Things Can Only Get Better

Things are still... challenging. The job market's a mess, and I'm stuck slap bang in the middle of it, harbouring overhanging problems from various years of bad decisions and being asleep at the wheel of my own life. No I didn't stick in at school. Yes I did leave a fairly solid job to go to university. No I didn't stay in the area that I'd made all of my social and business contracts. No I don't drive. Yes I do have RSI, mostly through my own fault. I have however reached a decision, which is that while I am looking for a proper job, I will take the opportunity between the hours of 3 and 5pm to polish up my writing and stop feeling sorry for myself. Because like it or not, right now I have the opportunity to actually slough myself out of the mire of crap I've landed myself in. In a 9-5 job, which is what the universe seems determined to land me in (no matter how nonsensical and self-defeating), I will not have this time to pursue the one avenue I am not only good at, but can still actually do without experiencing new and interesting stabbing pains every time I try (RSI is a wonderful thing. PROTIP: it isn't). SO there you have it. A blog. And a blog that is not centered around a point, because I will be saving those for the articles that will hopefully be published elsewhere and merely linked here. This is of course all dependent on me managing to fix the keyboard on my laptop, which I somehow managed to damage even more in my attempts to fix it this morning, so now the 'right' and 'down' keys are missing and the 'right' key doesn't work at all. In the meantime, I am and I hope you have also been. Good day.

No Jobs

Just to warm up the cranky, cold old muscles and get myself in gear for an article I'm working on. I say working on; I mean 'thinking about icecream.' And getting sacked, which was a little unfair, though has thankfully it has removed a major source of stress from my life. I would consider that it has added a different source of stress - namely having no money - but considering I wasn't making a tremendous amount there anyway that worry is, as ever, still present. Oh, and Steve Jobs is dead, which makes my planned rant about Apple look a little misguided. Still, it's keeping Twitter busy, so who's to argue. The crux of the problem is that getting sacked has sort of put a downer on the planned piece, since it was supposed to be a light-hearted and yet hateful critique of the sort of person I found myself becoming, but now that I've been given the heave-ho for failing to tow the company line and fuck customers over the way they wanted, I sort of seem to emerge the hero. A lazy hero with no money, but a hero nonetheless. And quite honestly that's not my sort of article at all; I mean who blows their own trumpet like that? I don't even have a trumpet. No you shut up. Anyway, the upshot is I now reside back in the land of afternoons and coffee spoons, only I'm caffeine sensitive and will indulge a lie-in at the drop of a hat.

Riots: Explaining, not Excusing

Before I start, let me very slowly and carefully explain the difference between understanding something and condoning it, because judging by the amount of shit I seem to land myself in, it's something that needs clarifying in advance. For the purposes of this article, here are some words you can group together in terms of excusing something:

• liking,


• pretending it's acceptable,


• agreeing with,


• condoning,


• supporting.

And now, let's look at some words that you can group together with explaining something:

• comprehending,


• knowing,


• understanding.

So when I say I understand the reasons the rioters have, that means I understand, I don't condone: I explain, but not excuse. The thing is, instead of vilifying the rioters, how about looking at the banks and government that pushed the people this far? Looters may have dragged it out for what they see as fun, but you've got to look at the reason the riots started - a government that keeps pushing it's citizens harder and harder, and they're not willing to put up with it anymore. Maybe it is undereducated and impressionable idiots that are currently looting, but it doesn't help that they're under the schizophrenic pressures of a hypocritical austerity drive and a consumer culture that is incredibly practiced at making people want more possessions. Combine that with government after government cutting educational funding and voila; you have an impressionable population that are easily led and get suckered in by consumer demand, but have no money to acquire any of it. The ingrained impressionability has served the purposes of advertisers and the alcohol industry, and the government has been happy to accept tax money from the sales of alcohol. But look at the list of symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome: Poor impulse control, poor personal boundaries, poor anger management, stubbornness, intrusive behavior, poor judgment, information-processing disorder, poor cause and effect reasoning, disrupted school experience, trouble with the law, inappropriate sexual behavior, alcohol and drug problems, dependent living, problems with employment... it's like a person specification for a rioter. So they're happy to take money from the alcohol industry but are unable or unwilling to deal with it's aftermath. I just think we need to remove the social situation that causes people like this to exist, instead of wasting time on punitive finger-pointing. And the horrifying thing is, there is nothing we can do, at least not within the system. We've seen the austerity drive go ahead with no vote, a government elected using the votes of a party who explicity didn't want the conservatives in power, and bankers still going unpunished and claiming bonuses for having fucked the economy.

Look at how much the looters have cost the corporations and local councils, and then look at how much the banks have cost the taxpayer. When a government doesn't play by the law, why should we? This whole thing started with a peaceful demonstration, marching on a police station, and quickly got out of hand thanks to a minority who hear 'demonstration' and regardless of the cause, see it as an opportunity to vent aggression. But Boris Johnson, giving a statement on BBC News earlier, walked away when people started demanding answers instead of sitting listening to a pre-prepared statement that doesn't address their issues. And that is the heart of the issue. There is a greater view of the 'reality' of the situation than the immediate view that it's 'just chavs' that are to blame here. I am saying it is more important to view this as an incredibly dangerous symptom of an ill that has allowed British citizens to grow into the people who have been looting the past two nights. I'm not saying for one second that their actions weren't incredibly dangerous, irresponsible and that the individuals responsible shouldn't be charged with manslaughter to the fullest extent of the law. But if we're going to target one cause of this civil disturbance we should be targetting them all equally, and that goes right to the top of government. I just think that when we have rioting on the streets of the UK, it's time to blame the system which has profited from allowing things to get to this point rather than the people trapped within it. The people are rising up, but it's amazing that what we celebrated in Egypt and Syria is damned in our own country.

Keeping up Appearances

Half-finished ideas for long protracted rants float lazily across the re-awakening frontal lobes of this poor sod, a blogger of advancing years and advancing paranoia about the world into which I stumble. Yes, I'm typing again. You see, I'd hoped this whole 'banks' thing would blow over by the time I left university, but it looks like the rich are still getting richer, and the poor are - would you believe it - getting poorer. You, of course, already knew this. So for today, let's just write this of as me trying to get back into the swing of things after allowing myself time off from writing for good behaviour.

Still Alive

So I'm pretty lazy. I mean, right now there are many things to comment on that are of personal interest to me, and by extension the people who feign interest in what I have to say. There's the whole News International phone hacking collapse, and the UK teetering on the brink of a known industrial lobbyist taking over the two main lodestones of British political sway, namely the tabloids and Sky TV. There's the ongoing patent war between Apple and everyone, in which they just lost their first major battle and now face losing their US (and probably UK) market share. Which I find hilarious because I work in IT and see on a daily basis how often Macs don't 'just work.' But really, it just seems to be a case at the moment of not having enough time at the moment to push my agenda on the world. Maybe this is why News International have been able to get so far in my absence, or maybe it's mid-day and I need to take the special pills that stop me thinking I'm more powerful than Rupert Murdoch (nobody is more powerful than Rupert Murdoch). I moved house you see. I know, tremendously inconvenient but then along with graduation comes the gradual bleeding of real life once more into my cozy existence, and suddenly I no longer have periods where I SHOULD be working but aren't, I just have moments when I'm either working or slipping further into David Cameron's pocket. So for the blog, this translates into me probably not updating much for the next ten days. There again, I might update more often, I just don't know. This is just to warn you that there will be gaps ahead.