  coffee and a damn good micropot sticky toffee pudd' and his unstoppable force managed to surrender to inertia. Peace broke out. T2 was still two nights away.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The last evening was spent running around delivering kids, him having gone like a good daddy to baby swimming at half nine and come back 3p,m with no explanation or even a bastard SMS to me. I had taken a lie-in and also taken full advantage of his whisky collection, which he really shouldnt keep in its original boxes as it hides such comrade driven evaporation. I went for a walk in countryside of which likes drove Lewis Grassic Gibbon whats his face to write books from sheer boredom, about something actualy happenign there. Rolling farmland, exposed to the winds from the North Sea and the Snow topped grampians. The long whale's back that is Benachie a little to the south, I can imagine why the picts held it in such reverance as it is the only sticky up bitty of note and elegance amidst miles and miles of sheer boredom. Perhaps it was more fun with bears, wild boar, elg and wolves running around chomping on your relatives or being chomped upon by them. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The day after we took a tour to where I used to live in the very shadow of said mountain. The house I had been lodger in was still there and the farmer, Geordie Skinner, still was the landowner with his Clydesdale horses. The nice lassie at reception at Pittodrie house told me. My mate took full advantage of being on the high margin colas, and the bill came to twenty three fucking quid for two pints, a whisky and those effing colas. It was interesting, because it was newly opened, 25 years ago, when I lived there. A place where I had turned down sexual intercourse with boith a girl of fifteen and a lady in her fifties thankfully. Not at the same time, it was a niece and aunty coincidence only, them liking tall chaps I guess and not having had it for a while. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Aberdeen's great grey corridors beckoned finally, and we made it in time well for the last late night showing of T2. Dinner was in a middles to shitty tex mex, some big retail opportunity site pish with an awful attempt at being original in decor and ambience. A chimichangas, not had since Dublin days out at Black Rock, soaked up most of the hotel room booze we had downed and some of its own interestingly labelled 'blond' beer from a hard up craft brewery somewhere. The film began about 1125. at night. It was almost empty, and we were the only vocal ones,. guffawwing and lauighting out loud. </p>
<p dir="ltr">On choosing life- one of the guys in the ads was right out of RSADA and he blew the proceeds on not chossing life, he chose some dope and had enough weed for all his mates too. He is now a hollywood director, who i beleive has directed Euan McGregor amonghst other names, one for sure is now Harrison Ford.</p>
<p dir="ltr">"It's been twenty years" as Spud put it. I am sick of Nostalgia. Sick and tired of the sick longing to rekindle, to relive to regurge it all Now at last though I find it an interesting experience rather than having either nerves nor excitement. It happened. As it it was back in 1971 when I was a student. Lang Syne. T 2 though obviously left me a little more melancholic, as if by design, for Renton is now a mere one year younger than my good self, and more Euan McGregor than ever befucking fore. Much like some other nostalgia tripping peoiple do, and our day at the Chapel o' Garioch the day before, the film played heavily on the past, quoting a bit too thickly from "T1" so to speak. Howevver it had a good enough series of plots, and wound the characters back together for what must be one last time, please tell us, just this and no more.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As with middle aged life though, you cant go making a comic book hotch potch of random scenes and let those around you work out what the fuck is going on, while you expect everything to be exciting and edgy. That is the mid life crisis, trying to go back to relive your youth or use your accumulated financial resources to OUT live your youth. Life is duller, harder and has responsibilities and regrets. Health is poorer, fitness is notable by its absence as ailments set in. T2 was for me an unnerving parallel universe with Einstiens theories of relativity pissed on, different speeds but the same time line, scared me. These once pop up cartoon characters now had histories, depth and most of all, most of cunting all, the same pathos you find around you and in your own life. Friends dead to you, times as a child a distant echo, the promise of youth denied by the realities of the world where you arent born with a silver spoon up your arse. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I left feeling my age, and feeling vulnerable a bit, but a little Begby in me kept my chin up as we walked up the hill passed the lappers to Union street in the midst of the pub to club transfer time. I found it all intimidating, so muich so that we asked a pair of coppers where to go, and they oddly enough knew a premises licsenced for later night entertainments and refreshments which was suitabkle for two middle aged fuckers who looked like they maybe had been through lives not unlike those of Renton and co. Drummonds had been on the go a quarter of a century ago as  kind of indie rock bar, and now it was a kind of noisy rocky bar, with various detritus who did not fit into, or did not want to fit into the plastic club scene and had seen enough   labias and bleached anuses for one life time donw the lappers already.  The bonniest Jean in the toon of aberdeen even admired my Hunter S' style attire, hawaiin shirt under leather jacket, and kissed me, mostly because it was her first chance to enter demial about becoming engaged to, remarkably enough, a Johnny Lee Miller look alike who was celebrating his 40th. We down some more, and then sauntered off to the Casino,</p>
<p dir="ltr">I was feelign rather jolly at this point, and I had the furhter pleasure of the world's self appointed smartest alec, pish all his money away on the bad odds of the roulette wheel and the five pound stake black Jack table. THe beer was good though. A taxi back o'er the Dee to some god forsaken Hotel somewhere I did not really remember south of the city other than a big retail pharmacy lay out there and you could eventually get to Cove. 5 am we got to sleep, and the arse decided brekkie would be maccie dees, down the road. Him not being a breakfast man. Luckiuly there was tea and shortbread and some baguette at my place for me. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I took off down the road then to see my crumbkling old mother in the west coast. Not quite fully incontinent, however th\e smell of pee was notable. as was her yet more reduced mobility., Yet what can you do, be there for her, be nice, hug her, run after her a bit and ask all around care supporters and neighbours if she should be in a home against her will, or if she is kind of relatibvewly speaking coping. Which my brother does not agree with ,and rubs his hands at my meagre inheritance being pished away in private nursing home land, five hundert a week. She is no longer just in the long autumn of her life, she is in the flickering last light of december the 31st I do believe. And that is both a great sadness, but also a great joy. As with T2 there were some jamais vu things, happened. I came across old photos of me, pretty much first time home from hospital with my red haired, proud mum standing there as my bother swaddled me in his arms while wearing a klnd smile / not that I have seen that much since, there is usually a patronising or derisory look in his eye when he smiles at me. That gave me a great joy, to realise that I had come home to love and given my mum so much pleasure of being a mother again having lost at least two bairns in pregnancy I have heard about. I was not such a difficult wee boy, and we enjoyed many good times just me and her, going to London to see the museums in the autuimn holidays, or taking my pals on a picnic on Loch Fyne. She enjoyed my freinds parents, mostly outliving them all as she approaches 90 next birthday. She gets great joy now of knowing I have a family and she will see them once more at least before she is released from the pains in her body which come with such age.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It was nice for her  to see me, you see. A few vistis earlier I felt stressed out and worried for her, and for me in a way. My childhood environment, our great family pile, our home, our caslte was going to be squandered away and bought inevitably by a developer to be bulldozed into oblivion and superceded with six figure properties. My refuge too as an adult in times of financial hardness and loss of jobs. Finally moving home to look after her when she broker her leg and hip and being resided to my local lot away from the metropollii and job prospoects. This time though, no, the house is a home still for her, it will pass on with her into history and those stories, uniquely just our familky as it was buiilt for us, will be remembered well by those who remain, and the photos of times before those again, will enter our own little folklore. You can level a house, but as long as the folk are long gone, you can never level away the joys and the strife, the happiness, the tears, the rich history every family experienced within such a long standing little mansion to the ordinary, middle income slekt. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I like the anonymitiy of being back at a place from which my generation pissed off from, it being boring as hell and representing the whole econbomic pressure cooker with the lock being those in privelidge of wealth or age or both,. The older sitting in safe jobs for thirty years, the young wondering why they would never afford a fucking house. One more old palk turned out to be visiting thouuygh and we had a good pint and a chat of real old times at secondary school with his mum and then down the boozer. No one knew me at the pub, and I knew one person though, I used to feel like I was hauinting the places there, about to bump into the living and scare them or be banished or exorcised by them. The last few trips the dribble of faces I knew and could maybe be bothered to talk to, ran dry and I became pleased after a while to have my anonymity. No one to know me, no one to cut me down to size, and no one to have trivial life explaining conversations where one party walks out dissatisfied with their own lives or bored to death at the very least.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In the house, thiis time i could ruthlessly throw stuff out I had gathered over the years. A lot of it actually wasnt mine, it was stuff which had been packed in with mine. I went through my old shoe boxes of post cards, and found a different view of myself. Old love letters - did I ever read of how much Sandra and Esther loved me? Did Kirsten not deserve a reply? Could Fiona have been the one for me? The wealth of the life I had came back to me from the late 80s when I was a young man about Uni. And what a nice coincidenc at one of my favourite pals from that time was home in Edina and could go for a beer on my last night. I threw out the detritus, the old train tickets, the old UCCA applications, variuous tatt, but wnet rhought a lot, careful to keep those little momentos and a time line especuially from uni in those wonderful four years, 86 to 90. I chucked out more stuff than I have ever, ever done before, without flinching. Such is life, loose the shit you no longer need and move on. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Edinburgh came after a last indulgence at the Esdquire house weatherpoons, a place I had flirted a couple of times with the Newton Mainrs/ ears Den females. Sandy or craig or both worked there in the 80s. I had a steak pudding instead of a flirt. and changed trains at GSQst. Martin met me off the Calton street road exit, I think it was thirty years since I came out there last, bursting onto the windy, dry evening with Kenny Dobie on a visit to the auld toon, to meet Sandra. He did some parent stuff,. His kid was quick to get on the phone after his athletics night at Meadowbank, and leave us oldies alone. We eventually wandered out for a bus, which completely confused me as for direcvtion, rendering me 180 degrees out in a mystical uphill part of Leith as far out as Portie' in my mind's eye. We had in fact gone round and were  facing back up towards the new toon, the Leith west triangle catching me as many a dribver, out. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The pub half way up Leith Walk was a kind of hipsterish place with a couple of good beers on the go. Craft beers are indeed a bit better crafted than big brewery ones. We chatted of old times, and who and what, but as always wi  Martin, we talked alot about the now time, the future, politics and personal economics, relationships etc. The bogs had a pile of posters, retro clubs, alternative nights, The clientel appeared suddenly bohemian as were the bar staff. I realised that we are now in a new underground era, the same as we had in the otherwise plastic, thatcherite eighties were there was a hard street movement against all the sqaureness.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">Life suddenly seemed even brighter than it had at Drummonds in Aberdeen or with my old pal at my local, or seeing my mum smile. I felt like a ghost yes, but one who was allowed to be human there for a week and wanted their life back , and got more of their life back than they had bargained for. A bit too much maybe, because now I want to Choose Life, Choose Scotland, choose waking up in the morning and knowing who the fuck I am.<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br></p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-51956811237025568912016-12-12T15:26:00.001-08:002016-12-12T15:26:40.915-08:00Career Tips Today From an Old Timer?<p dir="ltr">Would my career tips be worth a jott in today's app and big data driven world? Or are my generation a weak link between the semi digital, nine-to-five past and the cloud sharing economy of the very near future?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Well the fact is that a career will still exist, although there is now a lot of pressure for the form of that work-employee-contractor status to change, really much of this is reinventing the wheel and mediating it via mobile phones. Essentially, value will still be created in its significant form via organisations, and those will still need intellect and management.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I choose a route I regret a little now, having a portfolio career and becoming a consultant, now finding it quite a lonely place with obvious uncertainties. The nature of employment and corporate law is that the world is becoming more uncertain as the Neo Liberal era goes through its dieing throws and reinvents itself as something which democracy will probably overthrow. Hence Brexit and Trump, and watch this political space because it will affect your ability to earn and have a work-life balance. Organisations will always need talent, but in my experience very often those in management are there because they had luck or pushed a little more at the right times to get up the ladder. That ladder is a rarer thing as we go into yet more flat structures and what used to be departmental becomes compartmental ie single layer of workers use the tools of IT to manage and take responsibility for operations with a shorter chain of command.</p>
<p dir="ltr">How do you perhaps get on and what advice (take it or leave it) do I have ?</p>
<p dir="ltr">1) Experience Can Count for Qualifications , but often Not At All.....</p>
<p dir="ltr">It is really that the RIGHT experience can count for a mountain of qualifications. That is an experience which is highly respected or puts you in a position of power. The best example of course, is starting your own company - most of the Billionaires in computing, software and apps didn't start with a PhD or an MBA, they had an idea or two and found customers. In fact several never finished their degrees.</p>
<p dir="ltr">2) Get in Early to Something Big</p>
<p dir="ltr">This is what quite a few of the entrepreneurs above, like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and laterly, Mark Zuckenberg had the fortuity to be in - on the cusp, riding the crest of a wave, on the brink of explosive growth. There was a lot of fortuity in what they were into in a nerdy way, and what the market wanted in a latent sense. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Ok we all can't be Richard Branson but we can find those companies which are on the cusp of something new and exciting and get in there at the right time. Too early ? Well you may not get any pay back if you are in too early but then again you may be able to use that to get out to a competitor or move into another high growth company. Investors act like this, investing via venture capital in a spread bet over several companies in a sunrise industry. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Think of your time as a young person as investment from which you will get a greater return, and those 12 hour days and weekend hours you put in then, will pay dividends in getting up the ladder with this as your launch pad. However you need to get the right type of job which is of above average value, and that means either being involved in creation (R&D) where you can put your name on something so to speak, or being a person who becomes a people manager early on.</p>
<p dir="ltr">3) Don't hang Around Too Long Sometimes< Other Times Stick Like Glue</p>
<p dir="ltr">I have experienced the downside of being in Tech Start ups where I have either been a dropped in consulttant or discovered as a 'hire' I was very much outside the A team. Most of all for the first three years out of my masters I tried to hold onto rubbish opportunities and work 'that year on the CV'.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Eventually I worked for a really interesting full service technology marketing agency, but while there a couple of years I noticed that I was the employee in project management and new clients who stayed on, the others fell away after less than a year very often. I felt I had to make a go of a job after three years of false starts, and enjoyed the work. The others got less interesting positions and clients and they got out very quickly. Two of the many who left, got much better jobs which I believe they stayed at for many years.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It is very much a feature of successful people be they employees or entrepreneurs, that they admit their mistakes and cut their losses getting out early. A lot of people take a first graduate job in one or other also ran, unknown branded companies, and treat it just as work experience and a spring board to the next job. Zuckenberg wanted a kind of on line girl rating, beauty pageant and dating app and when he saw the light of 'political correctness' became a multimillionaire on a year's work and making the right connections - he dumped his first, unlovely idea.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Which brings us to....</p>
<p dir="ltr">4) Always be Applying for Jobs and Looking for New Opportunities</p>
<p dir="ltr">There will be less job security in the ongoing political climate across the west, because the right wing want to reduce costs and make us work harder via insecurity rather than positivity. So if you work for an insecure, pushy boss culltured company or department, get the hell out! Many companies don't subscribe to fear makes work, they know the real motivation and productivifty comes from engagement and employees who have a work-life balance.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Job security is really a figment of the imagination nowadays for we of the mere mortals, and even chartered accountants are quaking in their boots as the new generation of leaders finally seek to automate much of what should have been automated in the 1980s when it was first possible! We are all subject to take overs, cut backs, customer volatility, exchange rates and the whims of bosses and investors. Jobs then are just RELATIVELY safe, and if we see an environmental pressure on a company then it is time to get out early, that is where the smarty pants will., This is true of industries, with many of my former colleagues in Oil and Gas smooching their way into unrelated industries before the death knell tolled.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Always looking for new jobs has two other effects on promotion. One you can find opportunities to get promoted outside your company, and two you can use a job offer as a lever to get promoted. As I blogged on before, employees usually think they have a poor set of cards in the poker game of getting a job and a salary rise, and it seems that the risk of withdrawing their labour lies predominantly on their shoulders. Hence in the deunionised western office world, employers hold their poker face and will call you before you call them. In reality, very often you have very specific qualifications and experience which got you the job and the knowledge and experience you have of working there makes you uniquely productive. Bosses have targets for turn over, so as I found out when I was emmigrating anyway, they will offer quite a lot suddenly to keep you on when you resign. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Open applications with a personal follow up call are a really effective way of moving job either externally, or if handled correctly, internally. It is no mystery that interesting companies and exciting opportunities are often never advertised, while those positions which are are either hard to fill or they are looking for the cheapest in the trawl.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Companies are increasingly run on quarter-capitalist lines, and when they are buzzing away in a growth phase, then is the time to get a job offer as a lever to promotion. Alternatively when a company is struggling, then it is a great time to spot this early and have a plan B, which may become your plan A very shortly. When you are an employee then it is understood by the prospective employer that there will be a period of cessation under contract, and they may want to look at the open market of ready to go first, so it can take up to two months or more to get an offer from the outset of first interview. It can be wise to refer ' I will need to check my contract' on cessation such that you can keep your options a little open.</p>
<p dir="ltr">5) Recognise the GOOD opportunity from the BAD</p>
<p dir="ltr">This really applies to all the above scenarios and the ones below by in large. It is my greatest weakness in working life as an employee, yet a strength as a consultant now because I see my earlier failings. All jobs have some shit in them, but it is really how doing the whole job, dotting the i's and crossing the t's as well as the more interesting stuff, builds your position as in standing and respect in a company contra just being an eager beaver minion. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I have been a victim myself of 'imposter syndrome' where in one job I had with a multi national, I had a great level of responsibility as a project manager with upto 13 poeople working for me at anyone time and me conducting the orchestra, yet I felt it was all a bit scary and almost an out of body experience. I was treated with loads of respect and that made me more nervous for crashing and being shown up as an imposter. I tackled it really pretty well, with only one minor fiasco which was mainly on the part of the client. After that I setteled a little more into my shoes, but had decided to move to be with my girl freind unfortunately! I should have stayed, because the girl went bad!!!</p>
<p dir="ltr">A good situation would include being trusted with incresing levels of responsibility and tackling the job with a minimum of overtime. A bad situation would be drowining in tedious operational work, and like a labour of Sysiphus, you work more overtime for diminishing producitivity. Worse, you get recognised by the users above you as a nice little work horse for doing their menial work. GTFO - get the fuck out- is the course of action for all but the masochists. Renegotiating your work load can be an option of course, but you need to have somethingn to bargain with and that is often just withdrawing your labour ie nuclear war. You never know, moaners often get their own way with those neurotic bosses concerned about staff turnover or productivity gains acheived via experience on the job. If you dont see it is crap, and ask for change, you will get more of the same!</p>
<p dir="ltr">A bad situation is usually typified by a company losing customers or struggeling to find more. This also applies to start ups, because most tech start ups fail not because of lack of investment, but because of lack of income from customers. Essentially that is the difference between the also rans and the Facebooks, Microsofts and Apples of the world. Soft capital is a bad place relative to this because as I have seen several times, where the drive to get income from customers is lost in bullshit and doing R&D with 'partners' rather than delivering a product nbased on entr5epreneruial savvy.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Good situations are driven by a variety of factors. Firstly companies with a healthy economy, or the right reshaping opportunity for your skills to play a part in. Customers, markets and investors are important too, as are then the core offer and R&D pipeline., Very much though it is down to who 'buys' you and works with you above and around you. Which brings us to</p>
<p dir="ltr">6) FInd a King Maker or Be a King Maker</p>
<p dir="ltr">Internally to companies you are promoted not by some mysterious personnel assessment or a computer algorythm, it is your boss or some other boss you work with who gives you the nod. Sometimes you of course have to ask or you won't get, other times you get asked in for a chat in 'my office' with a smile and get offered promotion out of the blue. Conversely Many line managers will be little bitches who want to keep you down in your hole, and take the glory for themselves, and they are easy to spot, you never get a profile via them and are kept out of interesting / important meetings where your work is on display or of high relevance. How do you get round the little pricks when you are really performing? Well you make sure that other bosses know you are actually the one doing the work and get integrated into the chain of information and instruction, take ownership away from your boss over time.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A boss who recomends you for promotion, or puts you in a positiion you can shine in further outward in the company. They recognise your work, praise you and give you enough latitude to be visibile in the company. Part of this is just getting on with them, but mostly it is on your ability to cooperate and be productive in your own right. Kinbg makers then trust you and want to shove you forward - often they have a safe job and a family, and see you will be able to move on upwards in a company.. Sometimes they may be retiring. </p>
<p dir="ltr">More importantly, they may be moving company to an exciting opportunity and take you with them. One thing to realise, is that there is no lack of investment in the world, and all my cynicism of thye rich owning property over for choosing industry is not to be overplayed, there are philanthropic investors all over the place who want to create value, jobs and return on outlay in a patient way, or with some strings attached. Following an experienced boss out to a new start up can be great if they are the right personbaoloty or have been there in the growth phase.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Being a king maker is maybe a much rarer opportunity for the older manager, who can then follow that King into new departments or ventures. It couold be also that you are tightly together with an entrepreneur when they go big, and get the recognition as an A team player. It can be worth swallowing your pride and allowing a more energetic person to lead the way, with in fact you and others carrying them on your shoulders. Of course you can be following after an egotistical nut who will dump you without any recognition or payback. <br></p>
<p dir="ltr">7) Go Ugly Early</p>
<p dir="ltr">A lot of the above I have talked about the fast careers in start ups or glamerous corporates. very many leaders in those companies have been there in the big growth phase, and had their own little ling makers and so on., However the majority of people managers I have worked for directly have had one thing over me and that is experience of peoplke managment per se in something vaguely related. And very unglamerous. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Going ugly early is a terrible kind of disco strategy from the 1980s, made redundant by Tinder swiping. It meant not bothering to seek out a particularly attractive girl or boy, rather going for the sure bet of getting interest and potential 'escalation' shall we say towards a one night stand. In corporations there are thousands of small business to business brands and suppliers no one outside that supply chain has really heard of, or which you see on the side of lorries or equipment, or office blocks in public. They attract their own stream of anonymous MBA 'europyuppies' in the EU who take early management positions at different locations upin the beck and call of their masters. By the time they are thrity they are highly experienced line managers, often with 'change management', 'Lean' and 'six sigma' on their CVs and they become the well paid middle management we love to hate in the EU. Often egotistical and rather uncharismatic. So there are lots of ugly, faceless businesses looking for expecially MBA candidates, but also people with relevant operational experience to put into fresh management positions.</p>
<p dir="ltr">These companies themselves are not very profiled or 'charismatic' and so they can often have a pretty rapid promotion to middle management too, as someone coming in with other operational or junior management experience.<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">8) Go Public Sector</p>
<p dir="ltr">One thing I note amongst a great deal of the very politically Neo Liberal inclined, is that a great many of them either work in public service or are paid pretty much solely by the government. And they are doing nvery nicely on it too.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The public sector is bound to have further rounds of privatisation and deunionisation now in the US and the UK, but there are always new areas to get into either side of the fence which are promising and offer a better degree of job security for managers than the usual corporate world. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Very often though the public sector demands the exact right set of qualificatioins to get in, such as in teaching or environmental health for example, but they will invest in keeping you qualified more than the lean and mean private sector. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Privatisation actually breaks this need for the right set of qualifications down a little too, so all is not bad for the indifvidual looking to shape a career with a smidgeon more job or career security<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">9) Be Super Qualified</p>
<p dir="ltr">Although there is often a bad side of being percieved as over qaulified, for a good graduate career you need to be super qaulified. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The ticket to being a manager as I have said, is the MBA, but that has to be from a school recognised by your employers of interest. However there are other more specialist or modular routes which gain a lot of respect. For example some ( and mostly they are self serving) marketing directors demand that you have a chartered inst. of marketing diploma and participate in courses. Other industries havbe 'chartered' status of course> engineering, architecture, accountacy, surveying.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In outset many companies now 'demand' a higher technical qualification than a bacherlors with honours. Sometimes these are specific to skills and areas of research nut bvery often in my meeting of people, a masters or PhD is arbitarily demanded or part of the culture. I wish I had ten quid for every PhD twit who I uncovered as having actually spent four years researching something tedious and unrelated to the tech company </p>
<p dir="ltr">I dont regret not being an MBA or PhD but it would have helped a lot with the culture when I was an also ran and not in a king making situation. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Maybe I should have just gone ugly early, instead of going ugly ratherr late in my middle age after working with a lo9t of excitign companies before! <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br></p>
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Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-60607591061985818222016-11-09T02:57:00.000-08:002016-11-09T02:57:29.283-08:00Trump Wins! Liberalism is dead, long live Liberalism!!<h2>
Trump Wins! Liberalism is dead, long live Liberalism!!</h2>
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There are some surprises in this election result as the needle passes the point of no return for Clinton and <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/08/politics/election-day-2016-highlights/index.html" target="_blank">Trump is declared winner</a>. Firstly that he won Michigan and other democratic states while the whip states also fell. Liberals are in shock, both because of the swing surprise and because of the far right monologue Trump drove in his campaign</div>
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<b>Why Trump ?</b></h3>
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Several reasons for this as a surprise: pollsters are wrong in methodology and sample selection. In fact you can see that a low turn out amongst non white voters is proibably the major swing pusher. They turned out for Obama twice, yet 59% of whites in the US voted for Mitt Romney, the previous 'far right' candidate. This white majority is also reflected through the electoral systems in Congress. </div>
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Secondly the most important factor was that Trump is a non establishment figure. He is no self made man, having inherited his wealth and position, but he is a self made president. His campaign, by his own words, was indeed a movement. This is in contrast to a stage managed establishment candidate like Bush 2 or Romney. In that he was free to speak his mind, and to bend political correctness to build popularity. </div>
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Unlike the Bush dynasty, he does not see America as an Imperial power interfering with the world to its own ends with military force. He is also not 'economically correct' - he is prepared to tackle the hipocrisy of China and Mexico. US jobs going to a socialist bank rolled mega nation on the one hand, and to slave labour on the other. He is then touting protectionism, which has been off the Neo Conservative agenda for three decades. It is popular with voters, and a stone in the eye for the laisez faire academics who don't have to live with the consequences of the rush to socialist bank rolled China. Protectionism worked in the early post war for all the world's major economies, and indeed continued as far as the last Bush presidency with US steel being protected while it 'modernised', 20 years after Ravenscraig in Scotland was shut by effectively, Thatcher.</div>
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Clinton Fail?</h3>
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Shit sticks: unlike the virtually unknown Obamas, the Clintons have lots of flies around them which just nip away at public confidence in them, and rightly so. They have become an establishment dynasty. They have appeal to middle class liberals, but not amongst the working class any more. </div>
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Why is this so? </div>
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Firstly they "ain't no sisters and brothers" ie they are white, middle class liberals. So that emotional appeal was lost to ethnic minorities. Working folk do not really relate to their political agenda, and in fact the 'disruption' caused by Trumps wild-west, economically incorrect and agressive personal attacking style meant that she by in large could not present a strong economic case. </div>
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Trump was not chained to the Republican economic orthodoxy in what he could say. He could dumb down politics and make economics basal , but he could show an agenda which was quite unlike the previous Republican one in many ways. Protectionism as I say, also major federal investment in infrastructure. A smaller, cheaper, less adventurous military. He will still bring in tax cuts as a stimulus, but also he is prepared to call in dollars spent internationally to being spent in the US. Most of all he knows that the model where America designs and China manufactures, is broken and the US needs manufacturing jobs. </div>
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Republicans have driven a two faced agenda when Mexico is considered. Their financial and power broking supporters in the southern, border states are apparently happy to live with the illegals and grey-area immigrants who keep their wage costs very low and allow for in particular agriculture, food processing and oil fields to be more profitable than they would be if they relied purely on domestic labour. Also the Rentier economy is reliant on population growth to fuel the real estate market leverage, a major wealth escalator and "value" generator now in all western economies. White Americans are having too few kids, too late due to of course, the economic pressures they face. </div>
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Trumpanomics</h3>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPs17_AkTI" target="_blank">Trumponomics then dares</a> to defy the laissez-faire hipocrisies which the republican establishment have sat upon for two decades. That is both the illegal immigration from Mexico, and the Chinese sentral bank funding of their economy . He calls the elephants in the living room. </div>
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He stands against the free-marketers who turn a blind eye to the Chinese keeping their currency low. The chinese while fuelling their economy by printing money which is socialism, yet we in the west must not have socialism, we must compete. He calls the bluff of Republicans who tacitly accept that the southern border immigration is to be ignored, and brushed under the carpet. Border control and green cards are tickled with small change in relation to the defence and space programme budgets. </div>
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Donald Trump is not a self made man, it can be argued that in fact he hasn't grown his inherited empire in any notable way. He has had failures, Trump Airlines, Trump University and controversy dating back to his young days in opposing access to rented property for minorities in NY. However he is an educated and experienced businessman and a deal maker. He is used to negotiating from a position of strength, and now he has become the most powerful single person in the world.</div>
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Voters knew also then that Trump will break the economic status quo and challenge the concept that the US is inevitably becoming a tertiary service economy with a large national debt. The elite rich will hate him for this, because they are very much tied up in real estate for housing, and the buy-to-rent nouveau-riche especially in the border states, will not thank him for this shift in economic focus. Yet it had to happen, the way America was going was towards. As the finance crisis of 2008 and resulting depression showed, the USA cannot live from a house of cards economy based on real estate, and banks can never again be bailed out for building such a flimsy means of generating growth.</div>
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Trump's Double Communication on Race, Religion and Xenophobia?</h3>
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Has Donald played the small minded racists at their own game and won? He is a strange character, who has previously aligned himself <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DDnvRjCU9A&index=5&list=PL2SaY9FKBmMvruVIZULACI_ir-wOSNUnD" target="_blank">with a lot of socially liberal ideas</a>, and been a friend of the Clintons and other uber-liberals. He is infamously accused of saying " If I were to run, (as president), I'd run as a Republican. They're the Dumbest Group. They beleive anything on Fox News" - a quote the his campaign and the Republican party have been hell bent on denying and removing from the internet over the last two months. </div>
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Really since society organised itself, and probably when we were still smallk tribes, leaders have been able to exploit our natural, biological xenophobia to all ends when it relates to power. To isolate from other societies and define themselves by their leaders' vision. To discriminate against others and not treat them fairly, even if there is laws to protect national citizens. Of course nost of all, to go to war and kill other people you have never met before, who have families, wives, mothers, sons, fathers. Xenophobia is a primeval fear and the most powerful motivator for action in humans is fear. We will withdraw or attack based on fear, before we will ask questions, negotiate and cooperate. </div>
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Trump has appealed to the white racist voter and those voters who have indeed seen their livelihoods under pressure from Mexican immigration. Competition for jobs and housing where there are jobs. He has been able to use the middle eastern crisis to his ends, which are as with Bush 2's intentions, a far less interventionist USA. He stopped exposing religious bigotry and racism many weeks ago, because he knew he had got the rednecks out of their chairs to vote. Many were disaffected before.</div>
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Has Trump given a free reign to racism in the USA? Does he legitimise racial and religious bigotry? Well yes his campaign has that, but the man is racially liberal, and he has a valid point about middle eastern refugees, petty as it is, just a couple of terrorists and you may get either a new 9-11 or a shooting to equal an average weekly assualt rifle- in school outing. Trump the winner will leave his racist voters behind. Racism is a phenomenom which he has used and abused. </div>
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Liberalism is Dead, Long Live Liberalism!</h3>
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The other status quo which could not continue and which has drained the educated voter as much as the less savvy, is that we cannot go on with Congress being one colour and the presidency another. The best thing to come out of this is that now it is just Republican policy in governance over the next couple of years at least. </div>
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It is the same with Brexit, the public have swung to the right in belief it is all better for them, but in fact the realities are going to be different. The outcomes are not positive. Trumpanomics are disruptive too. This threatens to cause a great deal of instability and uncertainty before a new era starts, and that new era may or may not be more promising and beneficial than the one we are in now. In no way will Trump get a 45% tariff on Chinese goods, but he can at least threaten it and that can make the disruption work to gain concessions and move China towards playing a fairer game.</div>
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A red house and red congress is a gift to liberalism. The Clintons had become establishment, they had become distant. They appealed to younger educated liberals, who are in the minority. In fact the liberal mocement all over the world has become an establishment for minorities. Ethnic groups, LGBT, the handicapped. All the weak and oppressed, but not the core of who created the labour movements which put the Democrats in power. Their perception at least, is that they have been left behind by a political elite who present a new orthodoxy of not just tolerance, but it can be said, shoving minority rights down every one elses throats without doing anything for them as middle of the road voters.</div>
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Republican Economic Waterloo</h4>
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It has been argued that a power elite of owners in the USA decided in the late 60s that inflation and liberalism would destroy their profits in manufacturing, so they took the conscious move to shift their massive investment power to building the real estate market as the underpinning factor in expanding their wealth -at least, while also boosting the economy while manufacturing fell away. </div>
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Now Trump understands that the free market has been duped by the promise of "Go to China" where investment from printed money flows as if indeed, there is no tommorrow. Growth outstrips domestic demand, the currecny is kept low, some materials and goods markets are surreptitiously manipulated. </div>
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With the "Great Wall of Mexico" on the cards, Trump is actually lining up for a battle with those self same real estate driven Republicans who want a 'cheating' free market with goods from China for their retail empires, and a more or less free supply to labour and housing market from Mexico. Also yes, he will reverse Obama Care, but he is likely to go after a much better deal with Big Pharma and the Health Care conglomerates and force harder state negotiations on medicare, while injecting competition into the market. He has hinted at this two times at least when mentioning what he will replace the affordable heatlh care act with. </div>
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Liberalism Must Collapse And then Rally Itself</div>
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The trouble is then that the labout movement had suceeded in projecting liberal concepts into legislature for so long, that people both took them for granted and also saw the Democrats as part of the distant Federal machine. It was no longer a people's movement. It was a governmental vehicle for minorities and a good few fringe issues</div>
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When they formulated the affordable-health-care act then, the Democrats had a whole right wing establisment against them, and many non voting and healthy tax payers were secptical. It should have been the jewel in the crown of the Obama adminsitration, but it is both too early in its life time to really have common appeal or recognition, while also it has created inflationary pressures which they should have forseen. </div>
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Liberals the world over are on the back foot, with the "neo-neo-conservatives" in Russia, the UK and the US, reverting back to nationalism to secure economic power for the minority. Will though, Trumpanomics and Brexit not be glorious, popular successes? They are only popular because of the malaise the new world order of international super wealthy have imposed via the market crash of 2008. In effect we are trying to cure the down sides of capitalism, with on the one hand more capitalism in tax cuts, while on the other nationalism and protectionism.</div>
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The combination of protectionism, isolationism and lower income for government is however quite likely to be a recipe for disaster as far as many individuals are concerned. The free markerters have fought for freedom of movement of capital, goods & materials, and to some extent labour as their golden principles of supply and demand., yet Trumpanomics and Brexit has a simplistic appealk to the working man.</div>
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We have then both in the UK and the USA a four year period for which right wing politics can take us to a point where we know whether or not these great shifts in political landscape are going to work. These are two great experiments, but in fact by in large we have been there before. They created the type of poverty and dissatisfaction which spurned the labour movements, and the type of institutionalised intoleranse which gave birth to modern civil rights. Liberalism died today. Long live Liberalism.</div>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-56029407760520296502016-10-09T12:15:00.001-07:002016-10-09T12:15:15.006-07:00Mr Robot - Breaking Badly in Season 2<p dir="ltr"> If you have followed season one of Sam Esmail's tour de force 'Mr.Robot' then you may as well just stop there and forget about series two. Perhaps wait until someone out there in internet land Mashes or hashes together a version which is watchable and satisfactory to the initial premise and story line strategy. The script tumbles into chaos. The actors look tired and bored and irritated, like they have been asking on set for three months 'where are we going with this? "</p>
<p dir="ltr">Season two begins well enough with the development of a new third main line in the story where we meet the shady would be amatuer psychological genius with his mini crime empire, Ray. More on that soon, but the series goes into strategy melt down mid way and becomes a confusing mess of presumably self indulgent scene-bites. All the way we live with the pretence that there is a bigger plot, a major new world order, when in fact all that is delivered is inconclusive chaos. It didn't help that I was watching it late at night, because I got the feeling I had nodded off and missed some vital narrative or conversation between the main super propents. I have my own conspiracy theory.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Firstly though, I would have to say that the first series was mind blowing in both script, character protrayal and cinematography. The acting was captivating and had elements of intense stage monlogue, and improvisation of tense inter character dialogue. Introducing Rami Malek , a fellow ethnic Egyptian to Esmail, the pair were able to weave both a jamais vu experience of the life  of a nerd with mild autism, and a sympathetic relation to him as the central character bound in moral dilemas through each episode and as a continual tension. Elliot is both a hero and anti hero, Hamlet and King Lear.  There really is no bad acting in the entirity of both seasons. The director has pulled performances which are worthy of the highest accolades of the feature film industry, let alone Net TV as a medium. With synchronised release for each episode on a global basis, the grip of the series unfolfing was maintained for at least series one, and internet millenials and old data dogs alike were captivated and engaged in a huge amount of discussion on line as the series rolled out. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Filmed much in the style of Kubriks ambient light, "f0.95' the perpectives and stage direction chosen are a wonderful celebration of that director's 1970 quantum leap into a new, bold camera angles, lighting, trolley work, zoom effects yet with a less intrusive, camera aware impression than say Orson Welles' experiments of two decades prior.  The darkness, a real modern film noire, does become a little tiresome because by the middle of S2, the majority of scenes are at night or in dimly lit rooms and under passes.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The first series totally blew the methylated socks off Breaking Bad for all the above reasons, plus that the premise was more of our time, on the pulse of post democratic times in a roughly immediately contemporary chronology. Capitalism has become condensed to E Corp in America and the mysterious Chinese quasi governmental corporate with their hidden alter ego, The Dark Army. However in a kind of familiar yet completely different way, the later series deteriotes into a self indulgent, pretentious pile of short intense or long slow scenes, which delivery a poor entertainment value despite trying to be oh-so-clever in commenting on society, capital and power in today's America. It has too, broken badly.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Why do this to us, the eager follower? A series which had a plot developing which could satisfy and enthrall a sixteen year old or a 55 year old IT boss. A joy on the eye without being just carbon copy of Kubrick, in fact just amazing to see the new film media being used with such gravity, also as if the bespectacled genius was reborn though Esmail's craft. All the characters were magnetic and at the same time, mostly dispicable. Weaving in magical realism with the hallucinations of Elliots deceased father, the sitcom episode, and some of the way the the character Angela is developed as a kind of etheral metaphor for the dilema of metropolitan existence for young adults today. Yet it all gets thrown in the trash, script, character development, engagement with their dilemas and most of all plot. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The plot had so many ways to go. The characters had so much of their past to build and their present existential predicament to explore in comprehensible ways. Elliots father, we got about 80% of the way there with his 'motivation' from his former life. The Angela / Darlene connection. The real motivations of Dark Army and their leader. At the end it is just a mess which can only present to us that power is never absolute but always corrupts absolutely. The plot could have followed more on the Ray route as a foil and fortuitous cul de sac or scapegoat for F Society to get off the hook and live again, or gave gotten away with it all with impunity. The reverse of this, the real world violence of Ray's crew could have lead Elliot to engaging the FBI to catch both them and surrender F Society. Some more satisfactory total destruction of western and Chinese society? Some other, benevolent or ambivalent force from some secret national security or illuminati based policing which saves us all from anarchy. <br></p>
<p dir="ltr">I have a conspiracy theory about this though, the mess, the pretence. Or two. Firstly I propose that Esmail signed up for two series only and wanted to conclude the story line and create a short masterpiece in terms of the usual longevity of good TV series. He maybe just didnt get the time to close the plot to dear viewers relief and gratification. Or perhaps half way through, they demanded an option for a third series and Esmail had to come up with an inconclusion instead, toute suite. I think that is the most likely route chosen, and the cash came with it while the opportunities in Holllywood were yet to fall into his lap. What goes well as cult viewing by millions on Netflix, does not necessarily translate into popularity a the cinema box office. Although I would like a film version, 3 hours with a solid conclusive scene.</p>
<p dir="ltr">To some extent the final four episodes or so feel like they are from the 'cutting room floor' , a mash up of scenes. Here I play to the latter of my consipircy theories. The whole thing was played in with a 'closure event' in S2/E12, but the backers bayed for more and Esmail was presented with a short order to hack out the strands of story which could lead to a concrete conclusion or enough conjecture on the table so as to leave the cynics saying S3 would be ' so predictable'. Perhaps though Esmail wanted to be unpredictable, in avoiding either the big crashing end like fight club or the planet of the Apes, now a cliche or the more subtle ending where either the reality of imprisonment by the good guys, the FBI, closes the scenes or Elliot and gang disperse into anonymity after a final hack to cover their tracks. Breaking bad ran a series or maybe even two too long, and ended with a ridiculous almost Tarrantinoen gun fire ending, disappointing many fans who expected something chemical. </p>
<p dir="ltr">To be frank, I haven't either bothered to google rumours of S3. I just found it all boring in the end, the vagueness, the constant allusion to power being all that matters, not reality, just perceptions around existence of characters who are to be dominated or rebelled against. The very last thread of evidence in my conspiracy theory on S3 being thrust upon Esmail, is that they lay a very heavy handed, dubbed dialogue only telephone call to the end ( not revealed if you have not yet seen) which leaves us with the supposed tantalus of a new series, S3, S4....... The trouble is I would like to see a remake of S2, not an excuse for re-editing in what ever was taken out. Too many story possibilities are closed or become worn out. If they do an S3 and god help us S4, then the only way I am watching it is Robotically. </p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-52406634578209192802016-08-29T12:34:00.001-07:002016-08-29T12:34:32.444-07:00Change - Delta Inertia Momentum I Society and Economics<p dir="ltr">We see this repeating itself, or rather manifesting itself in different ways but from the same source. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Conserativism - resistance to change, inertia, or pure feet in the mud.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It isn't just the right wing by any means, although through the ages the powerful minorities of different societies, dynasties and empires have tried the hardest to stand in the face of change. </p>
<p dir="ltr">On the left we have seen republics and democracies ignore the rumblings of the massea. We have seen the unions trying to ebb the inevitable tide of competition and effectivisation. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Now we see that government for capitalism, by capitalism reaching the end of it's tether at the top of the cliff of change. They have abandoned -we need more capitalism- and in its place reached out for the nantionalist card. This is the same path we have seen before, with monster ego's and an immoral minority of hyper vocal supporters ready to bully the meek, and attack the outsider. Never with positive outcomes when they gain power, and prove to be a juggernaut against all vunerable members of society, making each element progressively the new enemy.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Capitalism in its' post industrial, real estate driven form in the west is coming to an end, as the average worker now experiences their standard of living being eroded, and they face a lower mateiral standard of living than their parents generation, and even a lower waulity of life and longevity. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Austerity was the cure which won't have worked, two electoral governments and more not being able to bring back better times. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The momentum is building, but as mentioned above, it could lead to a nationalist and protectionist future as the oligarchs manipulate the public in order to hold onto power. <br>
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Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-46873073205209263822016-08-29T10:58:00.001-07:002016-08-29T11:23:14.900-07:00Do Low Interest Rates Give Capitalists a Huge Subsidy? <p dir="ltr">We have historically low and sustained Interest rates, which are branded as the cure for the malaise of the high inflation in both the 70s and thw 80s. Yet is this situation actually a subsidy to capital, which drives ,assive hoasuing inflation and the erosion of standard of loivong for ordinary and even above average salaried workers?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Does the current low interest rates from central banks even cover the cost of managing and printing money? Let alone co tributing to the exchequor or things like national and private pension funds?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Low interest seems to shift the burden away from home owners in comparison to the high rates of the 1970s and the late 80s. However the reverse is true- house buyers are burdened with inflation levered way beyond wage rises in the post industrial, new white collar service slavery. Yes there are bigger capital gains in the metropolitan areas, but of course not for the first time buyer who is becoming ever older and shifting up the two income salary scale, with many workers facing exclusion from the general property market. Also people moving up the ladder for that baby room or suburb with better schools, face intense competition from everyone in the same, now middle aged ex yuppie boat.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The belief that housing is your be personal investment hand in hand with low interest rates and relaxed control over gearing to salary, fuels a cut throat market in most of the western metropolii. </p>
<p dir="ltr">On top of the competion between own-home owners of course, capital has shifted its focus from investing for ROI in industry, to real estate and the financial and banking structures which support this great house of cards. Also micro capitalists who have personal equity or high income, can cash in on the three times geared gains to be had in property while also covering much of their annual costs by renting property out. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Essentially this is all bad for the economy. It creates more jobs in centralised financial services and consumer services in the major metropoles to the expense of provincial cities and rural areas. As with all capitalist economies, this leads to more trickle up to both capital and to the monster finance capitals of NY, Singapore, London etc. and less trickle down- a larger proportion of total money is locked into housing capital circles and is no longer creating jobs.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Low interest rates sound really good for manufacturing industry in theory. They can invest in machine tooling and premises cheaply, and should face lower wage demands over time. However there are major issues because on the one hand we have glibalisation and freedom to disinvest in the old economies, while on the other we have competition from the monster of property.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Taking globalisation first. This has meant indeed that companies can operate and grow on a multinational basis, like Apple. It also means that they can find the lowest denominator cost base, regardless if that has the chinese ideology dicatatorship and market manipuøation behind it. Jobs in design and marketing also move inexorably to the new economies as  highly educated middle classes develope there, available at a fraction of the wages in the old west. The new eastern countries also become the main growth markets, attracting larger spends on marketing while the old west cuts back on sales forces and imports global advertising. We are left in the old west with some R&D, the super corporate structures, logistics and the financial diligence and profit optimisation accounting departments in the metropoles. </p>
<p dir="ltr">On the second point, manufacturing industry also competes with the property market and its financial circus. It actually competes for skilled workers, because more young people study or train and indeed re-train to work in the higher paid jobs around money flow into property, and the higher skilled working class become self employed handworkers serving the housing market. Of course manufacturing industry competes also for investment in order to grow and increase quality and productivity. Now we see though that very few companies with significant indigenous manufatcuring feature in the top 100 listings on old-west stock exchanges. Instead these are dominated by banks and financial institutions, consumer services and often privatised public utilities. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Many big product brand companies, like Apple, do very little manufacturing domestically. Worse than new industries setting up in the east though, or old industrues becoming unprofitable in the west and moving,  is that many profitable manufatcuring and primary extraxction companies give up in their western countries because profitability is even higher in low cost countries and there is no disincentive to disinvestment. ROI based on say a 20-30% gross margin and 5-10% profitability is no longer attractive enough for investors, nor accountants in multinationals. As i point out above, it is not just that costs are cheaper, but also that markets are growing faster in the east. It is a perfect storm for capital to move out of manufacturing in the west.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A higher proportion of western incomes now goes on housing than for a very long time in history. We to go back to times of poverty and social unrest to see so much of our wages going on putting a roof over our heads, bought or rented. Even in the 1970s period of high interest rates, we in the west used a lower proportuon of our income on hosuing.   This means we have less discretionary spend, use less in services and products, or have far higher high interest consumer debt, or have burnt equity and capital gains in our property to fund consumer spending. Many of my generation are facing eventually retiring still in significant debt on both housing and consumer debt. This is due to us maintaining the expectation of the materialist, middle class life style our parents enjoyed and that we expected to actually improve with our higher level of education. </p>
<p dir="ltr">In fact I propose that it is the university educated, western middle class who have come our relatively worst from low interest rates and our own growth in numbers and accompaning devaluation of degree skills. We have a lower standard of living now, and possibly quality of life over all by 2030 than our parents, the baby boomer generation who grew upo in boomijng economies, affordable housing, unionised industries and free education. The hand worker who is prepared to run their own business has perhaps seen the greatest relative growth in material life style, as they feed off the obsession with home improvement and personal ROI there in. The semi and unskilled working classes have seen a large scale return to pre-war working conditions, with little or no job security, unstable working hours and hence income. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Change is always going to happen, but we have seen the neo-conservative financial orientates power base resist the real need for change to which the 2008 "correction" was the symptom. Instead of allowing disease to teach the animal a lesson, they demanded corporate champagne socialism- bail outs to preserve the status quo: an unsustainable, property driven house of cards in the west. Higher interest rates are quite possibly no cure what so ever for the current wstern malaise, but they would choke the incessant, dangerous growth in housing and channel more investment into savings, bonds and quite possibly render ROI from manufatcuring more attractive to investors. What about inflation? Surely it always accompaniea higher interest rates?.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We have conquered retail price inflation in the west through more productive agriculture, super efficient logistics and the liberalisation of retail real estate meaning a saturation of outlets. Wage-rises are driven more by housing inflation now than any other personal costs or ambitions. We have replaced one demon of visible inflation, with another which the establisment has been able to dress up as a comfortable situation for average employees, when in fact the house of cards is anything but a sustainable position.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The finance crisis has in effect not really been cured, and the elements that created it in the first place are still looming in the private economy. Economic Growth in the west is rather pitiful, yet growth in capital wealth via real estate is at levels similar and locally even higher than pre 2008. We have a leverage effect as discussed before, where these modest gains in income and the relentless metropolitisation of careers feeds the ' three times' amplifier for capital gains from sale, and what can be extracted from rentals. This is percieved as a safer and preferable investment by in large, than that in manufacuring or other secondary value-multiplying industry. With so many technocratic and judicial jobs in the public -governmental sector also metropolising, it means there are perhaps two sources of susbisdy to real estate- indirect champagne socialism and low central bank interest rates. <br>
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Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-81602457286867125612016-08-17T13:53:00.004-07:002016-08-18T03:35:13.725-07:00Personal Economy - Running Your Household Money in ProfitI am a seasoned home economist. Some years ago I put a really accurate <a href="https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwisg7XQkcnOAhXFfywKHcD-ADEQFggdMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.investopedia.com%2Fterms%2Fp%2Fplstatement.asp&usg=AFQjCNFIdQIYCXtgN98rETI3Q6EmP1pUrA&sig2=AS7JljoMvWlm4YTNFdxI3g" target="_blank">P & L</a> spreadsheet together, in fact it was 1999, and this has basically been my tool for managing personal and home finances ever since. I say managing, it is really about analysing and the shocks you get are what creates management! Some years later I also developed a cash-flow spreadsheet, down to two week cycles to try and understand why I was out of pocket some months and empty for ready cash until the next e-pay-cheque.<br />
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<b>Two Key Concepts to Watch</b><br />
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Before I go further I would say there are two main findings I have to share with you dear reader. FIRSTLY that it is the seemingly small things which eat your budget down to the bone. Secondly, cash flow is really vital to understand and get on top of. These are in fact not unrelated topics. Life's little extras, luxuries, indulgencies and in particular monthly subscriptions and memberships lead often to negative cash flow and the need for credit to pay for even shopping, but especially things like holidays and car repairs.<br />
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<b>Use a Spreadsheet <i>or if Hipster, Old Fashioned Balance Ledger Book</i></b><br />
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You will only really effectively manage your monthly budgets by having a spreadsheet - more on that later, but look at any Profit and Loss or product management spreadsheet. In effect your monthly outgoings and income are a balance sheet of your operating profit or financial health if you like. A terminally sick patient goes progressively into operating debt, exposes themselves there in by too much risk. We exclude here any capital gains or losses which are generally covered for in the mortgage for your house. Another capital loss is though cars and they depreciate faster than shit stinks, but that is another topic in itself. We take here that you manage your car loan and resale value, your mortgage and your boat, pension, college fund etce by simple monthly payments included in your operational spreadsheet and turn over.<br />
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I would preach as I practice that we include food on our 'cost of goods' because it averages out over time in the actual costs we see in our bank statements, and we set a budget for it, Food is of course a necessity, and it is difficult to sort out drinkies if they are shopped at the same time. . Here food and drink accounts for 30-35% of our net income because it is so expensive. I recommend using your old bank statements or cut and pasting pdfs or online bank balance sheets onto excel as an "actual" dipstick each month, and over time you will get used to both knowing your "run rate" costs of living and budgeting for them so for example, food does not get extravagant.<br />
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<b>Cash Flow is King, <i>Well Almost King</i></b><br />
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Cash flow is both simple and complex to understand and get a handle on when you look at your finances. Money comes in, but if more goes out before you have it in again you go empty and need to use your overdraught or credit card to span the gap. It is like a wave out in the ocean, with peaks where you have seemingly a lot of ready cash, and troughs where the cash is near empty, or you actually creep into debt. Low troughs of negative cash of course, then spread over to the next peak, sucking your next crest of income. You are bankrupt when all you have is trough despite your income, the bottom is too low to cover by the next income. However as with many, many businesses you need not be profitable in the long run, but still survive on a cash flow which is positive. This is not a very balanced approach, but many business use their suppliers to fund their business simply by getting customers to pay earlier than they pay suppliers by several weeks. Usually they like to syncronise maximum income from customers to CASH in bank with maximum outgoings like monthly pay, and then have cash left over a few weeks before they eventually pay suppliers. Very often they can enjoy free credit from suppliers who are a bit lax on penalty or interest cost, or negotiate long payment terms like running month 60, which means they get upto 90 days circa credit if they buy at the first day of a new month.<br />
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Breath out! You and I use credit cards or the hateful payday loans if we experience that we need to pay for things just before we get paid ourselves. We more often have a negative cash flow from unforseen costs arising at the "wrong time" or we have been spend thrift and used too much money in the cycle. We can be locked in this for years, all the time because of a simple shift of a week or two which imbalances our cash flow. What we need is a higher wave at some point so we can roll over the deeper troughs. We need some 'working capital' or extra liquidable cash on hand, and we need to get our cost payments the right side of the peak - in the time ahead of it, not just before. Credit cards can help with this, but only if we know that in fact, we are making a profit in the mid to long term (6 months to 2 years say) ie our net income will exceed ALL our costs over that time by at least 5%- a semi healthy state of affairs for a corporate.<br />
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We can get credit cards which offer running month plus 14 days, ie they consolidate the calendar month's useage and bill you right at the start of the new month, allowing 14 days to pay, usually without interest if you settle 100%. However there is the risk that you are doing this on the 'never never' as the old Scots' saying goes, it is just covering up for you having too many outgoings relative to your income. Credit costs and with emergencies like car repairs or dental treatment, suddenly you can find yourself with a minimum payment, mostly composed of interest, of say €100 euros or dollars.<br />
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<b>Home Grown Gross Margin</b><br />
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Now we come to part two of the important stuff - nibblers and gross margin. A profit and loss balance sheet for operational management accounting or product management, places income (sales) at the top, followed by cost of sales, cost of production and so on, what they choose to allocate to deduct from this top line operationally, (depending on nation, state, size and type of company). Most often though, there is a simple calculation of health half way down the sheet, and this is sales income minus cost of goods (to make) and this is known as gross margin. If the company did nothing else but sell things they made straight from the end of the production line, no marketing or distribution costs, then this would in a hypothetical world be their profit. They have this left over to invest, pay tax avoidance accountants, have a party at christmas for the staff.<br />
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For you Cost of Goods in the cost of living - all your essential costs. For you and I these often seem fixed costs, mortgage, car loan and so on, but also variable costs like food and electricity ( gas , wood etc) A warm house, well fed, roof firmly over your head. Your family income per month must cover these, otherwise you will drown in debt or get repossessed. Also back to cash-flow, ideally you want to build a wave of cash or ready release savings which is two to three times the size of these costs, such that you can weather a large drop in income.<br />
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We have a degree of seasonality in terms of essentials- winter costs more for some in fuel for example, or we get most utility bills in January-February.<br />
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We also of course have other costs, often many small, some "essential" like say commuting costs, and after we take these away from our Gross Margin, by calender month - include then christmas or festive spends and so on - We get a handle then that we are either in profit, covering all our forseen (from our history and planning ahead well) costs, or not breaking even. We see what the bottom line is, and for us it is most important month to month, but with forsight so we can put money into that cash flow wave before the costs crash it down to a trough.<br />
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<b>The Fulcrum Effect</b><br />
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Small drops in income have a large effect on the bottom line because the additional costs companies have in covering a manufacturing, sales and distribution network are fixed, and take time to reduce in line with sudden reduction in turn over, or the price they can demand in the market. This is actually far worse for home economics because we usually DON'T drop any costs when we drop income. When we loose a job, yes we drop commuting costs as a 'cost of sales' equivalent, but very little else.<br />
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Also though there are far more subtle effects of the big fulcrum of falling income. A small drop in income can then grossly affect our cash flow, because it tips it into negative. That 5% "profit" we made or near break even situation we were in, suddenly leads to negative cash flow and more interest costs and perhaps a seeping level of debt which is going to drag us down over time. Remember those happy wave crests being reduced down to a low, negative, heaving swell of negative cash flow?<br />
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A bad fulcrum effect from down sizing job, maternity/paternity leave, period of unemployment etc can mean we run negative cash flow so long, that we not only have a sizeable monthly mimimum credit payement but also we run flat out of credit, and on this lower family income, have no access to more, or cannot make any more minimum payment thresholds. It gets down to a few gritty dollars a month.<br />
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<b>Nibblers</b><br />
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Now I am getting nearer to the crux of the matter. What we have to pay for out of our 'gross margin' is for everything nice in our coseted western lives. Going out, holidays, clothes and usually for most of us, monthly consumer credit payments. We also have a lot of other stuff we get involved with or think we just "must have" on a monthly basis. Gymn memberships, magazine subscriptions, home cable / satellite entertainment, health supplements, home delivered food or wine.<br />
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Here is the point. Any single cost on its own looks small, laughable compared to the "benefit" we will get from it. The enjoyment, the life enrichment, the fitness, the relaxation. However go back and look at your Gross Margin (GM). For a pair of yuppies, DINKYs, then often they will have a pretty large gross margin. <i>Many though have as high or higher a gearing to credit and house loans as people on the bottom of the salary scale due to urban housing costs.</i> Some yuppies are designer nightmares, holidayholics and shopping mad. They spend a very high proportion of their gross margin on the trinkets and conspicous appearance nights out that mid to high earning yuppies make. So they have a monster good GM often, but have a terrible spendthrift attitude to cash-flow.<br />
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At the other end we have people on low income who have little GM, and every other non essential cost eats away at it until they are on the most basic food possible and going to their parents to eat in the week up to pay day.<br />
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Avoiding any spreadsheet screenshots, but to give illustration: A family income is €$£2000 after tax per month, and they have a steady mortgage payment of 600, and food outgoings of 600 and energy bills of 200, and commuting costs of 200. That means they have a gorss margin of only 400 dollars. That is their discretionary spend. Suddenly a his an hers gymn memebership of 75 bucks eats up almost 20%, a fith of what they have to spend. Magazines, megabroadband and net flix take that to 35%. Going out, well you know that is a must for folk without kids...how much per month? Another 50% points ?Visa payments are then what is left over, covering the minimum payment demanded very often as you can start to see. As with calories and the waistline, it is the extras we 'must' have that eat away ar our real ability to get ontop of debt and ride out any storm.<br />
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Every 50 spondoolics is then a major chunk of your discretionary income.<br />
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The majority of educated workers who give a damn about reading this type of blog, have pretty reasonable gross margin in their households. Some yes live in metropolitan areas and have either stretched themselves to get a mortgage, hoping capital gains in property value will save them from two or three years of negative cash flow. Many of us do take on way too much risk, accepting a leverage to income via mortgage any business would shy away from as very unconservatibve and crazy risky. However many of us enjoy promotion, or inheritance and so on too. But once again though, are you actually able to cover all your costs and get a gross margin even to pay for food and commuting from your housing costs?<br />
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<b>Short Term Austertity in the face of Rank Consumerism</b><br />
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Back to nibblers for the most of us who have not stretched ourselves on huge mortgage leverage. We have all these nibblers and worse, we like to treat ourselves to things as soon as we are in a new job, or get a payrise, or worse, buy a new, bigger, house. We immediately put our selves in cash flow danger. Subsrcriptions, hire purchase and credit cards delay payment to get that cash off us, and it is still early cash tos to speak in the bigger picture of healthy cash flow.<br />
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Healthy cash flow, with that big ocean roller of a wave of positivity, takes months to build given we have an average gross margin. It means that we have in effect saved cash aside to let the wave build up in height. Small businesses often aim to have three months turn over (sales income) banked after several years in operation, because then they can either weather a storm, or use their credit rating to expand. It is recommended by many personal economy 'coaches'- I would like to see their bank balances, the majority of US citizens have less than a thousand dollars in savings. A more realistic goal is to have three months of your essential costs, because that is about the time you may need to get a new job, or organise longer term credit to cover for some accidental damage or ill health. Your credit limit should be reserved in fact, over time, for such emergencies and never used to pathc over a persistent negative cash flow ( as I know to my discomfort!)<br />
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<b>Marginal Gains </b><br />
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This is by no means a new concept in business or home economics, and probably not in the world of sport where it has been a recent buzzword following team Sky's huge british success in cycling. With money it means good old Aberdonian penny-pinching. Purchasing pros like myself should be very concerned about penny pinching in, but more often than not we have sales and project managers wanting to 'bring forward' income and delivery early, thus making the cost higher. This is the same as treating yourself before you save up a bit of that nice, big wave.<br />
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It takes top leadership to permeate a company with this concept, such as Martin O'Leary did with Ryan Air. He was perfectly serious when he asked Boeing if they could make a plane a few hundred of thousand of dollars cheaper by not installing cabin windows. It was a small gain, but if you make many small gains in your fixed or variable costs then you suddenly have a healthier bottom line. They have become the most profitable airline in Europe, and brought down the cost of tickets at the same time. No one else had this philosophy of every small thing counting in reducing costs or charging the customer a litte extra for those little extras.<br />
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Every little bit accrued from marginal gains though must go right to the bottome line. So if the first plane wihtout windows would be an expensive prototype, drop it! Next possible cost which can be reduced with no real internal effort. Next vendor who can be squeezed down. Next route which only makes 7% instead of 9% profit is dropped.<br />
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So for every nibbler you can get rid of in the 'early' phase of a new cash-flow scenario, the better. It is about postponing pleasure. Also as I mentioned above, it is about putting credit reduction in a san essential costs, at a far higher level than your minimum payments.<br />
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Another marginal game which pays off over time, is to move away from interest only mortgage as soon as you can, and opay even a small amount of capital per month. In this way you make a greater pay back when you sell the property, or avoid negative equity putting you in much higher debt perhaps if you are both licky to have paid off a lot and unlucky to experience negative equity when you must sell up.<br />
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<b>Quantum Gains</b><br />
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On the opposite end of the scale there are quantum gains. These come about by rethinking your life and costs, income balance. Firstly, a very big cost which is exposed to inflation and gives you a poorer quality of life is commuting. Longer, higher. You can then solve this only really by moving yourselves or moving your job. This can mean being a home working, self employed consultant for your current employer, knowing you are more disposable but saving enough to have a mega good cash flow for new business shoe leather time. It can mean moving to a city centre neighbourhood which is affordable yet being gentrfied by the hipsters and the NYPD. It can mean moving closer to faster, cheaper transport routes on the other side of the suburbs. Or like us, fuck the city, houses in rural areas are so much cheaper than we can work in refuse and kindergartens and afford a better home and nice lifestyle.<br />
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Quantum gains in income can be from promotion for example, but you should not consider capital gains as quantum income gains unless you invest them wisely and get a steady ROI on the go. If however you decide to downsize in property or location, then yes, that capital can be released as a supplemetn to income, or pay for a larger deposti on a house.<br />
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Going self employed is these days for the average worker, the best way of getting a hike in income, while of course it takes time and savings to be able to do so. You need a good wave of cash for the household while also investment money for equipment and possibly staff and premises.<br />
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One thing some hipsters and ageing yuppies with kids get trapped in though is down sizing their working hours or top line income, without significantly reducing their urban lifestyle costs. Usually this is funded in fact by credit, and often by that seeping form I talk so much about above. Little by little the credit bills rise and the total amount reaches as much as you can or should borrow for sustaining the unsustainable life style you have.<br />
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<b>Pre Tax Income Equivalency to Scare You</b><br />
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Here is another way of looking at luxuries or small nibbling costs. We nearly all have an annual salary quoted pre tax. On average in the western world we pay about a third of our income in central and local authority taxes. Now think of that left over Gross Margin money again: a fifty dollar expense is actually seventy five dollars top line quoted income, and 900 dollaroos per year. Take two such expenses plus say a magazine subscription and you are spending 2000 dollars of your top line income on fluff.<br />
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Also think of this when new costs are in the picture- commuting included. A new job on the other side of town pays better, but costs are an additional 600 dollars pcm. That is the same as 900 dollars income, which is that you really should be earning $10,800 extra gross income per year to cover this cost. Could you rather have worked ovetime in those extra hours you commute, or taken an extra part time job in a local shop, bar or warehouse ?<br />
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<b>Summary</b><br />
It is always down to making a better bottom line though through marginal gains for the majority of people in work, and building a positive cash flow scenario which is robust, while having reserve consumer credit for unforseen emergencies, not to tide you over to the next paycheque, be that $2000 or $20,000<br />
Big gains in life are for those who dare do something about it, but anyway after a gain is made, we can soon revert to being spendtrhift and spoiling ourselves with purcashes funded on the never-never, or first month free marketing lures. We cut our cloth to match our suit - that image we want to show the world, or feel we deserve.<br />
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We need to take a couple of months of personal austerity in ordinary times, with normal income and base costs load in order to come out ontop of our cash cycle. Cut out those nibllers , don't treat ourselves to anything special, cancel those subscriptions. Be tough when the sun is shining, in order to build that wave up so we crash over the troughs and don't get drowned in them .Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-27614365758870523982015-11-14T03:08:00.001-08:002015-11-14T16:12:52.825-08:00Jfk- Conspiring Against The Conspirationists ?<p dir="ltr">Oliver Stone spliced together pseudo facts, conjecture and pure dramatic license when he created JFK, which is almost as much a work of fiction as is his earlier master piece, Apocalypse Now.  A good  conspiration's theory makes for good drama after all, but picking away at the innaccuracies and speculations doesn't mean that there wasn't an organised, secret plot expedited in a coordinated way.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Stone could use the Garrison protagonist as a vehicle for expression of belief in the conspiratuion theory, but it was probably very unfair to present so many pseudo factas and half truthes which were later open to ridicule, thus p,aying into the hands of the 'single gunman' neo conservatives and myopic sceptics.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Several investigative committees and criminal evidence experts have concluded so far that a single sniper position is completely possible explanation for the shots which killed John.F.Kennedy. This does not though exclude other possibilities for him being the last link in a chain of command, as those who would like to put the issue to bed would like us to think. Pretending the whole thing is just a bore now, we are tiresome liberals chasing the end of a dark rainbow.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Writers critcal to the film and Garrrison, as well as those conluding at the end of official or public hearings, have tried to unpick all of the small, strange and seemingly coincidental strands of human involvement and physical evidence and reduce them to being irrelevant. Even witness testimony is presented as laying the contrary to rest.  For example the mysterious umbrella man incident is seemingly exåplained away and laid to rest as purely coincidence. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The "umbrella man" is a case in point, with at least two authors citing both his later witness testimony under cross examination, the symobolic significance from the Chamberlain appeasement fiasco and then they go on to try a hat-trick of killing off intellectual discource by clainming an assailant using a sniper sight would not require signalling. Any one who has been involved in sniper operations or even target shooting will tell you that there is a second man, with a wider field of view scope, who is guiding the sniper during longer range shots in order that they can zero in or the target or cease firing once the enemy is felled, thus not creating unnecessary barrell flashes which reveal their position to other enemy soldiers.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> Oswald would in this theory have known the position of the umbrella man, and looked for his signals as to open the window, raise rifle, rough sight to the forthcoming killing zone, and then use his telescopic sight for just the few seconds he would need for his first probably fatal shot, being able to check with the signaller as he lowered his sight to reload. Also the umbrella man would be signalling to accomplices or watchers at a slighly further distance who knew they could dissolve away without ever being traced to being near the scene.</p>
<p dir="ltr">However in any croime there are three elements. Motive, method and opportunity. Here we have two crimes, the actually shooting by one or more gun-men, acting alone or with accomplices unidentified, and also the conspiracy to murder and conceal any such organised illegality. MMO for both sides of the crime are of course estsblishable, and in the coming years the death-bed testimonies and paid to talk sources may reveal more about who was involverd in each of the three phases- preparation, insertion-assasination and cover up. The multi shooter theory would also need some form of signalling which would later be fully disputable in court, where as a radio signal or even hand gesture could be recorded or noted and used as stronger circumstantial evidence. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The umbrella man was real and was overlooked by in large by the FBI during the initial investigation throughout the 1960s. He was later called to testify many years later and cited the kennedy Snr / chamberlain misjudgement and other republicans taunting the Kennedys with this reference to the failed english gentlemanly diplomacy towards Hitler. How would this person, now deceased, be willing to use this cover story iin court to hide his real role on the fateful day? We will probably never know and nothing very conclusive has been established in terms of the frame by frame chain of events from the key film evidence and whether or not the umbrella is making any intelligible signals.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> Much of the speculation could have been either settled or alternatively fuelled during a trial of the assassin during which their testimony would have revealed more than we know at this point in time. . In the whole perspective of this case, the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald is so suspicious as to never truly settle the account.</p>
<p dir="ltr">What is the precendent for national security agencies acting in politically motivated conspiracies to extremr violence? Well you only have to look back to the Gulf War and the complete missuse of tentative evidence of "WOMADS" to conclude that the conservative political elite can and will utilise the security services to achieve their politcal-economic ends through violence.</p>
<p dir="ltr">How many more cold war events are purely in the realms of the secret, being carried out covertly and sanctioned by persons now deceased?  Where do military, organisational and poltiical loyalties stretch when a generation first pensions omfortably amd then fades away? We the public, cannot really know.</p>
<p dir="ltr">One the one side of the debate is the seemingly overwhelming body of openess. We have across most western democracies, freedom-of-information acts. We have a strong tradition for journalistic investigation. Then we have the whole issue of kiss-and-tell exposees fuelled by vanity and of course money. Surely these alone should negate the slightest chance that there was an organisational conspiracy ?</p>
<p dir="ltr">On the other hand there is the motivation for the assassination. A bright new democratic super star in the ultimate positon of power, set to potentially move te USA to being a non interventionist in both the post Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs Cuba, and SE Asia. Billions of dollars of military spending going to the industrial political complex, a massive crypto socialist subsidy to a protected industry which stood on the brink of the cold war otherwise becoming a limited spend on mutually-assured-destruction via ICBMs and other systems to deliver nuclear warheads. Conventional war was more mechanically diverse, and labour-mechanically intensive with a wider sector of industry able to supply conventional weaponry and in particular airborne transport platforms. </p>
<p dir="ltr">As Stone points out in the film, the Mafia hated Kennedy because of losing Havana for ever to communism, the military hawks hated him, the Republicans naturally didn't want such a charasmatic president leading them into a social democratic future. Even Lyndon B. Johnston was partisan to Kennedy. Then there is the Krusjtjov motivation post Missile crisis, with the link to Oswald. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Is there an alternative style of conspiracy theory, to most of those presented? The various angles taken by Garisson, and the other authors and of course Oliver Stone are those which presume that the so called book-repository-turkey-shoot was orchestrated by several snipers, aided and abetted by mysterious figures in black or fur coats who disappeared from the crime scene never to be identified by the state police or the FBI. These theories also presume that there was a large, organised premeditation in the whole affaire, which has been covered up, the final loose end being the terimination of Oswald. What overall form could an alternative take and how could it be more feasible in practice and in remaining unresolved?</p>
<p dir="ltr">You have to start at the end and work backwards. Why did FBI investigators in the land-of-the free draw a virtual blank on actual hard evidence and witness testimony which would fully contradict the lone gun-man contention? Organisational conspiracies all have their weakest linkes, their whistle blowers and paid for snitches, their exposure to the course of law and public scutiny. But what if the organisatioin behind the assassination was so closed and so used to covering its tracks that it managed to achieve this? Firstly this then rules out any political party or organisation which has individuals with discretion and a societal conscious. So that leaves only the Mafia, the Soviets and the CIA with possibly the internal NSA being the exception being more accountable to law and politics in the US.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Surely now though, there would be enough documentation released from freedom of information acts and the falling of the iron curtain to pay-to-play politics. Also how many mafia bosses would be interested in avoiding jail by brokering a deal on the kennedy killing in the aggressive anti Mafia late 60s and 70s? What ageing CIA official or agent would be so cash strapped from successive divorces as to decide to cash in their blue chips of knowledge about the conspiracy? </p>
<p dir="ltr">Now we are getting warm. The alternative theory is characterised by a much narrower channel of influence in stark contrast to the pyramidal structure many have been looking for, with Oswald as the final link. The operational 'silo' is tall and thin. A decision was taken, the pinacle route of mimimal involvement chosen and the command given. This is most likely to reflect a single 'supply chain' down to the point of recruiting, or merely encouraging Oswald to follow the methodology he did. </p>
<p dir="ltr">This vertical organisational silo would be typically single organisation, but nothing rules out a chain of command which crosses organisations. KGB to Mafia, Mafia to CIA, CIA to Mafia or secret political influences operating across two of these. However the likelihood is that a single organisation could contain the secrets better up to the point of Oswald, with him either being indeed the single shooter or the Patsy who just happened to get at least one shot into the President amongst other snipers securing the goal. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Would any group of people or chain of command be ideologically stubborn, committed and evil as to hide the secret for so long? The question is then how many nodes were there between order and Oswald/accomplices? Crossing organisations both potentially exposes the secret and circumstantial indicators and movements around the events to more people, while also actually allowing for the opposite. In other words each party has a particular self interest in keeping it from the chains in their own organisation, and by crossing over the lines of command, the thread of evidence if it was exposed is both limited and neutralisable. This is a term we will return to. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Each chain of command has access to one crucial thing and that is knowledge. One side has knowledge of the Opportunity while the other controls the Method. The motivation is either shared or becomes a transaction- a trading of values. This is then of course true within a single organisation and is a characteristic today of how terrorist cells are commanded such that the chain of command remains short yet distant and any connecting nodes largely neutralisable or defendable.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So as an example we can consider that Oswald is the key assailant in what today we recognise as a terrorist cell. He is chosen by his handlers, the peripheral node, who do not know his missioning only his required skill set. He is chosen to be either likely to succeed because of his marksman skills, or to be a very good scape goat (patsy) with the scenario being multiple snipers. He perhaps has accomplices as in the 'umbrella man' or even there is a second possibility for another sniper somewhere else on the route which was not exercised of course. He is chosen as ideologically opposed to Kennedy and groomed psychologically for this role, being a cold assassin. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The opportunity at the Dallas book repositry, is planned in detail by people who are nodes higher up in the chain of command, and he is only given this missioning at the appropriate time and when it is attained that he is psychologically primed and stable for the attack. On the day, like a modern terrorist cell or a cold war spy assassin, he acts alone for his particular deployment / inesertion point, route and access to sniper position. He may or may not then have had some form of concurrent or subsequent sniper back up, and signalling. As a single node himself, with personal knowledge of only his few handlers under assumed idenities. he can reveal little. He most probably doesn't know of any other snipers in the multi shootist scenario. He is set up to be captured, by his perfect vantage point also being difficult to escape from undetected.</p>
<p dir="ltr">If captured then he realises that he actually knows little about his handlers and psychologically he is primed as the self made anti hero, acting alone as his story. He has perhaps been offered large sums of money or some deal (texas had then and still has the Death Penalty for capital offences) or given some story that the Soviets will over-run the USA and free him. When none of this transpires he realises he is alone, a patsy, and just maybe as his psychological priming wears off and he may begin to think about playing ego games and disclosing his handlers and accomplices, he is gunned down himself. Neutralised by an end node himself, who knew nothing more than he was put up to it.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The nodes further up the line then are either very motivated to never reveal the conspiracy, or are neutralised underway. Neutralisation meas of course, killing them, but involves first passifying them such that they do not try to run or give evidence or otherwise document evidence such that others may find it after their untimely demise as the old film line goes. The fewer the number of nodes, the fewer need neutralising and so the easier it is to not create more trails of evidence in destroying lines of enquiry before they are even discovered. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Another way of looking at the whole notion of it being organised is to think of the concept of 'wishful thinking' and 'my enemy is your enemy, even if we are on the face of it, enemies'. Here then a very small poltically motivated 'star chamber' could discuss means of eliminating President Kennedy. The notion would be taken as hypothetical and deniable for actual intent. Then the next link to middle med who identify the Opportunity. Then via them or another route, contact with the handlers is made, and then Oswald is chosen as the crux of the matter. </p>
<p dir="ltr">In this type of scenario building we can imagine that either Soviets, Republican Ideologists or Mafia Dons sit in the star chamber, and either build a steep, narrow silo for the hit, or if they choose to use a verticle route in another organisation. Here we also stop thinking about organisations as defined by stature or family ties, but rather we can also think of relationships not strictly defined by 'employer'. Thus there may have been a Republican Ideologist who had inroads to the CIA and chose a node there, who then had a good node in the Mafia who could handle Oswald. Or for that matter the Soviets being the handlers of Oswald, with a double agent in the CIA directing them.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The chain is maybe even weaker, with people and actions being suggested rather than actually ordered. The chain may be longer, with as many as six nodes all impeccably reliable or immenently neutralisable. The one most compelling thread of evidence is that Oswald was silenced by someone who would remain silent or not be privvy to more than the 'sparing the first lady testimony' cover story. Over and above this a chain may very easily have been able to neutralise all around Oswald and any accomplices on the day, as long as they were not traced by the state police or the FBI as connected to the scene or Oswald. Disappearing the people who disappeared. Then you are maybe down to just two nodes -the star chamber and the middle man 'fixer'. These were in outset presumed loyal and committed enough never to talk about what chain of events they set in motion. </p>
<p dir="ltr">One man up in a window of an anonymous warehouse building, with a mail order rifle, killing another man who has is in a large open top car travelling at city traffic speeds with little or no obstructing vehicles in the line of sight. One man who knew the route alone and who entered the seemingly insignificant building alone, un perturbed and gained access to a very good shot, which he had premeditated as fully possible from a simple visit to the area in the days before the cavalcade. One man who could have failed but for his will to succeed and his keen skills with a sniper weapon. One explanation, completely plausible. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Silencing may also be achieved by other means. Firstly, by the notion of avoiding self incrimination where an actor in the chain of command did not fully understand the consequences of their actions, but did understand the implications of the end result. Secondly there is simply money, back then a million dollars was a serious amount. Enough to start a new life with no traces of the one you left. Thirdly there is fear, and fourthly there is the case that the CIA or Russians were able to use hypnosis and brain washing techniques to both motivate Oswald and to silence his handlers and possible on site accomplices.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Only that other explanations are also completely plausible. If you stop thinking of three layers of counter arguement as being decisive and start to pick at the last two then you may find that many points not 'evidence limb stubs' that in fact they could be open for new theories or as we may soon find out, corroborate or be corrobrated by new evidence and testimony brought to light. Why say this ? There are just a few too many threads which are untied from the bullet balistics of a single point of sniping, the probablility of Oswald actually being able to fire off so many shots wihtout a coordinated warning or singalling system, how his access and vantage point remained undiscovered, to the babooska woman and the now deceased Umbrella Man. It will take just one death bed testmony or secret service document to start the whole circus rolling again.<br></p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-15938604458948844702015-10-26T02:48:00.001-07:002015-10-30T08:09:59.048-07:00The Hipster Eclipse part II - Birth in a Million SunrisesHow does a fashion and whole life style genre gain a critical mass and go on to become so iconic as Punk was in the late 70s, hippie before that and now of course the urban woodsman look and artisan lifestyle of the modern-day Hipster?<br />
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Every such 'movement' , being more than an off the peg fashion choice and more a total lifestyle statement, has its roots long before they emerge and then they have their protagonists who propell the sect into the limelight. The hippies can trace their roots back to the free spirits of the post war motorcylce escapists who became part of the beat generation, and then the hipsters of the 1950s who were spawned of the late 40s beats into the 1950s and early 60s.<br />
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In my last <a href="http://freddierant.blogspot.no/2015/10/the-hipster-eclipse.html" target="_blank">essay I blogged about the root</a> to Hipsterdom but here I wanted to inject a little more theory into the evolution of the biggest fashion movement this last two decades, since white boys started wearing puffa jackets, baseball trainers and squinty oversized baseball caps. Also I wanted to think through out loud the economics of Hipsterdom and earlier incarnations of the heavier lifestyle fashions which have arisen post war.<br />
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<b>Innovators and Early Adopters</b><br />
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In consumer studies (and I would say studies rather than theory, this is more empirical than philosophical) marketing academics talk about three phases important to a product category. These phases relate to the chronological graph of growth in a categories volume or value over time. The innovators come first, followed by the closely associated group of lead consumers, the early adopters and then the next group which are either called the 'early majority' or broken down a little more as the second standard deviation when considering the burned out graph historically.<br />
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Usually this graph is referrred to as the Product Life Cycle but when considering a whole genre ecompassing many fashion items, styles and products then it is kind of a primary trend graph from which other product life cycles can trace their ascendency.<br />
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A fashion or lifestyle genre is very much aligned with this because it is all about conspicuous consumption. Even if you were like me, part of a quite underground movement - me an eighties indie fan - you are making a very visible statement to your peers if not society at large, and in choosing to shy away from the 'plastic public' you are making a similar decision as the Chelsea set shopping in exclusive designer boutiques on the King's Road.<br />
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As I wrote in the first <a href="http://freddierant.blogspot.no/2015/10/the-hipster-eclipse.html" target="_blank">"Hipster Eclipse"</a> these roots are echos down the decades, and I propose that they all trace back to the post war Beat generation in the late 40s and early 50s.<br />
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Soldiers, aviators and those in homeland defence factories, were spat out at the other end of the war in the USA to a country which offered the clean cut and educated a lot, but which was rapidly becoming more overtly socially conservative as would be seen in the reaction against the racial rights movements and in McCarthyism in the subsequent decades. Some of the great warriors and industry workers were left disilussioned with having to fit in as a cog in a greater machine, and got a taste of different culture, artisan food and drink when compared to their mass produced rations and the very ugly machinery of war.<br />
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Some of these characters took to Harley Davidson and Indian motorcylces, or railway hoboing and became the drifters who would eventually let their hair and beards grow, thus becoming the first North American bohemian prototype for the hell's angels, the hippies and then today of course, the Hipsters. Others became artisans, working on something niche like fixing old motor bikes or wood turning, smoking meats and fish and so on, to live an individualistic lifestyle and deal with customers in small numbers they could relate to directly.<br />
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Individualism and its self statement through lifestyle and dress sense, can be linked to those who are the innovators and those who are nearest to them or those who are most receptive and indeed neophilic - seeking the new, the exciting, the unique. Even a very small core of very visible innovators can influence these neophiles via media or metropolitan districts which attract the educated artisans, misfits and drop outs of the day. At this point of transfer it has become a fashion - people no longer are just trying out new things and maybe forming new connections and exhcanges of ideas. The early adopters are following more than they are leading.<br />
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However in turn the early adopters spread the word and image and the often young, fashion conscious consumer wants in on the act. There is an obvious critical mass. The 'beautiful people' are doing it. It has also become safe enough to dare just that little to go into it, and available enough through chain stores or by the proliferation og specialist outlets such as the Carnaby Street roll out in the 1960s. The threshold to mass consumption is physically and psychologically lower, and it snow-balls out perhaps reaching an exponential phase in adoption numbers or value of sales.<br />
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So who are these innovators in the Hipster movement, and who are the beautiful people who were so keen to adopt a hick back woods beard and braces look?<br />
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<b>The Beautiful and Often Gay People of Innovation and Style Leadership</b><br />
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I think that you can see that in the 1960s various threads of fashion were first adorned literally by the beautiful people - the models and pop stars of the time, and this became the cliche of the glam rock 70s and then the product placement 80s.<br />
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Hipster is far more underground though and I think personally you can trace the biggest echo in its fashion root to the 1980s gay scene, and eventual 1990s style "gurus" epitomised by " Red or Dead". In the eighties there was a sudden gay reaction against the plastic and pretentious club fashions of the time into crew cuts, cheque shirts, 'docs' (boots) and head to toe faded denim. It was both dated and very ironic because it was pretty much like the so much maligned skin head fashion of the late 70s. It became all the rage too with lesbians who could have a boyish, tough look while communicating surreptitiously to other lesbians without perhaps the public noticing. The whole look took off amongst mid to late 80s students, being affordable, highly functional and quite cool, only to be then later regurgitated in the 1990s as oh-so-knowingly ironic and high priced designer trash clothes.<br />
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Talking of trash, In fact though you can see from going back to the 1970s that hipster is a carbon copy with some gilt edges of the 1970s post hippy redneck woodsman look. With wild sideburns and quiffed short back and sides, this made a side show in the 1980s as the post punk "Pyscho Billy" genre. Full beards remained firmly for old, fat real ale drinking farts and the young men of the Apelachians.<br />
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I would like to have the time and budget to find the modern day proto hipsters, who I would say belonged to the gay community and developed the look as early as the late 90s. I dare say that they were the innovators and a large part of the early adopters. I think you can see that Hipster as a gay movement in outset by the fact that the fashion is very, very male dominated.<br />
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Somewhat ironic that the male Hipster look has become very iconographic for the modern, alpha male with soft edges that women may desire. This is in large because many male models came out with the big beard look maybe five or six years ago, and it has a staying power.<br />
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<b>Why Hipster is More Hip Than Fashion in General </b><br />
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At this point in the product life cycle something a little odd happens. This is because, a bit like going the whole hog as a punk in 1977, the hipster look, appendages and lifestyle takes more committment than just going into a chain store when they decide to roll out the look via clothes and accessories.<br />
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Hipster has a far higher threshold to participation. Firstly there is all that beard growing and trimming the old hedge into the Achaen columner beard, more down than out so to speak. Then there are artisan tattoos, one of those guilt edges which mark the modern Hipster as in the cognicenti and not just in a rusty pick up from the sticks. Ink is for life, and says something about you.<br />
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For the new rich set, despite Hipster fashion swaggering down the odd cat walk, it just does not capture the right communication for them. The children of the Reagan era born into wealth and corporate opportunity are looking for conservatism and exclusivity, not being called a douchebag walking down Fifth Avenue or on the beach in the Hamptons.<br />
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Then there is also all the "Hipster douchebag" slagging which started as soon as the internet meme media got hold of it. Prior to this, a bit like our anti-plastic-league 1980s indiedom, insults hurled across a street from a gang of squares or bitchy comments passed on the "pixettes" by highheeled working class tarts in a down town bar, were taken as confirmation and that we were doing the right thing! Being shouted at by some dick means that there is often safety in numbers so there are hipster communities springing up on the cheap side of towm, and in cheap towns like Detroit, where an otherwise economically unviable lifestyle and logistically difficult set of tastes can form a nuclear core with enough critical mass to humm yet not explode.<br />
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<b>The Hipster Economy</b><br />
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Following on from this last point, the whole artisan and rather twee consumer attitudes of the Hipster means that they congregate around districts and towns where there is a high availability of things like craft beers, period leather and tweeds, and slow food.<br />
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Being aritsan in nature this sets a large barrier to further explosion of the Hipster lifestyle as an industrial fashion. Artisan does not scale well. Yes you can buy new, premium priced designer Hipster clothes and paraphenalia, but the core of followers are still the modern disilllusioned.<br />
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You could argue that Hipsters are basically cheap skates, finding a fashion affordable by the charity shop availability of the themes of clothes, cameras, typewriters and so on. It is true to say that many Hipsters find their lifestyle choices and lower middle class status has marginalised them economically compared to the mainstream of corporate american, and even the skilled blue collar worker.<br />
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In fact for women coming to the movement, a blog worthy in its own right, it offers an alternative route to fulfillment than just being as pretty as you can and hoping to marry a corporate executive or trust fund playboy. Where are women in Hipsterism ? Yeah, a lot less visible but a powerful force no doubt. Do they follow, are they the modern housewife second job ? Or are they many of the new SME leaders ?<br />
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The Hipsters are/were middle class kids who just see the whole corporate America thing for the cubicle slave debt factory it has become. They see house prices in their middle class subburbs as being unattainable and the yuppie life style of the 80s aspirational as now being for the few from far wealthier families who can get those wages or share portfolios to fund a Porsche and Ralph Lauren lifestyle which once any hard working graduate could achieve in the 80s. Like Hippy, Hipster is very much turn on, tune in drop out.<br />
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Economically then for many it is about being niche and loving it, and about finding the cheap areas which are just safe enough from gang violence to be habitable. It is also about seeking non traditional, artisan and entreprenerial lifestyles or careers within comunity work and social enterprises where you can get a job turning up in a cheque shirt without having shaved for six years.<br />
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The Hipster Economy self protects then to an extent. It is still a niche market and while growth may be high, potential is limited, thus Anheuser Busch may scout for new beer recipies, but wont be going into the market. It is kind of self exclusive then, the barrier to entry for corporate is its small and undefinable future size, and the barrier to mass consumption is the lack of scalability of artisan based products and service businesses.<br />
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I think that in fact the Hipster economy could become the new mantra for middle class kids who see that meritocracy has all but evapourated in corporate careers, and wages have been stagnant and eroded in the SME sector of squaredom. The opporunity for young intelligent, energetic people with no ivy league and country club connections is to reduce their living costs and use some of their income either to become artisan entrepreneurs or to consumer and be consumed by these new bread of Hipster spawned SME.<br />
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<b>Hipster- Eclipsed by Its Own Success</b><br />
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Here we come to close the circle on what my thread of discussion is and why I have entitled this blog "The Hipster Eclipse". No longer can you say 'beardy weirdy", the genie is out of the bottle and the verdict is cool amongst many folk ready to be influenced, while the squares of other worn out fashions and lifestyles can shout 'douchebag' all they want. <br />
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So if hipster does overcome the cries of " douchebag " and go mainstream big time, then it will not implode but simply evolve around the mass marketed image to become something new, or rather old - perhaps quoting from punk or clean shaving beatnik days. However its legacy in the artisan SME economy may eclipse the size of the movement and become the luanch pad for the new 'belle epoque' for the artistic, the educated, the disillusioned and the young entrepreneur.<br />
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<br />Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-64016113352944572682015-10-25T14:30:00.001-07:002015-10-30T08:09:00.899-07:00The Hipster Eclipse<div dir="ltr">
The hipster fashion, neigh, movement was a very long time in icubation and now is likely to be at its asthmus, ready to implode after this total self eclipse.</div>
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If you avoid the whole facial hair thing and make it a cross gender consideration, then the modern naughties and tens (2000s and 2010s) are part of a very long, slow rebirth of the 1950s hipster, beatnik and protohippie style. It began in the 1980s when students and young folk were looking to react against both the whole terylene and sequin 1970s pop kitch and the spandex and heavy eyeliner, main stream eighties. You just have to look at some of the bands of the time who were alternative aka indie, to see how the oxfam (charity) shop dress code and short back and side haircuts or wilder, anti eighties coiffures. Just pick up any NME or history of underground pop in the 80s and you will see the whole underground, post punk anti style epitomised by The Smiths and Dexy's Midnight Runners. </div>
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The greatest thing about the 80s for us who were teenagers and young adults then, was the underground culture. In fact Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground were amongst the must own vinyl albums of the decade, they seemed to be both perfectly ancient and completely timeless at the same time. Unlike maybe the beatnik period of the 1950s with their polonecks and Monk records in smoky basements, the 80s underground was way more diverse, feeding off many musical and style genres. Parodying some, as in the pyscho-billy movement. Hanging onto others like the punkier gothic style who all listened to the damned as well as Bauhaus and The Cure. The "pixettes" with their lovely vintage mini dresses bought from Starry Starry Night and other retro second hand boutiques. The ubiquitous 1950s rocker style bike jacket, which accompanied all from goth, through the smiths and into main stream with Bros. Doctor Martins affordable, street wise shoes and boots, hijacked from the needs of the ageing working class for comfrotable work shoes. The the huge plethora of indie scene followers, like myself, wearing cheap but really high quality clothes from charity shops, once the fine coutoire of the well to do, and re-dyed army surplus combat trousers or jackets. </div>
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Beards were out in the 1980s, it was seen as just old hat, hippy shit, when we had access to the first really good Gillette double blade with glide strip and wet-dry electric shaves. A clean shaved chin was a good thing for pulling one of those sexy wee pixetes, who didnt want stubble rash to belie her last nights indescressions and casual petting. One thing that was in, courtesay of Morrissey, was side burns, which were a kind of tip of the cap to the 1950s and at the same time bohemia and the English tradition of the lamb chop. Long before Mr. Darcy on TV, the brace of peripheral squirrels was popular in many different walks, trimmed or bushy, and I adorned a variety of them, although never a full sized Lemmy Chops set it has to be said. </div>
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The other great thing though about the whole scene and fashions, was that apart from some of the day's indie stars signing for the likes of EMI, the whole stramash or visual and oral cacophany was never commercialised beyond being underground. In fact apart from music and bars and shoe shops suddenly having three shelves of the doc martin range, none of it became either main stream or artisan commercial. It was a kind of anti business style consumption as much as it was anti top-of-the-pops and anti Thatcher or Reagan. To marketers in fashion it was really a kind of unwanted mould. The fashion industry was for the 'plastics' and the 'designer nightmares'. This spilled over of course into grunge, but by then designers were more prepared to cash in on what a few years before , they saw as style detritus.</div>
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One are which did all get very twee was the whole retro thing, with vintage cloth shops becoming just about as expensive as designer boutiques into the 1990s, and some iconic nineteen fiftees consumer items like cameras, shoes, belts, leather jackets becoming highly sought after and basically highly over priced items of desire by the self appointed post grunge cognicenti. </div>
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Retro in the 1990s was still at the fringe, but it had become high margin low volume post indie 80s Carnaby Street tosh for the same type of mentality who were the credit card 'designer nightmares' of the young plastic public of the 80s. This mentality meant spending a lot on clothes, buying something of obvious 'build quality' and hoping you could string it together as style, often amongst the gay community in New York, London, Brighton and the Scottish Central belt, and many other metropolitan areas. Designer hot shops like " Red or Dead" rode the back of this, churning out vastly overpriced kitsch which you could easily take out of a dusty wardrobe in Islington and don on a Detroit super hipster today. Cheque shirts, retro jeans, a kind of manual worker look for the fashion editor or stylist of the 90s.</div>
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Facial hair made a big come back, after the demise of the much loved 1980s 'designer stubble' which george michael sported in it must be said a very manly and iconic fashion, which appealed to me with my youthful apple cheeked complexion at the time as a 18 year old. The goatee and the porno donut, although both were just known as goatees made a huge comeback maybe unconsciously or maybe by some style leaders quoting beatniks and fifties hipsters via the brush strokes of Gillette. </div>
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From all this you get the sense don't you that the modern day hipster was gestating away from the womb of the underground 1980s, which was a mix of all different kinds of shit mainly bought at Oxfam and small, dusty record ships run by ageing rock fans with thinning long hair like uber shredded wheat over their domes. Many a twee wee fuck back then would have some retro possessions - an old turntable and 1960s amp, An aquired Beatles collection of \original vinyl (found in dad's shed) , a communist block 35mm compact camera or maybe an old Leica if you had been to a 'soggy biscuit' school and had a trust fund. The cheqeured 'lumberjack' shirt and the scruffy, flung together look wandered as I said from indie over to the ubiquitous grunge look, ripped jeans from Bros. following too. There were plenty of references and then there was the whole rejecting the main stream.</div>
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Indie teeners an me felt that grunge stole our thunder to some extent, and was too narrow a genre to actually be taken seriously, and it all became too mainstream, too marketed at too exponential a rate, leading to the untimely and grusomme demise of its dark prince and anti hero, Kurt Cobain. I remember then some really twee fuckers into the early 1990s when indie was being in some parts commercialised while in others killed off, who turned to the whole retro designer thing, seeking out style ques from the 1950s and before. They were anti marketing yet consumerist and although they were now proto yuppies, they smirked at me now wearing a suit and being a nine to five square in my first jobs in business. </div>
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Well the mainstream of the mid to late ninetees and into the naughties deterioted into just a great mish mash of styleless fashion orgasms in all direction and then quickly became very conservative. The off the peg Oasis manufactured indierock or reborn mod look seemed to take up where grunge left off. There after there were just various styles competing to be fashion amongst youth, and the only one which stood out for its rediculousness was the black rapper on white youth look. </div>
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Where were the middle class youth in the aftermath of sagging and squint base ball caps and 'yo bitch' chat? </div>
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They were ready to get Hip, and I would say that it most likely started with some older 30 something gays with burned out careers looking for something original, something which oused difference yet was a style and protrayed quality and personalisation. Queu ink too, which also was a real 90s youth thing. Gone those all too hideable surfer inspired maori wavey rings on the upper arms, in were arm long and neck line crossing works of art, as well as bad copies of your kids over your back. </div>
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Hipster became very identifiable, and very male dominated. A bit like punk, women are notably second fiddle to the lead of the vertical hanging garden of gingery face-fungus. In fact the hipster look is just as instantly identifiable as the moheikan of 1977, if just of course a little more male. Females can kind of wear goofy sun glasses and androgenous work clothes, or just fling on charity shop ensembles and hang out with male hipsters it seems to be on board. How is oral sex with all that fuzz FFS? WTF? Maybe women want a new male icon, tough but caring, independent but approachable, after the years of rap culture portraying them as Hoe's with Booty. Perhaps hipster is actually far more inclusive than all the ' pop fashions' since grunge, I dont really know. Maybe beard extremism is like bra burning was in the 1970s, a phoenix for the inner man which brings him closer to his woman. </div>
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What I do know though is that where as in the 1980s we revelled in our secret underground culture, and had a shoe string of a budget for clothes and haircuts, the modern hipster is very, very conspicious consumption. In fact it is about to disappear up its own ass, a total self eclipse as the central 'first two' standard deviations decide that Hipster is the new black and throw out their multibladed, overpriced razors. Hipster is a highly commercial movement, it spawns businesses selling basically overpriced stuff at high margins- yeasty beers which give you the runs, single source arabica coffee which taste very like nespresso, lumberjack shirts, turtle neck jumpers and other Millet store 1982 back shelf stuff, hand sewn at a hundred quid a shot and you still look like a kind of dustman who used to chop wood for a living before the chainsaw was invented. Style never goes out of fashion, it just gets mass marketed for a while and a whole load of non cognicenti start cladding themselves out like them, and hence the cognicenti GTFO. </div>
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If it were not for the late Steve Jobs penchant for black polonecks, I would have bet that the next thing the cognicenti would get into would be the beret wearing, Mailer reading, Ginsberg reciting, slow chain smoking beatnik down in their jazz basements, in the shadows with their joints, illegal absinth, and epiphredine or what ecver the fuck they sped on. Hipster has no defence position. It is conspicous, it is talked about, it is not underground. Most of all for the average male 19 to 45 year old it is darn comfortable and pretty low risk to get into, especially if enough people are into it. Hipster, both hello new trivial follower and farewell old compatriot. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-50966702137312475312015-10-23T13:59:00.001-07:002015-10-23T13:59:54.283-07:00Life Bugs and the need to find Some Stress Hacks<p dir="ltr">As you go through life there comes a good deal of maturity - that is to say that you make better decisions and enjoy life based on rational learning experiences over many years, through trial and error where learning from mistakes and through the luck of close shaves or the misfortunes in life from injury, love scorned and berievement.</p>
<p dir="ltr">However a parallel process in many adults is that you pick up more bugs along the way, which means that you feel stressed more often. Pyschological challenges and personality issues from childhood are often blown aside in the rush through early adulthood when we expose ourselves to many challenges and go through our young sphere with little responsibility for others and our own concentration on the pursuit of education, career and economic rewards. This headonistic period is of course these days being ever extended with the average age of committing to a mortgage in the UK now a staggering 37 years old...we are changing careers more often and seem to have an equally consumerist attitude to partners and friends. At the end of this road for most of us around the average level of sub clinical insanity which is the human condition after all, we meet with mundanity of the job, and the committments, responsibilities and joys of families. Suddenly the load we feel on our shoulders increases and the demands placed on us in terms of stability, attention, level headedness, financial responsibility and selflessness suddenly exposes our weaker sides. </p>
<p dir="ltr">We tackle stress or rather the loading often with a worse perspective in that we have been bachelors/bachelorettes or D.i.n.k.y.s. far too long. Our maturity has centred around how to suceed at work, or at least get by, and how to thereafter enrich our own selves or just hedonistically entertain ourselves in a great string of consumerist mind orgasms. Mortgage and the patter of tiny feet bring this all to a hault, but we have gone much longer and also we are the first generation who have not only moved often far away from our parents, but become so old that grand parents are too frail to be a working part of the extended family care unit if you like. Light baby sitting on occaisional visits.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This disconnection to the chain of parent skill learning and to-hand support means that we are especially challenged as parents. Often too we expose ourselves to pregnancies and births with the backdrop of unsound relationships. with some people actually having more children in order to try and make up for a failing love between them. Demands to run two careers in the one household now place larger strains  on time and common interests. We cant go back to the majority of women being housewives, so we need to understand each others position in the work-life equation and how important to the old ego each respective career is. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Now, into your early or mid forties is my friend, the time to grasp the thistle of your chain of bugs and your childhood issues, insecurities, neurosies and mental ailments which have come to home to roost. Maturity runs deep, but our ability to tackle stress can run away with itself and we have to stop and not be complacent, awaiting that further maturing process will help us to grow out of it. I have not looked at the stats, but I dare say that the average age of 'nervous breakdowns' is either getting older, or fragmenting into two peaks - one in early life with the stresses of education, and early career, while the other being in middle age when trying to square the circle of work, domestic finances, ambition, family, a love life and play. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The reason these bugs and underlying neuroses will not get better with more years, is that they are intwined with biological processes. We become shorter tempered for example, if over time we allow our temper to run free. Our biological 'hackles' are  up quicker and quicker so to speak. This happens subconsciously for temper and on a wider basis, stress. Our coritsol response triggers at a lower threshold, we enter a viscious cycle where we are more often in a flight or fight biological status and our experience of stress and ability to cope with life's challenges deteriotes.</p>
<p dir="ltr">One approach to how we consider how to define stress, actually helps alleviate stress. That is to not define the external stimulus, the situation, as stressful or being on overload, but in describing stress as something internal. We can consider positive stress, but for the purpose of this essay, we would talk about challenges which people set about tackling in an aroused manner. Stress is rather to my mind, the negative outfall of not having early screen tackling techniques. We let stress build and do not master being able to cope with stimulus and situations, Indeed the feelings and 'fight or flight' bio-status when we are exposed to our own internal stress responses. Stress then is an unwanted, internal outcome of having a loading upon our perceptions and interactions out in the world,.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This approach then, considers stress as an internal set of factors. composed of a biological element and a cognitive element. ie a hormonal, visceral response and a though related response. The two are inexorably linked. We can never break this link completely, because some of this is intrinsically important to our survival reactions hence they are called 'Fight or Flight'. However much of the system gets loaded up with small bugs over time. We find a job stressful. We get sacked. We get dumped by our partner. A parent dies. We are socially not accepted in a new group. The larger loadings build up and these larger negative events it is believed, especially childhood trauma or exposure to forms of abuse and bullying, then colour our the experience in challenging situations. We are more likely to have a biological stress response which is disproportionate to the more minor type of 'stimulus'. These then become a series of further bugs which collectively can then have an effect upon us. Infact I would say of course that a proportion of those suffering the severe effects of stress, including adrenal gland burn out at the extreme end, have only been exposed to series of small bugs through life and no majore traumatic events. </p>
<p dir="ltr">We must realise that we just aren't going to get better., For me it started in a professional capacity, considering assertive behaviour patterns in the workplace. Later I became increasingly short tempered in my private life, and was really more or less forced into going to anger-management if I was to continue in a family home. More recently a different perspective again from the workplace in management education on stress within individuals. I have had real benefit from the anger management, and also learned very much from the two courses, the latter being ongoing.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The main common thread between all these three courses, with the latter two being somewhat closer in language at least, is that you have to break the cycle of having a bio-emotional response to everything  In assertiveness we want to have the personal tools and the team appreciation that we behave objectively and we speak to each other as adults. We stop our agressive behaviour by being aware that this can be to others at a far lower threshold than we would consider our approach is. We stop others aggressive or domineering behaviour by taking them to common perspective discussion. Playing a little chess, we have a short gambit followed by a game where we force the proponent to talk and act on level terms. It comes naturally to many people, but some go either way ....being agressive, overbearing and placing unreasonable demands from a position of authority or simply being a coworker bully, or being too inclusive, too passive, too democratic and worrying about keeping everyone on board before making decisions and requesting actions or feedback.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Anger management and stress management are far more closely related and focus almost exclusively on the internal processes of the individual. Arresting detriomental bio-emotional responses in their tracks by various techniques and employing PMA - positive mental attitude to ourselves and situations. We learn to see ourselves from an external perspective and understand that our processes are running too wild in either outcome, anger or stress. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Many physicians consider that there is a source of stress, that the stimulus is the main cause of our response, Given a large stimulus which can be removed - the workplace, a difficult partner for example - then they are likely to try and solve the situation by removing the person from source of stress. Sick leave, or 'go an live at your mums for a while'. However in doing this they may completely oversee the fact that the stress response was disporportionate and above average. It gets them out of their surgery. The situation resolves itself because the absence leads to a discussion at a later time when the patient has had time to think. However the trick is missed that this was a person in dire need of decoupling their stress response from everyday situations as much as having acute need for stress relief.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Luckily there is an entire armoury of cognitive techniques for reducing stress, many of which have been found in everyday human life and culture for several milennia. Prayer as a form of meditiation and PMA, the church and holy texts as a source of solace and therapy, our extended families in the past being around us and able to help us cope. Nowadays the modern lifestyle we find ourselves in -the secular, disjointed family non collective culture, longer working hours, a high divorce rate, children planned later in life, and so on - means that we need new techniques to practice on our own. These are well documented and can be found in many source books. courses and on line. These are cognitive and therapeutic approaches and they include (not exhaustively): The ABC/D stop model, the assertive behaviour model, self body language, meditation, PMA courses. lightening therapy.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Returning to a point about the biological-cognitive nature of stress. Cognition is a huge area of science and current research. In the stress response much of cognition is unduly influenced by the sub and peri-concsious and these processes are flawed in many of us. Further more to make matters worse, we are very used to internalising and rationalising our behaviour. We then actually start to believe that negative automatic thought patterns emulating from the feelings of being stressed, are correct and fit in with our own summation of the situation and even our own view upon our life regulations if you like. Breakign then the cycle can contribute to people becoming more positive and fulfilled individuals in society. <br>
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<p dir="ltr">Summary</p>
<p dir="ltr">The author proposes that stress be considered as an internal response to challenges placed upon us. It is composed of biological and psychological components and becomes often negative when these two become grasped in a viscious circle, exacerbating each other and reducing the threshold we experience stress at, while also potentially increasing the stress response disproportionately to the challenges we meet in everyday life or exceptional situations like berievement or being made redundant. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Over time we then can develope an ever worsening ability to cope with challenges and problems in life, and we do not mature out of this, rather the opposite. The demands of the modern western lifestyle or 'human condition' impose greater strains on our coping ability, while at the same time the traditional support mechanisms of family and religious wisdom are falling away, while health care systems are more stressed and more expensive.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We need to realise the case that the biological and emotional cycle is detrmimental and much of it works on the subconscious, while we have an unfortunate innate tendency to conclude that the resulting negative thoughts are correct and appropriate for us. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Luckily there is an armoury of self help techniques which can considerably reduce the level of stress we encounter in response to life's rich pageant. Attending a course is to be recommended by the author, especially when the content includes a mix of cognitive and indirect therapeutic techniques such as posture and body language, meditation and sublimation.</p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-77223443660901287492015-10-09T15:37:00.001-07:002015-10-09T15:37:43.280-07:00Recipes in Sheer Boredom and Accidental Harvest - Rhubarb and Green Tomatoe Chutney and Rhubarb Crumble<p dir="ltr">For the first time in my life I have access at home to two ultimate pieces of household paraphenalia from my childhood 1970s. Firstly a soda stream, which I coveted sinfully 40 years ago as a nipper when the posh Naval officers families all had one. The cola and lemonade tasted more ICI than barrs or pepsi, but the orange was at least pretty decent. It was not just the novelty of doing it at home, it was the litte bit of industrial machinery which was maybe a little risky for the kitchen even. Mums could handle several times atmospheric pressure from the space age looking bottle of CO2. Gone is the fancy sleve and locking lever, and in is the simple, threaded sealing system twixt bottle and tower. Over the years it has been whittled down to the minimum possible of actual engineering and materials, which is both rather elegant with the machine being a descreet tower in capsule-espresso style , practical because I dare say the gas cannister is larger than in the 1970s,  while the whole system becoming a flimsy feeling triumph of design over content, marketing over machinery, chain store margin greed over consumer brand value. (well that little rant went longer than I had imagined and was totally tangenital to the main topic here! You bought into it, Fred/Rants ))</p>
<p dir="ltr">The other quintessential 1970s household item which appeared in green houses., front windows, balconiies and south facing walls in summer, was the domestically tamed tomato plant. It was aided and abetted in its rise to a stranglehold on sunnier areas around UK households by the wonderfully simple "grow-bag". Compared to Que Gardens or even Percy Thrower, the grow back was the Idiot Savant which brought a little bit of Tom and Barbera's Good Life to thousands of socially aspirant UK homes. Semi dwarf varieties were available which did not grow to jungle like proportions in the course of one or two seasons at least. At the same time as the supermarkets had coluded with foreign producers to breed strains which would go red while not actually being sugar content or flavour ripe what so ever. Supermarket tomatoes became imposters - small botanical versions of polybutanate bouncy balls crossed with rubber water bombs. The clyde valley tomato industry which had supplied local, tasty if sometimes a little squisy tomatoes to us in the early 1970s, collapsed against the tide of continental pseudo food. </p>
<p dir="ltr">People then could reap a bountiful harvest of lovely ripe tomatoes grown from within arms reach of their kitchen chopping boards, and often grown in those very kitchens with their newly installed glassed porches or floor to celing windows. There in lay the very problem with many of these varieties. The fruit, as is factually and taxinomically the reproductive organ of the plant and not a vegetable, ripened quite nicely, but then so did they all. In their dozens. There may have been a few cheeky early arrivers to the party, but the majority turned green to red in the course of a sunny satruday afternoon and the wood be indoors farmer was inundated and festooned with the damn little red globes. Also in less silubrius locations for the plant, or with a late planting of seeds or starter saplings as it were, the plant would grow a pile of green fruits which blankly refused to ripen in the weaker sun either side of the summer months. </p>
<p dir="ltr">As a response to this suprising bounty, our amateur horticulturlists donned their chef du parti funny hats and aprons with boobs and suspenders on, to make various dishes, soups, salads, bakes, pastas and condiments which included the plentiful little round visitors. This included Tomato chutney, and as many found out, you could precrop unripe or slightly ripe fruits so as to ease your burden of the culinary rush hour which otherwise ensued upon the arrival of this most soft and savoury of fruits. A lack of sugar content in the greenish fruits was no hindrence to the masters of pickeling and condiments, because in the Atkins ignorant bliss of the 1970s, shoving masses of sugar into jams and chutneys was not seen as life threatening. As long as it had a home grown or nature picked source of flavour and colour, then you had grabbed your very own wee bit of 'the good life', and very content you were indeed in your crocheed tanktop and corduroys. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Time passed and despite an aversion to GMO, in part because genes that are stuffed in can also hop out, the plant breeders employed armies of botanists to do cross breeding and selective refinement to produce tomato plants which could achieve the Nirvanna of the grow bag aficionados, a plant whose fruits developed at different times, and plants which had also multiple flowering in the same season. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Now, we the spawn of the 1970s all lived happily ever after or rather we all had to work harder, worry about our careers., lose our first couple of potential spouses to 'wander lust' or 1980s consumerist 'choice paralysis' and didn't grow up to be Tom and Barbera, rather Gordon Gecko or a wayward endless cast of Slackers . We shared accomodation and avoided such discussions, as can I have a small holding on our smoking veranda ? Grow bags and aphid complexions became something pensioners did, not somethign we the supposed Yuppie generation bothered to waste time on. Time became money, and then we started to get less and less of it. Suddenly three quid for enough tomatoes to make a home attempt at campbells reddest and bestest soup, seemed liike a lot of money, and we mostly never did get very upwardly mobile in the delayered course of the late 1980s and the dreary grey early 90s. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Finally we got round to producing offspring and not giving too much of a damn about our careers any more, we had a place of our own, just like mum and dad did in the 1970s, only smaller while like a perverted Tardis, eating up more of our joint economy than in those rosey years of 1970 to 1977. We did though have space for those bonsai like chilli plants someone gave us fo an anniversary. And we remember with some fondness those grow bags the cat used to take a fly crap in, and the pleasantly wiffy plants and their pretty offspring.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Now we can have all sizes of tomatoes on plants which ripen them progressively and seemingly in cooler parts of the house and the near extremities of the summer.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Extremities though do have their finite horizons, and we now have a sizeable crop of green fruits from button sized to 'biggy' marbles hugeness as winter marches over our fields once summer. So I thought back to those craft fairs and the odd visiting gifts in re/used robinson jam jars disguised with string bound chequed cheese cloth bonnets round their lids. Chutney and pickles and home made jams. A concurrent and somewhat lingering crop of rhubarb lay in a sad little sprawl as the last-man-standing in the six by four earthy bit we hope may become a vegetable garden and not a potential venue for mud wrestling.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Here then is what I threw together, and it tasted magic> Branston What?</p>
<p dir="ltr">500g of green tomatoes<br>
150/200g of Ripe rhubarb<br>
250g of demerrera sugar / aka brown sugar but that has a heroin connotation<br>
500 ml of vinegar , good quality if you can> i made a little economic cocktail of 200 ml Red Wine Vinegar, 100 ml balsmic vinegar and 200ml of a nice sharp brown vinegar.<br>
Two challotes, large, chopped quite coarsly<br>
Half a red onion<br>
A handful of raisins (couldnt get sultanas)<br>
A small palmful of dried cranberries<br>
Two fresh or dried figs, 'filleted' </p>
<p dir="ltr">Two pinches of salt and freshly ground pepper, two teaspoons of chilli flakes or powder,. a desert spoon of corriander seeds, a pinch of cumin seeds or powder, two teaspoons of curry powder, two teaspoons of mustard seeds, three clove sticks , two teaspoons of ginger powder or finely chopped ginger, a large bay leaf, three cardemonn pods.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Yessirreee this is a spicey, heavily laiced concoction. The leaves and the pods need fishing out after.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Chop up the tomatoes into one centimeter type bits / quatering cherry sized tomatoes that is.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Dry heat the curry powder, chilli, ginger and some of the seeds for a couple of minutes on a medium heat, then add the onion and stir until the spices are taken up. Cast in the chopped tomatoes and add about 25ml of water and stir these up on a higher heat. Put the lid on for two minutes. Add 25 ml more water and the chopped rhubarb and simmer quite hard for another five minutes Then add the vinegars and boil up for 5 minutes, before then throwing in the sugar and the rest of the spices, the dried fruit and reducing the heat to a good bubbling simmer, striing and taking care it doesnt stick or burn, for up to an hour or so until it thickens and looks pretty much like a dark chutney.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Boil up jars and their lids, and when the concotion has cooled a lot, but is still a bit warm, stuff it in with just a small air space, and get the lids on tight so they seal once the header air cools and contracts.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Rhubarb Crumble<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">For the crumble top you can find any old recipie and it is like making dry mud pies with your hands. I used a well milled whole meal and spelt mix with just a little white flour up in it, and added the brown sugar towards the end of the finger squishy mixing time. Nutmeg is nice in it, a pinch of salt can help it too. Baking soda is good to keep it light. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Enough for five or six folk:</p>
<p dir="ltr">I cut fine about 150 g of rhubarb, while having nice chunks of 350 g. I boiled the small stiuff with just 100ml water and a tespoon of cinnamon, for 5 minutes until they became jam like and added about 150g of fructose sugar. Then i added anbout 50 ml water with the chunks and a pinch of salt. Boil up then simmer until the fruit is softened but still has some texture, about a further 8 to ten minutes checking often. Add lemon juiice if it is not tart enough, or add more sugar if it is too tart. Add water 25ml at a time if the mix is too thick under simmering. Preheat oven to 200'c non fan, 190 fan oven. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The cooked fruit should be about 2 cm deep in a baking dish or pyrex form or caserole. The cover should be about one and a half to two deep, being about 500 g total flour. Spoon in, bake for 15 mins and check it, then bake for up to another ten minutes checking to see if it is browned and the whole of the crumble is cooked through.</p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-91444456071354744762015-10-01T06:12:00.003-07:002015-10-01T06:12:46.109-07:00Bye Bye Facebook, FaceBook Bye Bye.....I saw on BBC scotland's post on FB that the bay city rollers were doing a comeback, I guess their pensions weren't as good as they thought they would be. Also I was getting a little tired of some people's obvious pub crawls and Shares of either pro refugee or anti refugee news and blatant propaganda.<br />
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Now there is a huge round of Birthdays popping my mobile, tablet and Hotmail inbox, making it all a bit tedious when about 75% of those with Birthdays this month never posted anything on mine last month.<br />
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Sour grapes? Well you bet actually, I mean it should be a social facility for interaction and dialogue, but it is all too easy to either over post, over Like or over Share yourself and be put on Ignore...sorry..Hide ...sorry I meant Don't Follow. People have a very low tolerance it seems for the amount they get from one person in one evening. Some people were rediculous however- my sister in law became a nightmare- a tirade of consumerist Likes and cause/charity Shares, with very little origianl posting. Coupled to her only real comments on any family posts of ours being ' Aunty's wee sweetie pops" or the like about our kids. On the birthday of her middle daughter, she posted that out and got about 6 likes and 4 comments from her 450 strong 'freinds'. Even her family had her on ignore.<br />
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FB went through a period of trying to second guess what you might like to see, and who you may like to see that from. Also it used to allow a kind of sensible approach to not seeing Shares and Likes of others, but the word-of-mouth marketing lobby reversed that no doubt, it being dangerously anti consumerist and removing their beloved consumer self endorsement and virality. Now I don't know how it works, and I think most people have just grown tired of each other and either dont post or cut off most following.<br />
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I have had also an on off bullshit with my longest standing friend- not my best friend you understand, just the oldest at over 43 years or so - he started with posting a lot of cheeky comments, the odd semi porno thing and so on to wind me up, and then it went on to writing really purile sweary stuff and editing it immediately, which meant you got a preview which you thought you had better rush in and fix. Since he reached about 7, he has enjoyed teasing and irritating and being rude to those around him, later developing a bit of a superiority complex like his dad had. Now he has lost the little threshold he had for listening or reading other people's points of view or banter if it does not interest him or he does not have an cheeky come back. FB has maybe kept us together more than would be natural come to think of it, and I have defriended him at least once that I remember. Lately I took him back into the fold of social media, and sent him mid MSM Messenger an e-card image "un-fuck you" which is about as far as it went, and he has behaved himself slightly better since.<br />
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So my oldest pal then has also become the wee albatross round the neck who like a lot of people I really shouldn't spend any time on, has a basic lack of respect for me and other folk. He is often the first and often the only to comment on my posts and still about half or more are just cheek or innane puns etc.<br />
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That was one major frustration.<br />
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The other was that people who face to face are pretty interested and sociable with me, never really Like or comment on my posts. Even if I try to nurture comments on their and not too keen likes some time after a post I like pops up. So piles of them went on ignore a while ago out of pure tit-for-tat spite.<br />
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Other folk who I like to hear about have all but given up with FB in the last year, or my NewsFeed decides to deprioritise their blatantly un commercial posts.<br />
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Given the lack of content from some buddies, the number I put on ignore because they are spammers, the ones I hid spitefully in the last four years, the ones I just deleted or those who deleted me, I just seem to get a lot of news now. Which is quite nice, but FB is not just a big RSS feed. It should be about being sociable. I have toyed with the idea of Twitter, especially in these interesting political times, but it just seems to be something that would eat up my time and ping away like blazes, and attract lots of Flamers and Haters.<br />
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So finally I am entering total facebook fatigue.....social media burn out. I didn't close my account or the like, I just simply removed the buttons from the start pages on my phone and tablet. I haven't had it as a start tab on Chrome or Opera for ages either on my laptop. On my mobile it is replaced by BBC podcast, which in contrast to their stupid iPlayer, actually plays BBC Radio Mp3s and lists them in by station and then by show in alphabetical order. On my tablet I have just left a nice gaping hole to remind me of that twitchy finger and the time I would spend just having a wee tiny peek... for 25 minutes when the kids were supposed to be getting their supper.<br />
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It started to get a bit like the BBC was at some point in the 1980s when it was all Noel Edmunds and repeats. Crossed with the new commercial TV's obsession with 'indecent exposure of personal trivia and neurosis' aka reality real time shows. Meets Esther Rantzens trite 'That's Life' nice stories, consumer rip offs, exposees....Chewing gum for the eyes, with people liking causes and stories which they will never donate to or do anything about. It is all a bit 'right on' and my bidey-in is getting intolerable to the stage where I could easily put her on ignore, sorry 'dont follow'. It is getting that way a bit in our face to face relationship anyway.....<br />
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I don't miss it! Cold Turkey is so far working. I prefer to look at a whole nes category when I am in the mood for it - BBC, Scotland, Sailing and so on. That is more brain freindly and time effective. Also I listen to lots of podcasts and get on with other things at the same time.<br />
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For those people I want to communicate with on a regular or sporadic basis, I do so in MSM Messenger, with some groups there too, and on the new Viber, which has good call-out when you need it. I get a direct reply, or if I share too crass a joke in a group MSM posting, then I get a terse silence as reply. There isn't a lot of content, sometimes we have a real laugh, other times it fizzles out due to kids needing their teddy putting back in bed....or just middle aged nodding off, or just a polite Davey Cameron ' I will not deam to give that any respect or notice by replying to it'.<br />
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<br />Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-19505751684051170112015-09-30T06:00:00.000-07:002015-09-30T06:00:27.107-07:00My Happy Place....Tastes Change...When I was about 30-33 I thought I was a bit set in some good tastes and habits.<br />
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I knew my favourite film, albumn, beer and malt whisky. I knew what career I direction I was taking. I enjoyed a lot of things around me. I felt that I was still in a little 80s sub culture into the late 90s.<br />
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It changed before that when I realised that alot of stuff I thought was cool and maybe even a bit hip' was actually just part of the culture in general or had enough. My favourite film had been Apocalypse Now, but everyone began ranting on about how hip it was. My favourite malt whisky was The Macallan standard issue, which became a drier, cheaper offering. Those cool, rare tattoos I was going to get suddenly showed up on every lad in town's upper arm and shoulder that same summer. I realised I was not unique and that my tastes weren't either. Then I gave up having favourites.<br />
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Also when I emmigrated from Scotland, I took a last fling with bagging the Five Sisters of Kintail followed by a road trip to Ullapool via Loch Ewe, and a night at the Ceilidh Place. I sat on my own with my good taste in hills and restaurants and felt a little sad.<br />
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Recently I began one of those community health courses which is basically all about the mid life crisis and was mostly for people in that or other crisii. One exercise they asked us to conduct was the "Happy Place to a Happy Theme Tune". The tune I came on quite quickly - it is the Swedish Favourite "Oppna Landskap" alternating with the words from the Norwegian National Anthem which Are & Odin used in 2005 to mark the peaceful fractioning from Sweden in 1905.<br />
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The place was much harder, but I took it to be somewhere peaceful, and eventful. What sprang to mind after a bit of contemplation was the summit of Suilven in Wester Ross. It is over twenty years ago since I was up it, and in fact I have only been up the western peak and only once, despite three trips to the wild country there- one being with a mate recovering from illness and the other being with my now bidey-inn when the weather reached 30'C and 110% humidity and any movement was a sweaty, fly ridden hell. We camped two nights at the same spot I had been up in 1992.<br />
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I first experienced Ullapool and Assynt on holiday as a kid in about 1982 /83. I was having some issues with the isolation/company thing and anger after my dad died in 1980. However my Uncle taught me how to use an SLR camera, lending me his old Praktica and a light meter to boot. The Assynt hills struck me with their uniqueness and beauty, standing in the seas of 'flow country' - bogs, muirs, lochans and rivers which form a kind of monument valley floor for these hills to seemingly soar and float above, hiding their otherwise rather modest altitudes. I was in the school hill walking club probably at the time too, but summitting them seemed not as good as being amongst them with a camera.<br />
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Back then I had chosen the best of weather to go over to Suilven from my base in Inverness (I can't remember if I was shacked up with 'blue' on Island Bank Road at the time....or it was just before I believe) It was one of those 'big weather' weekends probably in May 1992, when high pressure sat over the North Atlantic and a breeze cooled the otherwise sun drenched landscape of the Lochinver ranges of Wester Ross mountains. The walk in was quite arrid, and longer than expected, but I managed it to my chosen base camp in fairly short order, having the rest of the light evening to relax. As usual for being under canvass, I slept badly and had this worsened by nightmares of being surrounded and attacked by marauding warewolves coming out of the wierd mists which had rolled over the shoulder of the Eastern turrets of Suilven and down to the glen and muir I was camping on.<br />
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The ascent then was quite aquick jaunt and I dare say I could have tackled it the evening before. The path was then very erroded and to the point of being dangerous at its steepest near the top before the inevitable zig zags cut in. On the 'bealach' or valley between the two peaks of the mountain, there was a bloody wall still in place. It was there to keep the ewes off the western summit apparently and not just a statement of ownership and border. The grassy summit falls away to verticle buttresses in that nasty convex fashion which means you don't see how steep and dangerous it is until you start falling, and sheep of course were rather good at finding one last clod of grass to eat from just at that point of no return apparently.<br />
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There were other walkers there, given the weather forecast I shouldn't have been suprised nor that I probably slept in until 10 am. One of them knew a chap from my school! Always the same I say, less than five degrees of seperation in God's Country. Most of them if I recall had walked in from Lochinver that morning, and maybe some had come the longer treck from the main road inland at the transit from Fionaven to Suilven or there abouts. I felt a bit ashamed at my overnight luxury, but it was all part of the experience to me. The walk out involved collecting my tent and stomping down the wonderful track by the loch and river gorge back to my fancy wee Astra SRI.<br />
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So I chose that mountain top as my happy place. It was an achievement to do it alone, which was part of the point. More than that to me now, it was also had a very neutral feel to it- it was not laden with relationships, with connections to other things. It was kind of the high point of my short career as a 'commercial traveller' in the "hee'lan's" , where I enjoyed the freedom of a car and zero responsibility or committment to anyone else.<br />
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I have had other happy Places: but mostly they seem now to be tainted. Part of a fabric of regret, love long lost, some anger even sparked by strange association or just purely that the memory has faded and become a little jaded in light of all the passage of time and the good things I have been up to with freinds and my own family since.<br />
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I used to love Cove and Kilcreggan, and still do sometimes, but made it my happy place to retreat to in some dark days when all I had for entertainment was loaning my mum's car to take off. I remember too being a kid playing on the beach, my first ever snorkelling, the great ice cream shop. The hippy pals from school and their Doors, 'Stones and Grateful Dead vinyl albums. The annual Cove regatta and ensuing party. Other Nights out. I ended up having the most beautiful lover I ever had or will have in my entire life from there. But an abortive d,te with a Swedish girl to see if she would come into my happy world, and I had worn out my happy place on a wall flower. I still like it a lot, but now it is just one of many favourites, like my taste in malt whiskies.<br />
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In fact I admit that often I struggle to find the simple and lasting joy that I used to experience at my happy places. I don't understand. Things seem temporary, life seems very much finite now, and a little boxed in and things are furstrating with kids not maybe liking some things and how my other half bitches about me in front of them when we are supposed to be at a happy time and place.<br />
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But in the case of Suilven, and that being perhaps my once in a life time ascent, it lingers as the moment I reached the top of Scotland's most spectacular mountain in my opinion, and took in the beauty of it's formation and the wonder of the vista beyond out towards the Minches, the Hebrides and open sea, and over to the the other hills of Assynt- Stac Pollaidh ,An Fidhlair and the Coigach to the south and Qunaig to the north, both spectacular areas in their own right. The summit of Suilven is a peaceful center point for all this great wonder of natural forces and divine aesthetics. For me it may be a lonely place or a lonesome tour, but that is one reason I chose it. It lacks the baggage, the connotations, the thought pathways of 'what if's' and the sighs and the embarressments. For me it is a rightful happy place to escape in my mind's eye to.Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-7059874412080951932014-10-10T03:15:00.001-07:002014-10-10T03:15:49.644-07:00Clacton Effect on English and Scottish PoliticsThe result at clacton (and Labour's near missin Manchester) show pretty clearly that UKIP will be holding the whip in the next parliament.<br />
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The big majority shows what I always knew that England is a land whose emotions are at odds with its economic reality. Epitomised by the English football fan, it is a land with a presumed sovereign right to be superior, but in fact a land with an insecurity problem tilting on this superiority/ inferiority complex. What England expects is actually the same as WWII, that somehow the special relationship with the USA will save it from the perceived woes of Europe.<br />
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And that is just what it is, the perception of negativity from Europe. Politicians since Ted Heath have not done a job in presenting the huge benefits of being in Europe, and indeed Thatcher's stance on gaining the special rebate on payments shows that you need to be IN the EU to get a better deal OUT of the EU.<br />
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UKIP want two things, withdrawal from the EU and then a new agreement, just as the Scottish Nationalists proposed for the relationship in the old union. Just as the SNP found, they are up against heavy pro unionist interests, money and media influence. However there is a twisted mirror image here, where the emotions lie on the other side of this union debate. There is no emotional attachment to the beurocratic looking ring of stars flag as there is for the Union Flag red white and blue. The established Rome/maastrich/Schengen style union of 1707 and the creation of the Union Flag, gave peace and some level of prosperity to both lands and northern Ireland for two hundred and fifty years before the old industries in Scotland which created so much wealth for the UK, Steel, Coal, Ships were swept away and new industries never managed to regain the employment levels of the 50s and 60s. Scottish Waters and Farmland became a cash cow for the London Exchequer, who managed for years to convince Scots that they were really getting spoiled with the Barnett Formula when in fact they were getting de-industrialised at a time when they should have been modernised.<br />
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Pro EU Scotland and Catalonia aside, the UKIP divorce proceedings are unlikely to go to any wild plan that Farage has, and he is up against the small "c" conservative establishment, who do not like uncertainty and are neophobic by nature. We are not talking about one politically motivated insurance company talking of leaving Scotland, and one ship yard being under question when it concerns the UK divorce from the EU. Already the Bank of America, no small beer, is making contingency plans to relocate outside the EU.<br />
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The EU has much to gain from the exit of the LSE from trade and freedom movements. Frankfurt and the regional stock exchanges will see this as a once in a lifetime chance to lure investors and there with company listings away from London, and to influence politicians to move legal framework towards something that competes with the LSE and City markets. This will begin even before the next UK general election if the UKIP wave rolls forward.<br />
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And roll forward towards crashing on the beach of chaos it will because having lived in England myself, I know it is a nation of many, many muttering xenophobes. Fertile ground for a tacit racist undertone and a flag waving royal wedding approach to going "indy".<br />
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Unlike Scotland YES campaign which started with only 25% of the early polls, UKIP and the referendum OUT campaign will start with perhaps 45%, <em>where YES ended up</em>, plus they will have some of the major traditional media on their side whereas YES was completely overpowered by the traditional media. Farage is on the same Soap Box as Salmond:<br />
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<ul>
<li>We are in a union we feel no longer works for us</li>
<li>We are big enough to Go it Alone</li>
<li>We Can Renegotiate Our International Trade Agreements</li>
<li>There will Be Only Job Gains, Not Losses</li>
<li>We Are Under Threat By Continuing in the Union</li>
</ul>
From last night's Clacton result it is clear that the next election could easily go very wild, with UKIP having twice as many seats as the cardigan clad Lib Dems and those being won from mostly Tories but also Labour and the Lib Dems. The tories do not really want to sit in a Farage whipped coalition as stands, and the City may not let them form a government if the storm starts to blow harder than it did over the referendum north of the border.<br />
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You do have to take some mid term bi-elections as protest votes, but this is at a critical time in the momentum towards the next general election. It shows the Tory vote is in dissarray and the other parties can also suffer.<br />
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Labour's plans of clear water between them and the tories as the main pro EU party, against a referendum can also back fire on them, but equally the UKIP vote could split many marginal Tory seats and hand them to either Labour or Lib Dems thus leading to a more holy alliance of centre left politics in a parliament.<br />
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To secure this, <strong>both Labour and the Lib Dems should just sweep in and offer a referendum on the EU</strong>, thus clearing the way for the Election to be about policies for those who care, and for those who must wave the Union Jack from their little boat of England, can vote UKIP in 2015. Labour then buy the City pro EU lobby a year to put together a Pro EU anti separatist No Campaign. Allowing UKIP to sit in government and have the worlds biggest soap box to rant from and have in effect a two year long campaign for separation from the EU in the traditional media.<br />
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I would guess the media two days ago were split about 40% anti EU, 20% neutral and 40% pro. Today there will be the real rumblings from the major international banks, investors, unions, the EU, pro EU tories that editorial must be positive to the EU and I expect it to be in the end in terms of major titles "broad" and tabloid about 30% completely No, 10% a little no but both sides of the argument and then the rest presenting an EU editorial with a No style scare campaign on jobs, influence and desolation of independence.<br />
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An area then where Labour and the Lib Dems should be active in and that is limiting how many asylum seekers the UK takes and using vagrancy laws to restrict the eastern european beggar and petty crime wave. It is sinful that young male asylum seekers get treated better than wheel chair users and pensioners in the UK. Also they could offer troop policing for the borders in Bankrupt greece and the waters south and east of Gibralter.<br />
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The other side of immigration is of course the terrorists who misuse the Islamic religion, but that was a very empire, Great British thing, where the McMillan governments wanted to avoid the UK becoming a higher wage economy, which would force employers in the 1960s to modernise and vastly improve productivity and qaulity in order to compete against the post war tiger industrial economies. So in came the Afro-Caribbeans and the Asians from the empire for better and for worst. The white British worker then used the unions to maintain and better their standard of living, while their productivity and quality output was falling behind Germany, France, USA, Japan and then Korea while China was still struggling to grow enough rice in its paddy fields.<br />
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The British working class get one of the worst deals in the EU. The tories claim that their policies have lead to one of highest employment rate for any of EU countries bar Germany, but the minimum wage and the extensive use of revenues from the City finance industry and the North Sea industry are really behind this, in other words social democratic relatively high public spending. For the bad deal on working hours, pay rises and job security the lower third of the work force get, rather than blaming their own productivity and lack of fire-brand unionisation they are easily lead into the stories about the blacks and the paki's taking their jobs away and living of their taxes.<br />
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Enoch Powell predicted blood baths in the streets because of immigration, but instead it will be a blood bath in Parliament for David Cameron who other wise would have sailed into perhaps even a majority government in 2015 with no wee silly lib dems squeeking from his breast pocket. The xenophobic hand of card from the silent, and ignorant minority has now been pulled in what you could say is a perfect storm for the poor Tory party. United we stand, divided we fall should be their battle cry over the whole issue.<br />
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<br />Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17778101.post-74740317479759723602014-10-04T05:00:00.001-07:002014-10-04T05:00:12.405-07:00What Relevance Milliband's Labour Now<p dir="ltr">No doubt over the coming weeks the conservatives will be saying again, what relevance Labour politics now?</p>
<p dir="ltr">The conservatives now lay out the expected tax cuts, plus some in the Labour heartland of the low paid, and also a firm but fair freeze on benefits. At the same time of course, the rolling agenda of austerity, privatisation of the health service and strange scando-socialist tweaking of the house market continue with the back drop of continued disontent with low rises in wages for average people as against continual above RPI rises in former public utilities and transport.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The tories have got it right on the one side where labour should have gone as a vote winner in raising the threshold for 40% tax to 50k. Many of the work force earning this are prime labour swing voters or even core supporters , because they are people in their 40s and 50s by in large, and very many doctors and public administrators, who have both benefited enormously from the welfare state and education in particular in their youth, while now seeing the down sides of the Tory march towards britain becoming UK Inc.., a political subsidiary of the USA and international capital.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Where the tories have got it wrong is in giving tax removal in the lower paid section of society. THis is a very Reaganomics policy and is detested by the middle class in the USA, who see that low paid workers do not pay for any federal provision. Also low paid workers are subject to hikes in state taxes, and pay a higher proportion of their income over time to state taxes. This sets a viscious circle of voter demand for less tax and smaller government, while of course just fuelling then "trickle up" in that the poorest third of the work force become slaves to their bosses and to high utility and health costs while even average standards of living are undermined. To break the franchise of paying income tax and getting services in the UK will prove to be a mistake for the Tories as now they create their own little beast, demanding tax cuts at the local authority level while also being more likely to be in receipt of top up benefits and periods of unemployment on benefits, plus of course costing the NHS more from their poorer lifestyles. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Labour should be reversing this, with a direction to even more taxation being central because that is the most cost effective means - income taxes, profit taxes, capital wealth taxes. Indeed on these issues it can be said that the LibDems view of local levvy income tax with a post code tax level is a contender once again to accede the old throne of local rates on domestic and commercial property. Hence deprived areas can recieve boosts to their spending while also reducing the levvy on tax on expecially commercial premises with funding coming centrally. There is a fortune to be saved in not managing rates and community charges at the local level. </p>
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<p dir="ltr">On the up side for Labour, the Tories have now showed their hand in the UK becoming effectively the same type of economic model as the USA, but of course we all know that the UK is not a meritocracy with wide access to scholarships for the best students from all backgrounds, nor does the UK have the huge natural resources the USA has per capita. Essentially privatisation of health services will lock some of that area into charges at point of care and blur the boundary between private and public health for both the supply chain with the GP as triage nurse and purchasing manager, while hospital staff increasingly chasing better wages or contracts on which ever side, and probably working concurrently on both sides to maximise their income. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The move to privatise health is of course just going to be the same set of Tory bungled marketism as the utilities and early telecoms privatisation was. The 'market' is mostly false, with many caveats which reduce risk of companies who invest in the utilities such that they can raise capital. That is to say reduced competition, ability to charge higher prices than when public and to keep those prices rising to suit their dividends and ability to raise capital and leverage loans from the stock market share price and allocations.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In health they will of course claim that there are international professionals ready to sweep in and offer a competitive market. Well of course that is nonsense, there will be the same caveats which secure both high prices over time and public subsidy in facilities. There will be in effect hospitals, mostly the newer ones, which will move over first to part private management and then just become private with the state firstly as their paymaster, but later you can expect medicare and a style of obamacare in the UK too, with checks on these and your credit card when you turn up in trauma by nasty little tory type admin nurses and high earning doctors.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In terms of the real biggy in the UK, the domestic housing market and diconnection for my generation downwards, Labour so far have no answers which are being taken up in the media. The Tories continue to follow the social democratic and outright socialist scandinavian model of making home ownership affordable via state managed mortgage devices. In an ideal world though, Labour should be looking at becoming a popular party by sweeping away restrictions on planning applications for first time buyer homes, and importantly the whole two-up-two-down market. There is a ticking time bomb here in that many of the 1980s cheap built rabit hutch two up two downs are actually reaching the end of their servicable lifecycle and are cheaper to demolish than strip out and repoint, reroof etc. Labour should be looking at freeing up more land where the state continues to own the land and rent it to the developers and then the owners. Also they should be using more housing associations to regenerate run down council house areas and offer a ladder for hard working below average income families to have a stable renting relationship and a route to affordable ownership in their house or within the association.</p>
<p dir="ltr">One area which leads on from this is the very essence of the debate. In the USA the lower fifth of society are completely socially immobile and the lower third are generally crippled for social mobility. Access to education, access to capital, a safe environment for businesses and cultural snobbery are some reasons. There is no solution and there is no solution offered either in the UK either to avoid this becoming the norm in the UK. Capitalism as a system does not care about these people. They may as well move to china and work 60 hour weeks for a pittance for all the system sees of them. THey are irrlevant almost to a modern economy which demands on the one side high skills while on the other reasonable social skills in service industry. </p>
<p dir="ltr">As I said above for Labour in fact this is the last broad generation appeal they can have to turn the middle class away from the model of an American society, in having a middle class which created itself post war on the back of the welfare state and access to college and university education. After that generation wanders into its dotage, there will only be the highly in debt, jealous bickering out for themselves generation, a bit younger than me and so on, who have worked hard all their lives and resent paying taxes which otherwise could be used to cover their above inflation bills and feed the impossible college fund. In the USA the republican machine managed to swing this large swaith of middle income employee workers over to the mean, I manage my own money best approach to life where smaller government means less taxes for them, and while they are in work and good health they can benefit from small society, small service. So social democracy is avoided in the USA by a massive PR machine which pumps the concept of small government, while feeding off big government spending on defence, policing, space exploration and of course the enormous missues of public employee mediicare contribution which floats the private health system with huge profitability for providers and pharma' companies. The owning classes decided long ago in the USA, probably during WWII that Socialism was far too good for the working classes, and public money should be syphoned off to their own pockets when ever possible. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Sitting writing in Scandinavia it is refreshing to see that democractic belief in society and good public services we trust and rely on is alive and modernising itself, with the best education in the western world being the social democratic model in Finnland, almost a Steinar School approach with the beloved PISA results to show for it, the sensible public planning of the Swedes and Danes and the generous distribution of wealth in oil rich Norway. Labour in the UK has to redefine its core voter and make them feel responsible for positive change, while also I think it is inevitable that proportional represenation and coalition governance needs to become the norm in the UK if Labour and the centre politics want to avoid a drift to the Cameron mid to far right politics we see rolling out now.</p>
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0