Month: September 2014

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Loyalty

Today I will face an annual grumping. On this day, the day of the NFL International Series, Jase will moan at me, about me, to me. I love American Football and today I am going to Wembley to watch my second (but really first) team, the Miami Dolphins, take on the Oakland Raiders. Before the match, every year, I get an ear roasting.

I have been struggling over the last few years to decide where my loyalties lie and why. What social groups do I belong to, or at least feel most allegiance? If we accept that we are social beings and that we need to belong to groups or tribes then you start to think to which tribes do I belong?

My tribes change depending on what I am doing or who I am with. I guess my tribes are how I identify myself within society. It’s a way of quickly explaining things about me. We take information about these tribes and use them to make decisions about people. We do this all the time. It’s similar to the cast system in India, we judge people by their associations and not necessarily their deeds.

Some of my tribes IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

  • Heavy Metal – I spent a great deal of teenage time associating myself with this tribe. It was and still is a very big part of my life.
  • Industrial Electronica – this is a new tribe. It’s what I listen to and write.
  • Tottenham Hotspur – Now, this is an odd one. It seems to me that if you live in the UK you must have a soccer team. “My team” is Spurs. I don’t like football. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t understand the fanatical following by people but Spurs is my family’s team and so that’s who I support. It’s my dad’s fault, but then we grew up in the London over-run area so it was to be expected.
  • Fulham Five – a bunch of 5+1 people who met over 20 years ago.
  • Home Friends – a few people I still would “go that extra mile” for. I know none of them from school, I feel very little allegiance to my school.
  • 309 ATC – This was where I spent my teenage years getting to experience things most people can only dream of. I’ve not been a part of the Squadron for 15 years and I still visit, I still give money, I still attend the dinners.
  • MGS CCF RAF Section – My new thing. It’s a strange one because I’m not initially a CCF man but am becoming one. This CCF Section does a lot of good.
  • MGS – having been here for six or so years I feel part of the community and happy to be there. It’s looked after me well.
  • New Orleans Saints – my first NFL team after seeing them play at Wembley in 2008. The Dolphins are my second team as I have supported them since the mid-eighties.

I should feel a great deal of patriotism, I think it’s expected, but I struggle to identify with what the UK is or stands for. I guess this may have been easier in the cold war because there was an enemy, the zeitgeist was more patriotic. I’m not sure that I love the UK or England. I don’t know what it means to be British I guess. We Brits are meant to have common values but I don’t know what they are. I am British but I don’t know what that means. I struggle with this.

Would I stand and fight if necessary? Yes. Where would I draw the line? I don’t know. Part of me feels that the cliffs of Dover make a good line, through the fortunate but randomness that the UK is (mostly) an island and we have distinct borders. But if there’s an army marching across Europe would I wait until they got to Calais? Probably not, so does that mean I identify as European? I don’t know. Once you start moving the “line” where do you stop?

I feel that we as a collection of humans need to see each other for what we really are:

The SAME

We break our societies down into manageable chunks so that we can closely identify and organise ourselves, but in reality we are the SAME. We are one collection of lots of little tribes where we fight for one tribe or identity above another and that’s quite sad. Who cares if you support Arsenal or Spurs? Who cares if you speak Spanish and I speak English? We care the same for our families and our societies, we are the same. I think this is at the crux of my problems with identifying with a country [which is purely a socially constructed tribe for the organisation of things].

Countries are too big and vague for me to feel a connection. I think I feel a connection or loyalty to those things which I experience regularly. Hence the list above. I don’t really feel loyalty to things I don’t feel or see or experience regularly.

And finally to the reason that Jase will moan at me today. I won’t sing the national anthem. Jase doesn’t like this, he thinks it’s wrong. I will stand, if only to avoid having to explain myself because it seems that it is “disrespectful” to sit [I don’t understand who or what I would be disrespecting or even what that means]. I don’t feel a connection to the UK. I won’t sing the anthem. At work when we have awards presentations I sing the school song [small local tribe] but I still don’t sing the national anthem.

Another, small point. Our national anthem [see how I said “our”, because I feel some connection, oh the hypocrisy] has nothing to do with our country. It’s about god blessing and saving a person [or legal entity]. We don’t sing about the lands and its people, we sing for praise to a person who is meant to be more important than anyone else. Fuck that. Give me a song about the land, as long as it’s not “Jerusalem”, and I might consider singing it.

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The Equalizer [sic]

I have just got in from watching The Equaliser. There are probably going to be spoilers in here so if you think you might watch it and yet don’t want to know any more than the trailer tells you then feel free to pop back another time.

Overall I rated this film a 6. As with all my ratings you need to refer to this previous communication.

I enjoyed this film. It’s hard not to like a film that opens with warnings of graphic violence on the ratings certificate. I often remember a friend saying

It’s good to see a proper 18 film now and then

this may have been in reference to Ong Bak.

The Equaliser:
A good action movie. The opening was pretty good and set the mood. I liked the slow pace of it. The problem was that the initial killing sequence was over the top and from there the only place to go was to make it more “involved” and more elaborate deaths.

I kept trying to remember the TV series I watched with my dad. I’ve a feeling there were adverts so it may have been on ITV (shock, horror). Edward Woodward played a man with a mysterious past who helped people in trouble. He would do so in a menacing way and with lots of guns, did he have a secret wardrobe full of weapons? I’m pretty sure that he was rather low-key and sinister in that English way.

In this film version there wasn’t any real subtlety. The first killing was five men brutally executed after a slight altercation about nearly $10,000. Oh, and it turns out these people were key players in the Russian mob. After that the Equaliser can only go on and root out all evil that plagues modern Boston and Russia.

There wasn’t a need to make this a nasty, violent film. It would have been better if the first story in this inevitable franchise was a low key story of a man helping those in his neighbourhood. It could have been a slow-burner of a film and then about three into the series we could have had the decimation of all the mobs running the East Coast.

This film, while enjoyable, missed the point of the Equaliser and I think they also missed a trick. It could have been better.

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Newts

Went for a run earlier today. Coming up Rotary Hill I noticed some plastic fencing. It turns out that this is to catch newts and then relocate them away from an area where there is going to be a new water main. Here’s a picture in case you see some around your area, you’ll at least know what they are.

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Here’s a map showing where the fencing is and also the path that is Rotary Hill.

Newts Map

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Privileged

I live in one of the three villages of the Medway Gap. I have only just heard of the term Medway Gap, I was preparing the previous communication and looked up Eccles on Wikipedia and there was a link to something called the Medway Gap. I think I prefer the Three Villages moniker but Medway Gap is a pretty good name too.

The Medway Gap is a part of the Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Kent. My village doesn’t quite make the cut into the AONB but I do get to look up at the Downs every day and often run through the lovely countryside.

Here’s the Kent AONB:

Here’s a link to the website of that organisation.

The Medway Gap is a little part of this map just outside the AONB but nestled between the conurbations of Maidstone and Rochester. To live here it feels as though you are deep in the countryside of Kent but in reality there are two motorways within 3 miles, a mainline railway to London, a major river and the Channel Tunnel Highspeed Railway passes under the Downs within this area.

Here’s a map of the Medway Gap.


View Medway Mosaics in a larger map

Here’s my rubbish attempt to show the route of the high speed rail link:

High Speed Rail Link - Tunnel Highlighted
High Speed Rail Link – Tunnel Highlighted

The title of this communication is privileged. I feel privileged to live here and see this lovely landscape every day.

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View

I had a run recently, I try to run about three time a week. The running is for two main reasons; keeping fit, eating more. Anyway, I’ve bought an OS map and have investigated other routes I could do in the area of the Medway Gap.

A Run

The views in this area are just stunning. Here’s a picture I took while descending the North Downs.

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North Downs

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Progressive Tax

I consider myself a liberal. I have some views, which I obviously thing are the morally correct, which would place me firmly as a conservative. I also hold some views that are positively communist. Overall though, I think I sit as a liberal for most things. Except maybe this.

As I think about it more and more I find it harder and harder to justify the higher income tax rate.

I think it is right that we pay a certain amount of tax. I also am happy to pay that tax. It goes (mostly) towards services that I consider for the good of society. It also seems obvious to me that to tax the lowest of earners would be wrong. We already know that a higher proportion of their money is spent on the basics. If we want a society with cheap goods and services we have to accept that we should support those lower earners.

Currently the government has a “basic” tax rate of 20% of income and also a higher tax rate of 40% for people earning above a certain threshold.

It is the higher 40% rate I have issues with. For a fair society we would ask that those who earn more, give more. This already happens if we tax people as a percentage of income. I don’t see that there is a need to tax the higher earners more. This seems very unfair to me. In fact I would think that this tax rate encourages people to investigate ways of lowering their tax bill. There are some people who have their own personal service companies and they receive a dividend from this which is quite plainly “income” but is taxed at a lower rate that the 40% they would pay if they took the money as they should.

If we had a standard tax rate the same for all people and a higher threshold for paying tax to help the poorer of society, then this would give all a sense of fairness and probably encourage greater payment of income tax.

Governments like to either raise or lower the higher tax rate. This looks either good or bad depending which side of the threshold you sit. In reality it doesn’t do a lot. The exchequer gets little extra or loses little because of these rate changes. It is a rhetoric gambit. A way of looking as though they are looking after the little man but with very little real impact. In reality the government has very little control over the economy but we don’t tell people that. We like to think that “someone” is in control and that things happen for a reason. The world economy is far too complex to be manipulated easily.

Make it fair for all. A single tax rate and relief for the lower earners.

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A Slight Explanation

Earlier today or if I publish this after many revisions it’ll be early on 21 Sept 2014 I tweeted the following:

I thought I ought to give some clarification about why I said this. I think I feel slightly guilty and that the tweet may have come across as not considered and plain offensive. It probably is still offensive, if you are easily offended, but it was considered. I spent the weekend in Coventry. I saw the Ricoh stadium, a massive Tesco store and the Transport Museum [home to Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC].

I was invited to the christening of a friend’s children. These friends are people I see about once a year. I have known them for ages [since College] and I always look forward to their company and listen to what they have to say. This communication is definitely not about questioning my loyalty to them. I remember at their wedding the vicar asked the whole congregation to promise that they would be there for the couple in a time of need. I promised and would keep that promise, even now, ten years after the wedding. I didn’t really have to make that promise though. These people are the sort of people I would help out and look out for without the need to make a promise in front of the zombie cult alter.

The christening took place in a village church to the south west of Coventry. I turned up and there was singing in the church, five people playing guitar, piano, bongos and bass while singing. It set a reasonable tone. There were two projector screens on the walls giving words and information. The vicar seemed good fun and wore a Madonna style microphone so we could hear him. In terms of a service this was probably as modern as the Anglican Church gets. It was happy and friendly. People were singing out loud and dancing and raising their hands when they sang to god and putting effort into it all. I could imagine the more “cold and dreary” traditionalist hating this all. The church was a lovely very old building and was decorated well.

Here’s my point. I saw the best the modern church can offer. It left me cold. I was not moved at all. Not a tiny bit. In reality I felt slightly sorry for them. Their whole beliefs are built on lies. The historical evidence for Jesus is pretty slim, as for him being the son of god, well, let’s just say they jumped the shark with that one.

And so Jesus said . . .

Was how one of the readings began. Well, that’s all well and good and the lessons are probably perfectly good moral lessons, but why don’t you use Star Trek or Dr Who? They are all three as made up as each other. Saying that Jesus said it doesn’t make it true. And, so to my conclusion of that hour spent in a lovely church:

I just don’t get it. I don’t see how they can believe. I don’t understand why they think these things happened. I just don’t get it.

This was the best a church can offer and it was still shit.

Here’s two proper human achievements. Something we can all celebrate and take lessons from:

Thrust 2
Thrust 2

and

Thrust SSC
Thrust SSC

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Summer Time

In a room with a screen our main character speaks, a typewriter annoyingly clackers in the background not in time with his words.

IAN PARISH: I dislike the summer. I can cope with the standard two weeks of quite hot that we get. I can cope with the mugginess. I can cope with the grey overcast but sweaty days. I can cope with (mostly) men driving with one arm hanging out of the car window (normally t>22C for this). What really bothers me about summer is British Summer Time.

IAN PARISH (adopting a superior tone): I was raised to understand that when the sun is highest in the sky it is midday. Midday is also the time 12pm or 12:00 for most people.

NARRATOR: It was at this time that Ian Parish remembered moaning about midday some point in the near distant past. He opened another window on his browser and searched Fooyah.net for “midday”.

(On a screen the page entitled British Summer Time appears.)

NARRATOR: Ian Parish realises that he has written about this before. He wonders what he can add. Then he remembers. He remembers the best part of the Wikipedia page on British Summer Time.

IAN PARISH (slightly embarrassed): I can’t keep writing about the same things. My audience will think I’m crazy. Mind you, this BST-GMT thing really does annoy me. I’ll justify the communication with some NEW information.

IAN PARISH (striding around the room with purpose): There appears to be a bill to be put before the UK Parliament proposing an investigation into changing the clocks. The Bill looks to be about looking into the possible evidence for changing the clocks, then trialling clock changes to see what the benefits may be and then implementing whole-scale change.

IAN PARISH (working into a stupor): This is an excellent incident of scientific parliament and laws. The idea of trialling a particular policy to see what the REAL changes are and then following what the evidence says is almost the exact opposite of dogma driven government that we see at the moment. Thank goodness a very small minority of parliament understand how to get the best results. It’s a shame the bill will probably never pass.

AUDIENCE (following the words appearing on the screen): While we understand your point we don’t care enough. These things don’t bother us.

Fin

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Chin Strap

Chin StrapThis really is a headline on the BBC News website. There’s a picture below this of a piece of chewing gum.

Apparently two engineers have taken a pre-existing material and attached it to a chin strap. It then produced some electricity when the user used their jaw and it could feasibly be used to charge a device.

I don’t even know where to start being annoyed at this. While I am nearly impressed with their idea it seems ludicrous to me that you would wear something on your FACE that then required you to use your jaw constantly. SURELY there are other parts of a body that move further and more often. This would only work if you have to wear a chin strap for safety reasons anyway [definitely not Sikhs].

Most of my anger remains directed at the BBC. They are the premier news reporting service in the UK and yet they constantly produce shit like this. Is it really someone’s job to read science journals and then EXTRAPOLATE wildly to make some form of headline that will attract readers. I hate it. It’s lazy and not what a NEWS service is for.

Let’s see what the final line of the article is:

“This is just a proof of concept,” Dr Voix emphasised. “The power is very limited at the moment.”

If you have to include this in your story then it is NOT a story. Report on real science responsibly.

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A Most Wanted Man

I really enjoyed this film. It showed the gritty realism of being a spy and trying to make the world a better place. Of course the gritty realism just means that there weren’t lots of car chases and vodka martinis. I’ve gone off Bond a lot since Casino Royale but this showed a certain story telling class as you would expect with a film with involvement from John Le Carre.
I think this was PSH’s last film. To be slightly honest I’m not surprised as he drank and smoked his way through the entire film. I liked the way that the film never left Hamburg. It was pretty much entirely from the point of view of the PSH character. This was an intelligent film, well worth a viewing.

My IMDB tweet will appear here when I can get the embed code.

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