Spaghetti Factory Mobile

Ah, Mr Lunatic, here are the asylum keys…

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:33:58 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

That’d be the train firms who, despite the promise of £400m of our money over the next two years, still want to be allowed to run things their own way. The train firms who, in several cases, haven’t even been able to make it through the regular seven-year franchises without messing up badly. And they want immunity from government intervention?

Of course they do! Without the awkward General Public complaining about reliability, punctuality and ticket prices, the Train Operating Companies can get on with their main priority… making as much profit as possible. Without central intervention, would we not see even more rail replacement buses on branch lines, designed to annoy passengers so much that they use their cars, giving the TOCs statistical grounds for cancelling the service completely? Less and less compatibility between different companies’ timetables at interchange stations?

I’m not saying that the government has done much good with the vestiges of its centralised power, but at least there’s still the potential to fix things. Rail travel in the UK is already starting to feel like a clique. Those of us who use trains regularly know all the tricks for keeping ticket prices to a minimum, and the horror stories of £100+ return tickets (with a 90-minute wait because two operators hadn’t synchronised their timetables, etc) largely involve people who rarely travel by rail. It just shouldn’t be like that, and without some means of censuring the train companies, I could see that situation getting a lot worse.

But first on BBC1, some casual racism…

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:11:26 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Just as I started writing about Nick Griffin’s controversial appearance on Question Time, I checked Twitter and saw this quote from Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News…

@krishgm Anti-fascist protesters break into the BBC. Is it me or are people more angry about Question Time than about 2 BNP MEP’s being elected…?

Which says it all really.

The whole “No Platform” debate is all very familiar to me, as it was a major hot topic when I was a student. Student Union meetings were an endless stalemate amid protocol discussions… should that homophobe be allowed to speak, given that the previous speaker voiced pro-IRA sympathies? Should this student be refused platform on the basis of racism, when all he did was criticise Scottish people?

With the caveat that I’m white, middle class and pretty laid back about my self-image (and therefore not susceptible to many hate crimes) I’ve always thought that freedom of speech has to take precedence, within the boundaries of the law. And of course it’s not always comfortable, and there are some grey areas… where is the line between voicing unpleasant opinions and Incitement To Do Really Bad Things? But as a basic starting point for making the world a better place, it’s the best we’ve got.

And that’s why, despite some misgivings, I’m in favour of Nick Griffin appearing on Question Time. Returning to Krishnan G-M’s tweet above, the whole thing has rather been blown out of proportion. It’s not the first time Griffin or the BNP will have been seen on TV… he was on Channel 4 News earlier this week, and there were BNP Party Political Broadcasts prior to the recent Euro elections. We’re not going to be overrun by neo-Nazi hordes just because of a sedate BBC discussion programme.

It’s easy to overestimate the importance of the BNP in general. There’s a good blog post here by Chris Dillow…

Stumbling and Mumbling: The BNP in Context

As he says, the BNP’s electoral success was skewed by the pitifully low turnout, and their actual numerical power is very small. That’s not to underestimate the considerably larger number of ignorant racist dickheads out there, but they’d mostly exist anyway. This is not about incidences of thuggish violence; it’s about electability. My partial sympathy for the No Platform camp is based on the risk that Griffin’s appearance on the BBC’s beacon show for establishment political discussion could serve to legitimise the BNP as something more than knuckle-dragging idiots.

The counter-argument usually involves letting them dig their own graves, but don’t forget we’re not dealing with the rank and file of thugs, thickies and other hopeless cases. Griffin might be an objectionable person, but he’s not stupid. He’s bright enough to earn a degree from Cambridge, and there’s no questioning his PR awareness; the party is a lot more electable than they were in the days of Derek Beackon.

But then it still comes back to freedom of speech. If Griffin pulls off an absolute blinder on Question Time tonight, tough luck. It’s up to the other parties to do the same. One of the reasons our mainstream politicians seem so permanently complacent is that they rarely have to fight hard to defend the Big Questions of democracy and ethics.

Thinking about it, my main criticism about tonight’s programme is how the BBC have come up with such an oddly-contrived set of fellow guests to face Griffin. The inclusion of both Bonnie Greer and Syeeda Warsi is a bit heavy-handed, but fine, let’s go with the idea of successful, intelligent black and Asian women? So where’s Sharmi Chakrabarti? And why the blustering, ineffectual Jack Straw rather than, say, Jon Cruddas? Will Self for some withering sarcasm from the token civvy spot? It’s as if they started out trying to devise the ultimate non-BNP panel, but then wimped out.

I’m not even sure I particularly want to watch. It probably going to be a dreary damp squib. But there’s always the chance it’ll be a horrible piece of car-crash TV, and hate to admit that’s what intrigues me…

Tiny people running around in my computer!

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:19:16 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Despite my initial indignant bluster, with much projectile monocle-shedding and rustling of the Times, I dutifully paid for the online feed of the Ukraine-England match. The £4.99 buy-by-Wednesday special offer rate, of course… I’m both tight-fisted and slightly sceptical about how well this internet-only thing is going to work. Are there going to be a million people across the UK, peering at badly pixellated, jittery images with out-of-sync sound?

There’s no stopping the march of technology, and for the most part, I have no wish to do so. I’m quite intrigued about how football coverage could be expanded (and made more competitive) with the addition of online-only services. But, as so often seems to happen, we’re being urged to jump excitedly on a new bandwagon which is still lacking a couple of wheels.

Unless broadband coverage and speed become more consistent, I suspect a lot of people will quickly lose faith in the concept of internet TV, especially for football, where the multiple intricacies of movement (more so than the simple back-and-forth of tennis, for example) demand a certain level of picture quality.

And then there’s the fact that a significant number of people (especially older people) have no internet access. For them, an online-only football match has the same expensive exclusivity as one broadcast on Sky, with the additional barrier of technological complexity. Plenty of people of my parents’ generation will have no intention of buying a computer and learning how to use it, simply to be able to get a few extra TV programmes. Until “the Internet” stops being a wholly separate utility, and becomes part of the general data stream entering a house (without the need for complex, expensive and specialised equipment) this situation isn’t going to change.

The music industry must die, part 293

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:51:57 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Lily Allen’s contradictory stance on filesharing was just a bit of silliness, but this is really, really stupid.

Edwin Collins stopped from sharing his music online (Guardian)

Despite astutely retaining the rights to his downright catchy hit “A Girl Like You”, Edwyn has been stopped from sharing the song (HIS song, remember) on his Myspace page. MyspaceMurdochDodgyMediaCorp just can’t get their heads around the fact that he owns it. I mean, what a crazy concept… surely only major labels own songs, right?

All this is like watching the sad, degenerate end of a great era, like those wistful novels about the end of the Edwardian age. I’m just not entirely sure there was ever a “great era” in this case.

If elected, I will be lovely.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:19:23 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

In one of those moments of sudden clarity, when the brain (well, my brain, anyway) spontaneously deconstructs some mundane truism or other, I wondered…

Why are party conferences given so much coverage in the media?

It’s a bunch of paid-up party members listening to their favourite politicians telling them things that have been carefully written to make them remain happy and positive about those politicians. How is that in any way newsworthy? We know what they think from the everyday political news, and we’ll find out how they intend to win the election when they release their manifesto. Why do we need an hour-by-hour description of their annual love-in?

In Bristol today, a large crowd gathered to watch as a man with a sweet tooth ate a bar of chocolate and then described the experience as ‘favourable’.

Plum Pie

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:15:28 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

A celebration of our finest humorous writer? At a distinguished bookshop in Mayfair?

Plum Pie: The Life & Work of PG Wodehouse

With tours of Wodehousean Mayfair by a Lt-Col Murphy? How could a chap possibly miss such an opportunity? If anyone wants me, I’ll be playing bread-roll cricket at the Drones…

Dan Bull’s musical open letter to Lily

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:12:29 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Oh, and on the subject of my last post, the scandal they’re (oh okay, I’m) now calling Lilygate has developed further. After a major toys-out-of-the-pram moment she’s now made a rather more dignified adjustment to her original stance.

Not that we’re really in a position to poke fun; some of the comments have been pretty nasty over the past few days, and however hypocritical Lily has been, she doesn’t deserve that. Well-written satire is always the best way to lampoon celeb silliness, and on that subject, this is a great song from Dan Bull…

Not so Lily-white now, eh?

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:49:54 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Poor Lily Allen.

Ten days ago, she joined Metallica in the “poacher turned gamekeeper” chapter of pop history when she spoke out, not only against filesharing in general, but also against the Featured Artists Coalition.

She’s a bit hazy on factual accuracy in there, but we’ll let that pass for the moment. It’s always funny how so many cheeky, edgy young popsters quickly leap on their high horses when they suspect that someone might be chipping away at their new-found wealth. To be fair, we’d probably all do the same, but perhaps we wouldn’t need quite such a large shovel as Ms Allen will be buying this week.

First came the revelation that another of Lily’s anti-filesharing blog posts was copied almost verbatim from a Techdirt article. Well, she’s a busy woman, isn’t she? Most of my blog posts are just copied word for word out of John McCririck’s autobiography.

But that’s not all. Lily really has no respect for the copyright laws she so vociferously battles to uphold. Her “mixtapes”, used as a marketing device at the start of her career, are still available for free download from her website. Free mp3s from a variety of artists! Just ask for Lily, she’ll see you right! Filesharing is uncool, unless it’s done by cool people, right?

Cory Doctorow writes an excellent summary of the whole sorry mess on BoingBoing. Like Cory, I’m a small-time fan of Lily’s music and have no wish to see her humiliated. And like Cory, I don’t think she’s actually a complete hypocrite… she’s just got all excited over the subject and really hasn’t thought it through. On balance, despite her aversion to the established rockers who “do sell-out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections”, I suspect Lily would be more at home in the Featured Artists Coalition than she might think.

Gibson’s New Coke?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:16:33 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Back in blogging mode, and I must apologise to non-guitarist readers, as this is a bit guitar-geeky.

This month’s big guitar news has been the deal between Gibson and Janie Hendrix, sister of the legendary Jimi, and senior honcho at the Authentic Hendrix, the organisation which takes care of the great man’s work and archives. The upshot of all this is a series of three Hendrix signature guitars. Oh look, there’s one of them below…
Er… right. So it’s not exactly dissimilar to a Fender Stratocaster, really, is it? The offset body shape and simplified headstock shape (have they been taking lessons from John Suhr?) are a little different, but it’s not hard to see the inspiration. And why not? The image of Hendrix with a Strat is one of the most recognisable in the history of rock music.

But then, Fender have already invented the Stratocaster, and have continued to manufacture versions of it since 1954, including at least three specific Hendrix tribute models and nostalgic replicas of the off-the-shelf late 1960s models as used by Jimi.

What’s more, the three Gibson models are priced between 250 and 450 US dollars. That’s not just for the guitars, either… each one comes with an amplifier and various multimedia goodies, and the most expensive package also includes a fuzz pedal. This is pretty low-budget stuff, so what’s going on?

For non-guitar readers, perhaps I should explain a little. Much of the history of the electric guitar has been dominated by two American companies, Fender and Gibson. Both played pioneering roles at the start, and both have a generous list of celebrity users, but there’s generally a distinctly identifiable character to the style of each company. Right from the start, Gibson guitars had the look of luxury and classic craftsmanship, while Fender are better known for a modernistic utilitarian look. The boundary has become blurred over time, but there’s still a certain amount of truth in that simplistic summary.

Readers with memories of the 1980s may recall how Coca Cola changed their basic formula, introducing a smoother, sweeter version of Coke in an attempt to reverse a sales slump in comparison with their main rival, Pepsi. The product bombed. Is this the guitar version of New Coke?

It gets worse, too. The price range of these guitars puts them in an area of the guitar market in which Gibson have limited experience, and in which Fender have MASSES of experience. The beginner/budget market is fiercely competitive and dominated by the Fender Strat and interpretations thereof. Can Gibson compete, even with the help of the Hendrix brand? I seriously doubt it, because I suspect most Hendrix fans will not be satisfied with “very similar to a Strat”, even if it does feature Jimi’s signature… they’ll want a Fender Strat.

Furthermore, you have to wonder at the business sense of sister Janie Hendrix… did “her people” even look into the far more appropriate idea of launching this project with Fender? Given the clumsy and misguided zeal with which the Hendrix name has been exploited since he died, I guess not.

Ahem…

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:18:35 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Yes, I realise I’ve written nothing on here for a month. A mixture of house buying/selling and all the stupid bureaucratic box-ticking crap involved, a week of pure air and sunshine in the Swiss alps (to recover from the former) and a sudden mass of bluesjamtracks work is to blame. I’ll write something proper very soon…

Les Paul 1915-2009

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:26:22 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

It was probably inevitable that the mainstream media would focus on Les Paul’s connection with the solidbody electric guitar, in some cases almost implying that he invented the electric guitar. The average evening news viewer has little concept of multi-track recording, but can easily understand what an electric guitar is, and that the model used by Slash and Jimmy Page bears the name of this old chap who just died.

I just wish they’d try a *little* harder. Yes, he had an important role in electric guitar development, but how many of us actually play guitar or listen to electric guitar music? His role in studio technology, however, was absolutely pivotal, and we all own LPs, CDs or MP3s of music created in professional multi-track studios. It’s these recordings, not the electric guitar, that owe their existence to Les Paul.

My own experiences match this. My first electric guitar was a very cheap copy of a Gibson Les Paul and I did own a Tokai Love Rock (a well-respected Japanese replica of a classic 50s LP) for about three years until I sold it last month, but I’ve spent far, far more of my life playing guitars with a direct line of descent from Leo Fender’s inventions. My appreciation for Les Paul is founded almost entirely on his other work, and the best way I can explain it is this…

Like many guitarists who spend more time practising in their bedroom than gigging with bands, I very quickly developed an interest in recording my own playing and, most importantly, being able to overdub, to hear me-as-a-band. When I started playing, consumer four-track machines (using cassettes) were already becoming popular, but they were way out of my budget, so I waited all through school, through university, through the unemployment that followed until I could buy a multi-track machine (a Tascam eight-track).

And you know what? When I come to take stock of my life and look back on the most significant moments, that first multi-track recording experience will be one of them. Certainly in my life as a musician, nothing has compared with the moment when I listened back to one of my first proper recordings, hearing the interplay between parts that had previously only existed in my imagination. It’s the closest thing to Harry Potter magic I’ve ever experienced, and I have Les Paul to thank for making that possible and affordable so early in my lifetime.

My new screenshot trick

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:25:52 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been using OSX almost since the start (and old-style Macs for a few years before that) so I always tend to skim the “Mac 101″ posts on TUAW. But having idly followed one of their links to the Pro Tips section of Apple’s site, I then found a tip about screenshots.

You know how to do screenshots in OSX, right? Command-shift-3 to create a picture of the whole screen, or command-shift-4 to summon the cross hairs, allowing you to select a specific area of the screen. But I never knew this…

Super-Clean Screenshots

Having pressed command-shift-4, you then hit the spacebar, and the cross hairs change to a camera icon. As you pass the camera icon over various screen elements (application windows, folders, the Dock) they’re highlighted, showing that if you now click the mouse, you’ll create a picture of that element only. Clever!

Wholesomeness transcends cultural boundaries

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:53:07 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Camp Quest, the summer “freethought” camp, has come to Britain and is running right now. Some of the froth in the media has been amusing (particularly the hilarious Dawkins sets up kids’ camp to groom atheists in the Sunday Times) and there have been plenty of mistaken statements to the effect that the camp was set up, or even run, by Richard Dawkins (his foundation is a donor to Camp Quest, I understand).

And yeah, why not? Get kids questioning stuff and thinking for themselves. If I had kids, I’d far rather they went to a secular humanist summer camp than anything based on a single religion.

But then, if I had kids, I wouldn’t be sending them to any summer camp. I mean, seriously, what sort of parents send the poor buggers on these things? Kids want to be kids, not some kind of prototype office-motivational-away-day drones. Let’s see what they’re going to be doing…

We aim to provide summer camping holidays and trips that focus on our childrens needs – physical and mental activity, and a lot of fun! As well as the more traditional outdoor activities – canoeing, climbing, zip wire, high ropes…

Well, okay… some kids like that sort of thing. Posh kids. Swotty kids who always get picked first in games.

[And kids who never learn how to use the possessive apostrophe on plurals? No, I'm not that pedantic or bitchy, am I? Hmmm?]

… our enthusiastic and knowledgeable counsellors will lead the children on a variety of activities which could concern anything from critical thinking and logical fallacies, to the scientific method and pseudoscience, philosophy, ethics, famous freethinkers and world religions!

School, then. Or even worse than school, by the sound of it. Just the thing that you want to escape from during that long, blissful summer break. We could take a big step in improving the world by filing the word “activities” in the same class as “paedophiles”, “power lines” and “deep, dark water”… the sort of things that all kids should be warned about and taught to avoid from an early age.

Like I say, why not just let kids be kids? Their school hours and after-school hours are already filled with adult-devised schemes to foster obedience and conformity… give them a break during the holidays and let them idle around. They’ll get bored, of course, and then imagination and self-sufficiency takes over. It has done for every other generation up to now, after all.

Kids say the FUNNIEST things!!!!!!

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:49:04 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

One of my personal bugbears is that old cliché, “My five-year-old can set the video recorder; I don’t even know where to put the tape in”. As well as being a mainstay of mainstream stand-up comedy from the late 80s, I also heard it in plenty of real-life conversations. Yeah, I know… it was only ever supposed to be light-hearted, and mostly an exaggeration, but I still can’t help finding it irritating. Maybe because it seems like a celebration of complacent stupidity, I dunno.

Alarm bells started to ring, then, when I read that Morgan Stanley, purveyors of Complicated Grown-Up Stuff, had employed a 15-year-old intern to tell them about teenage media habits. Yep, we’ve now regressed to not understanding a jot about this new media stuff… bring on the spotty kid!

Apart from my double-take at the phrase “15-year-old intern” (do they not have skateboards, underpasses and cheap alcopops where this poor little chap lives?) it also amused me that such a large corporation would place so much trust in the word of one teenager… “We’ve had dozens and dozens of fund managers, and several CEOs, e-mailing and calling all day”, according to the executive director of their European media team. Let’s just take a moment to remind ourselves what has been happening to the economy recently, eh?

I also found some of the conclusions surprising. As did the Guardian’s Tim Dowling, whose teenage child’s comments are much closer to what I’d expect from my (slightly younger) niece. Dowling is spot on with his conclusion… whatever Morgan Stanley may have been told, this is a social group that largely expects to get every short-lived fad for free, so why are we even asking them? Your five-year-old may well be able to program your networked multimedia device, but have you seen what he’s actually recorded for you?

Selling my Tokai Love Rock

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:06:30 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Yep, I’m so bad at selling guitars that I’m now selling another!

This is an early noughties Japanese Love Rock, model LS95F, and obviously it’s left-handed. The “F” indicates that there’s a thin flamed sycamore veneer on top of the usual maple cap. This is common on recent mid-range Love Rocks… it means that they can keep costs down by not having to use expensive flamed maple for cosmetic purposes. But then sycamore is a type of maple, so the tone isn’t going to be affected too much.

I’ve been very careful with this guitar (probably because it’s so damn cute and less obviously utilitarian than some of my other guitars) so it’s almost in “as new” condition. There’s just a couple of belt-buckle dents on the back. Everything is stock apart from the wiring… I installed CTS pots, Orange Drop capacitors and rewired everything to the Gibson 1950s schematic (Gibson and many of the replica manufacturers now use a slightly different wiring scheme, which seems to kill treble frequencies a bit more as you turn the volume down).

Click the photo to go to the Ebay auction page, for bigger photos and more info!

Selling my JJ Retro

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:30:54 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve never been particularly good at selling guitars. Despite my best attempts at rationality, and despite not usually being a sentimental person, I always seem to find myself erring on the side of nostalgia and emotional attachment. They’re just tools, fergawdsake!

However, the need to declutter and the impending arrival of something new and rather tasty means I have to be brutal. I haven’t really used my JJ Retro for a while now, so it’s going, shortly to be followed by something else (details to follow).

You can find all the details, including a little demo video I made, on the Ebay page (click the picture) but in summary… it’s a prototype, from the last stage of development before the original JJ range went into production. As far as I’m aware, it’s the only left-handed prototype they made (it was specifically made for me when I agreed to endorse them) so it’s unique!

Streamlining the UK, one plug at a time…

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:20:19 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

From the “improve our lives by addressing the mundane and everyday” department…

Folding Design Flattens the Fatty UK Plug (Gizmodo)

That’s just totally wonderful. The whole design is impressive, but the Big Grin Moment for me is when the folded plugs all connect to the side of a master adaptor. Someone please give those designers a lot of money and go into mass production NOW!

A new lick of paint…

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:12:31 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

So, a new design, as you can see (unless you’re reading this via your RSS aggregator, in which case, don’t worry). I decided to go for the Cutline theme for Wordpress, as I’d seen it on a couple of other people’s blogs, and liked the clean lines and suitability for customisation.

I still have a proper, self-designed identity in mind for this site, but I just need to find time to get it from my head into actual CSS. Until then, Cutline makes for a nice stopgap and an eventual platform for my own design. I’ve tweaked the basic CSS slightly, so let me know if anything doesn’t quite seem to work in your browser!

Michael Jackson 1958-2009

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:25:06 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

I’m not going to burble insincere drivel about a musician in whom I only had the vaguest passing interest. There are plenty of self-satisfied rent-a-quoters already doing that on every news report.

However, I will draw your attention to this wonderfully inappropriate BBC headline…

“Latest live coverage”… in the 24/7 glare of modern media, even death is no longer final!

The unmasking of Jack Night

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:07:24 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

It’s been a bit quiet on here lately… a mixture of self-inflicted DIY, bluesjamtracks work (including the London International Music Show) and the usual everyday stuff.

Anyway, this springs to mind as the most attention-worth bit of news I’ve seen…

Nightjack case kills the right of anonymity (Guardian)

In case you weren’t aware, Nightjack was a blog written (anonymously) by a police detective. I used to read it from time to time, and it was an interesting read, offering an alternative (and unflinching) view of British street crime from that portrayed in the Daily Mail, Guardian or BBC. I wasn’t the only admirer; Nightjack was awarded the prestigious Orwell Prize for blogging this year.

And then it all came crashing to a halt. “Jack Night”, the pseudonymous writer of the blog, failed in his legal bid to prevent the Times from revealing his true identity. Mr Justice Eady judged that “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”, which is just a ridiculous over-simplification. Of course blogs are publicly accessible, and anonymity is frequently abused on the internet, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions. The whole point of Nightjack, as a piece of journalism and an educational resourse, was that it had to be anonymous. Revealing the true identity of the writer makes the whole thing pointless.

Tempting as it is to hurl abuse at Mr Justice Eady, the real culprit here is whichever Times journalist thought it was in the public interest to reveal Jack Night’s identity. The gulf between new and old media is still pretty huge, it seems.

Probably my last word on the expenses scandal…

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:12:18 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Although I can’t say I’m sorry to see the back of Hazel Blears, I’m slightly alarmed by the way the fall-out from the whole expenses scandal seems to be escalating into the realms of Completely Missing The Point.

This isn’t exactly helped by most of the media, where various events over the last couple of weeks have been identified as the “final nail in the coffin of New Labour” (or something like that). Gordon & Co. have been polishing quite a few contenders for Ultimate Nail all by themselves, but THIS IS NOT IT, okay?

To turn this specific affair into the necessary leverage for removing Labour from government would be unwise, causing the inevitable Tory victory to seem like a purge. Let’s be clear here… some of the most arrogant and profligate wastes of public money occurred in Conservative seats. There’s Bill Cash with his creative offspring-juggling, Bill Wiggins and the mortgage that never was, Douglas Hogg’s moat, Peter Viggers’ Duck Island, Anne Kirkbride and Andrew Mackay with their dual primary residences, countless cases of Capital Gains Tax avoidance and so much more.

I’m not trying to score desperate lefty points here; the Labour MPs have shown a striking lack of ethics as well. What I’m getting at is that this is not a question of party politics, not a reason to win or lose an election. This is something that needs to be completely cleared up and repaired RIGHT NOW, independently of the party system.

Spotify on the go!

Thu, 28 May 2009 23:23:33 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

As a huge fan of Spotify, I couldn’t help letting out a little squeak of excitement at the news of a forthcoming mobile version.

But then the cold light of rationality hits me and I wonder how practical this is going to be. With our mobile network providers still charging ludicrous rates for even the fusty old GPRS data standard and patchy 3G coverage even in city centres, how functional will mobile Spotify be in the UK?

Of course, there’s Wifi and supposedly also WiMAX, but whatever happened to the dream of free (or at least cheap) wireless networks spanning our towns and cities? With very few exceptions, you’re limited to networks provided by BT, T-Mobile or The Cloud… complete with rip-off prices!

The “buffer” mode mentioned in the MusicRadar article sounds promising, given the mobile network issues, but then you might as well load up your iPod before you go out. The wonder of Spotify lies in its instant access, and it’d be a shame if our mobile networks robbed it of so much potential.

Infinite Summer

Fri, 22 May 2009 23:45:52 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

… or “why I love Twitter #237″.

One of my Twitter friends (or followers, if you prefer) is the groovy solo bassist Steve Lawson. In one of his tweets he mentioned his namesake. I’m a nosey Twitterer, and regularly follow links to people I’ve never heard of, so I clicked over to this other Steve Lawson’s Twitter page and then to his literary blog.

And there I learned all about Infinite Summer, a group readathon (sorry!) of David Foster Wallace’s huge novel ‘Infinite Jest’. Now, I’m a big fan of the book, having read it twice (the first time haltingly and with great bewilderment; the second time with ever-growing admiration) but there’s a lot to digest, so it should be interesting to read it again with the benefit of other people’s comments and a general community vibe.

So ner to all those people who dismiss Twitter as either a bunch of celebrity stalkers or self-obsessed wankers who want the world to know what they had for lunch.

In the post-sleaze world…

Wed, 20 May 2009 21:07:13 GMT

Originally published at View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

Back to the expenses abuses. I’m writing this before I read about Harriet Harman’s expenses reforms, so I’m fully expecting to be disappointed, but still…

Basically, the ONLY solution I can see is to remove the opportunity for abuse. There is a reason why I consider this whole debacle to be less of a scandal than, for example, launching a war based on dodgy intelligence… to a degree, the MPs were only doing what we all do in our own jobs. We all interpret the rules as liberally as possible. The difference here is that they were dipping into public money with such a mixture of arrogance and nonchalance.

So, we remove the room for interpretation. We standardize the entire system.

Constituency residences are entirely the responsibility of the MP, as these are understood to be their family homes. In buying and maintaining (or even renting) these homes, they behave like every other citizen, paying out of the family income. Of course, if they choose to make their family home outside of the constituency (Lady Olga Maitland, former member for Sutton & Cheam, springs to mind) that’s up to them. It’s still their financial responsibility, and the consequences of this choice are up to their local party representatives and the constituents who may choose not to vote for them at the next election.

To complete the accommodation picture, we build (or ideally, renovate) a series of apartment blocks in convenient locations in central London. Every MP has the right to one of these apartments. That’s right, every MP… we’re standardizing everything, and that includes removing any room for argument over what constitutes “too far from Westminster”. Of course, there’s no obligation to live in the state-owned apartments, but no accommodation expenses will be provided by the state. These apartments will be compact, but comfortable; they’re professional temporary accommodation, not surrogate family homes. We’re not monsters in this new, sleaze-free world… they’ll be of a decent standard, with security precautions. Hell, they can even have gyms and satellite TV, given how much sleaze money we’ll be saving!

Travel will be provided for free between London and the constituency (along with journeys to vital meetings and conferences). Standard class trains for the majority, first class trains for ministers, private cars for high-security cabinet members. Standard class flights for extraordinary distances from Westminster. Petrol vouchers, to a value precisely calculated to suit the distance of each constituency from Westminster, will be offered as an alternative to rail tickets. Any other private road travel is the responsibility of the MP. Travel between governmental offices and London apartments will be of the same standard and also free and unlimited. A state-owned taxi company will be set up for late night journeys.

All food in government offices (including the Palace of Westminster) will be free, and of a high quality. All other food will be the MP’s own responsibility. The rest of the population have to feed themselves once they get home from work, you know.

Salaries will be recalculated to allow for the loss of certain expenses, and will be comparative with high-ranking public sector posts. There will still be a rising scale from back-bencher up to prime minister. And there will be no room for negotiation. Because we really don’t want to trust them with setting their own salaries, do we now?

The Troughlodytes in the Commons

Tue, 12 May 2009 11:48:11 GMT

This is a crosspost from View from the Spaghetti Factory. Please leave any comments there.

In a shameful week for politicians, Commons Speaker Michael Martin is struggling with the concept of PR…

Let me say that anyone who has looked at their own un-redacted information can see that the signatures of employees are exposed, that private ex-directory numbers are exposed and that passwords—telephone passwords—are exposed. I just say to the hon. Lady that it is easy to say to the press, “This should not happen,” but it is a wee bit more difficult when you have to do more than just give quotes to the Express—or the press, rather—and do nothing else; some of us in this House have other responsibilities, other than just talking to the press.
(Hansard)

Of course, MPs have as much right to protect their personal data as the rest of us, but there’s a lot of *public* data there that would be covered up if the Speaker had his own way. This is all a bit rich, coming from the chair of the House of Commons Commission who sought to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act back in 2007.

I can’t say I’m particularly surprised by this whole expenses scandal… we saw most flavours of sleaze back in 1992-97, and (New) Labour have given no indication that they’re better than the Tories when it comes to ethical behaviour. Mind you, it’s heartening to see the first signs of how some Tory MPs have been milking the system to even more spectacularly decadent ends. It’s supposedly easier to be in opposition than to be in government, because everything is hypothetical and reversible, but that lot can’t even keep out of trouble while they’re in opposition!

What’s shameful is that such a vast and wide-ranging mechanism existed to make these claims possible in the first place. The second-home trick has been dominating the headlines, but this is only the large tip of an even larger iceberg. To my mind, the enormous list of trivial, everyday expenses is more damning, because it suggests an ingrained, arrogant attitude of entitlement.

No doubt the system will be improved. Receipts will be demanded and scrutinized. There will be stricter rules about the description of “family home” and “second home”. Tax loopholes will be closed. And then human nature (because, let’s face it, we all like to bend the rules) will take over, and new opportunities will arise. The ONLY solution is to remove any room for interpretation. Everything must be standardised, unambiguously, for all MPs.

I want to get this posted now, so I’ll say more in the next entry…