New job.
Thankfully, I've landed myself a nine-to-five. Got a job with the probation services which is located reasonably close to my home. The only snag is that initially the role is temporary, although I'm told it's ongoing and likely to be a few months at least. Still, I'm not about to jack my pub job in straight away without any guarantees and so my hours will be more like nine-to-midnight for a while. Obviously, I hope to keep blogging but it might prove difficult.
At last.
Finally found a dentist who will accept new patients. I've been in quite a lot of pain the last few days. I know I need a couple of fillings, but I think there may be some wisdom tooth trouble as well, even though I seem to remember them coming through years ago. Scouring the Streatham area proved fruitless, so I went for a hike all the way through Tooting and near Balham, and still nobody would accept new patients. Is it the time of year?
When I came across the surgery that have booked me in for next week I couldn't believe they were just 5 minutes down the road from my house. Only £15 for the check up too, the private one further down said 50.
Betablog
Fucking unbelievable. I switched to Betablog, after reading all about it and the many benefits promised by Blogger. They neglected to mention that once I had switched, I would no longer be able to post a comment on any non-beta blogs. Thanks for telling me, you bastards! Apparently, that "feature" is "coming soon". What a load of bullshit.
Livingstone, part 7.
Joan Smith, the
Independent on Sunday:
"Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts, had a theory about young men going through a period he called the "rutting season". He meant this in relation to sex, but I find the image of males locking horns with other males coming to mind with increasing frequency in relation to the Mayor of London. Though he is no longer in the first flush of youth, shall we say, Ken Livingstone is about as open to civilised debate as a rutting stag; last year, a Jewish reporter from the Evening Standard who annoyed him found himself compared to a concentration camp guard. Then it was the turn of the Reuben brothers, a pair of Jewish property developers who were told by Livingstone to "go back to Iran and try their luck with the Ayatollahs". Now with much stamping, crashing, and breaking of branches, Livingstone has burst from the undergrowth to savage Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Racial Equality. Phillips's offence? He has questioned the meaning of multiculturalism, challenging the notion that the Notting Hill Carnival is a triumph of this much-discussed phenomenon. Speaking on BBC radio last week, Livingstone claimed Phillips has become so right wing "that I expect soon he'll be joining the BNP". Actually, Phillips's point was that the carnival is a one-0ff, a great party that doesn't represent the everyday culture of most of London's communities. This seems to me uncontroversial, as well as raising an important question: what is multiculturalism? These days, everybody is so busy taking positions - right wing columnists blame it for everything from mass immigration to terrorism, while the hard left denounces anyone who questions it as racist or fascist - that it's hard to know what the word means. Phillips's pronouncements on the subject are robust - earlier this year he suggested that Muslims who want to live under Islamic law (sharia) should leave the country - but more coherent than anything the Mayor of London has come up with. Livingstone's take on mulitculturalism certainly isn't mine. It's a form of relativism that allows him to park his values when they're inconvenient and embrace religious extremists with repellent views on women and homosexuals. Living in a society that has abolished the death penalty, Livingstone welcomes to London a cleric whose website discusses whether death is the appropriate penalty for gay men, and appears at public events with an academic who refuses to call for a ban on the hideous practice of lapidation. Of course, multiculturalism is about respecting difference, but it isn't about recognising no boundaries. I am very happy to live in a heterogenous society where we don't all have the same skin colour, wear the same clothes, eat the same food, follow the same religion or vote for the same political party. Underlying all that, however, there has to be a common set of vaues, which we recognise through respect for the rule of law. Most Roman Catholics, for instance, oppose abortion but accept that it's legal in the UK and, unlike in the US, they do not attack doctors who perform terminations or blow up abortion clinics. In fact, the biggest threat to multiculturalism does not come from organisations such as the BNP but politicians such as Livingstone who refuse to have this debate, seeking to close it down with accusations of racism and Islamophobia. The UK is a diverse society, but it won't remain so if millions of ordinary people feel they're not allowed to criticsie the minority who hate gay people, treat women as second class citizens and support political or religious violence."Couldn't have said it better, apart from perhaps pointing out that while Phillips may have been "robust" suggesting Muslims who desire the rule of Sharia law should leave the country, he was also right.
EcoDave to the rescue!
David Cameron is right to question why environmental concern has always been attributed to the Left, as though Tory voters couldn't care less about green belts and ozone layers. Realistically, the idea is absurd. It's much easier to imagine Middle England's middle class, middle aged mum caring a great deal about the trees in her garden than it is her less affluent inner-city counterpart who hasn't a garden to speak of.
That's not to say those without financial comfort are incapable of caring for our environment. The orange recycling sacks that seem to step out from my road's gateways on a Friday morning like soldiers up for inspection testify otherwise.
But certainly there can be no case for assuming centre-right voters are somehow less inclined to think green than Labour Lambeth's residents.
Cameron calls for a cross-party effort towards achieving ambitious goals in the drive towards a more environmentally friendly Britain. And if he wasn't making such impressive political gains with this environmentally aware approach, he might even deserve applause for attemtping to detach the issue from politics altogether.
RDA - Alcohol.
In mind of the recommended weekly alcohol intake we are advised to adhere to, I thought I'd document the number of drinks I have each day this week. Hopefully the excercise might make clear to me whether I'm drinking more than what most people would deem normal or not. I suspect "most people" drink a shitload and hopefully somebody will reply telling me I'm well within the norm. I won't make any efforts to drink more or less than usual, so this should represent a typical, organic week's worth of boozing.
Anyway, Monday was as follows:
A pint of Stella, a couple of bottles of Corona, a double Tia Maria and coke, and a shot of Corky's.
Tuesday:
Five pints of Guinness and two bottles of red wine.
I'll update this tommorrow, safe to say I haven't had anything this early though.
..............................
Well, five double Jack Daniels and coke's and a pint of Guinness went down pretty quickly when I was working last night. I just read a pint is equivalent to two units, I'd thought it was one.
..............................
Not sure how many drinks went down on Thursday really. I'd estimate between 12 and 14 pints of Guinness, which is not something I do regularly. Might have tipped the scales the wrong way when I tally up the week's units though. Woke up to find six hardback Catherine Cookson novels on the floor near the living room. No idea where they came from.
..............................
If I remember rightly...
Friday: three Jack Daniels and coke's and a pint of Guinness.
Saturday: one pint of Stella, two bottles of Polish lager, seven pints of Strongbow and a strawberry Daiquiri.
Sunday: one and a half pints of Guinness, a half of Fosters, bottle of Stella and single Jamesons.
Err...
Went and calculated the amount of units consumed in the last week, and it came out at 94. Seeing as the limit is supposed to be 21 I guess I have the answer to my question. That's a pretty sobering thought. Will abstain from drinking for at least a week while I contemplate these results.
Monarch passengers.
Understandably, there has been considerable outcry at the treatment of the two young Asian men attempting to get a flight home to Manchester. However, in an interview on BBC breakfast this morning, the two concerned displayed a more rational approach than many others who have chosen to comment. While it is deeply unfortunate that this incident happened in the first place, it will do no good to label the actions of the nervous, non-Asian passengers as "disgraceful" and "racist".
Many people, myself included, do not feel entirely at ease with flying in the first place. My return flight from Spain in July was a pretty horrible experience, as I was sure something was wrong with the plane. Looking out of the window terrified me, even though on the flight at the beginning of the holiday I had been fine, and enjoyed looking down on the sea below. It's inexplicable. But that's what comes with boarding a plane.
In these times of heightened fear, when the public is constantly warned to be vigilant, and told they are always facing the imminent threat of Islamic terror attack, we can hardly be surprised people are scared of anything even remotely like what they imagine to be the face of the threat.
You wouldn't expect anyone to get onto a plane with their family if even the slightest possibility of danger had been hinted at.
Misguided, yes. Irrational, certainly. But these were not the actions of racists, merely of people unsure of whether they are safe or not. The reality is none of us know.
Pub grub aint all bad.
Lucy Mangan
writes in today's Guardian how pleased she is that Gordon Ramsay has come to save pub grub. I never knew it needed saving. Undoubtedly, there's some rubbish out there. If you have ever eaten a meal in a Wetherspoons pub you'll know that.
I actually worked in a Hogshead kitchen once and will admit the food did not represent the height of culinary possibilty. On the other hand, it wasn't anything like the atrocious stuff they serve up in Wetherspoons. Still, neither of these franchise's can be seen as real pubs, anyway.
I can't help thinking Mangan just doesn't know what signs to look out for before she eats in a pub. Firstly, word of mouth. If a pub serves up really good food, you'll hear about it. If you've just stopped for a quick pint in an unknown place and fancy a bite to eat, just see if others are eating, and snatch a glimpse of their food before you order. I love eating out, it's one of my favourite ways to spend an evening, and obviously a pub is not generally the place that springs to mind when thinking of where to go. Having said that, my all-time favourite place to eat is a traditional English pub called the Cricketers, which also houses a Thai family who take care of the food side of things. The food is the nicest you'll ever taste, so good I'd move into the place if I could, even though it's in the middle of boring, generic Kingston Upon Thames.
And what about pubs that do a carvery? I know one that does the nicest roast dinner you're likely to find for miles, including in any restaurant.
I'm not suggesting all pub food is good, but it's a bit unfair to write it all off as shit.
Not that I'd object to accompanying my Guiness with a lunch cooked up by Gordon Ramsay, of course. Even if he is a bit sad with his little "campaigns" (get women cooking again; cook more English food; whatever) in a desperate attempt to attract publicity and keep up with Jamie Oliver's school dinners and cooking in Italy bit.
Tuition fees.
What a surprise, the formerly tumescent university application levels have gone down this year. Ministers dismiss it as a "blip", but the figures speak for themselves. As a student, I had to pay £1,100 annually in tuition fees, an amount which has trebled for today's aspiring learners. Contrary to the BBC report this morning, three years of shelling out three grand will not result in nine thousand pound debts. The reality is people will owe a substantially larger amount than this.
And for what?
Personally I am satisfied with the fruits of my labour. A university education helped cultivate my adult perspective and, I trust, will result in a higher earning potential than the industrial estates of my teen years offered me. Yet still I find it difficult to reassure others who left university in despair, seeing nothing but sales jobs, and low paid work open to school leavers, ahead of them. The truth is there is no guaranteed route to financial success. This is particularly true now when courses like physics are shunned in favour of media studies and film studies. Of those who did not go on to higher education, some will find wealth, some not. The same is true of those who got their 2:1.
It might sound absurd in this day and age, but I think the prerequisite for satisfaction at the end of a degree course is actually a hunger for knowledge, rather than a mapped out economic future. The question: how much are you willing to pay to appease that hunger?
