British Political Podcasting :: 01:49 AM :: easyjetsetter

Recess Monkey and Guido Fawke's 2nd beta podcast gave me a frisson about what life must have been like before the BBC started letting people on air with regional accents, but one line intrigued me...

When discussing the Conservative Party's attempt to convert itself into a "nice" party, it was posited that if you were going for a "nice" candidate, you couldn't get much "nicer" than Tim Henman, all round decent chap and dreadful British tennis player (is there any other kind?)

I think Mr. Lineker begs to differ.

Me, me meme! :: 08:27 PM :: easyjetsetter

Via

Seven Things To Do Before I Die
1. Be in a motorcade. And not as an outrider.
2. Take the Trans-Manchurian Railway while reading A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
3. Eat at the French Laundry in Napa Valley. And someone else pay.
4. Take a class from either Harold Bloom, Stephen Pinker or Niall Ferguson.
5. Learn how to plumb and wire a house.
6. Have the self-discipline and the money to read both the New Yorker and the Economist weekly. I tend to be in the mood for one or the other, even when I can afford to spend £10 plus on magazines every week.
7. My own tax return.

Seven Things I Cannot Do
1. Cut in a straight line. Not even with a guillotine paper cutter thing.
2. Cry in front of you. That's the worst thing I could do.
3. Sew. But MTF can. Or knit. But the wife can.
4. Directions. And take measurements. And counting.
5. Throw, catch or bat. Ball games are dead to me.
6. Woodwork. See 1.
7. My own tax return. See 4.
I'm basically a chocolate teapot. Utterly, utterly useless.

Seven Things That Attract Me to… books
1. If they have that nice, musty, old, papery smell. And little white flakes falling out of the inside...
2. If the words "tour de force," "journey," "thriller" and "powerful" are not in the review blurbs. In fact, no review blurbs is best.
3. If there is no photo of the author.
4. If there's an inscription inside from the original purchaser for the original recipient.
5. Large font
6. Lots of pictures
7. Chewable.


Seven Things I Say
1. I'm such an idiot.
2. I don't let fashion get in the way of being stylish
3. Natch. (short version of naturally)
4. Generally speaking (followed by anecdotal evidence)
5. Pfft. (With pout and shrug)
6. I have no problem being selfish. The world would be a nicer place if more people admitted that they were selfish.
7. I can lose weight any time I feel like it.

Seven Books That I Love (and a pithy moral for each, so that you get the gist)
1. House of Mirth - Edith Wharton: Pride in your beauty may cause death from laudanum overdose.
2. Washington Square - Henry James: It's better to be loved for your money than not to be loved at all. No matter what your Father thinks.
3. Arcadia - Tom Stoppard (Yes, I know, it's a play): Despite entropy, the world is nevertheless a fascinating place.
4. His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman: Humans are touched by the divine, animated by their own consciousness, but there's no such thing as God and anything else is an anthropomorphic delusion
5. The Leopard - Guiseppe Thomasi di Lampedusa: in order for civilisation to remain the same, everything must change
6. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov: what morality condemns, poetry can redeem.
7. Any Asterix from before Goscinny died. Ostensibly Gauls resisting Romans but actually, in my opinion, a metaphor for the French cultural struggle agains the cultural empire of the American export of globalization and commercialism. Honest.

Seven Movies That I’ve Loved (at different times and in no particular order)
1. Royal Tenenbaums
2. Election
3. The Sound of Music (a masterpiece, and anyone who says otherwise is horrid)
4. Apocalypse Now (and accompanying documentary)
5. Rear Window/Charade (a tough one this, basically, any film with jimmy stewart or audrey hepburn)
6. Amelie
7. Being There

Seven People To Tag (in no particular order)
1. Petite
2. Armin
3. Antipo
4. Small Town Diva
5. In Actual Fact
6. Just Dazzle
7. Justin

Oh and :: 11:10 PM :: easyjetsetter

Go here. One of my favourite comic book reporters, Joe Sacco (there's not many of them actually...) has done his thing on Iraq. The power of this medium to emote never fails to amaze me...

The shame! :: 11:08 PM :: easyjetsetter

I once sat in a linguistics class and listened to my German professor say that he was forgoing the use of teh word "schmuck" which, despite its everyday usage in mainstream America, actually means penis in Yiddish (presumably, an uncircumcised one, as schmuck is no compliment...)

I put my hand up, little Hermione Granger that I am, and suggested a raft of British insults that have no dirty meaning, such as pratt, twit or....twat. Which, as every American knows, means vagina. Admittedly, it works the other way too, with Americans calling what I would call a bumbag (though I don't mention them often, or own one, honest) a "fanny pack."

Apart from the fact that in British English this would require a whole different orientation of straps in a bumbag, this is what enlightened me to the fact that "fanny" in American English refers exclusively, and more politely than, say, butt, to the fleshy (well, mine it anyway...) protuberance behind you that you sometimes use as a shelf on which to store extraneous objects.

Having sorted this out in my first year in the States, I am now mortified to learn three new confusions.

First: "sloppy seconds" As a girl who went to boarding school and has heard this phrase used by many Americans in polite company and work situations and so on, I assume this meant nothing more innocuous than, say, getting a second helping of food from a cafeteria where the trays have sat out under the lights a bit too long.

Alas, it apparently has something to do with semen and gang sex in Britain, but in the few months I have resided here since returning from the States, I cannot count the number of times that I have used that phrase and now understand why i got some funny looks.

Second: "glad rags" In Britain, your glad rags are the glitzy, slutty clothes that you wear to go out in. Disco-wear. In America, it is apparently an alternative to a tampon. I assume everyone I know in America is extraordinarily self-controlled and polite, or they put my consistent use of this phrase down to being a nutty foreigner who didn't know any better.

Third: "down low" This is a phrase that me and the wife use regularly, and so I have extended it to use with everyone else, forgetting that the wife is unshockable, and that we think it's appropriate to call each other "crackwhore."

Because of course, while "keep it on the down low" means "keep it quiet" I have learned, thanks to a rash of articles inspired by the shenanigans of a former candidate to lead the Liberal Democrats, that to be "on the down low" is to be a black man in a commited heterosexual relationship and having bum sex with men on the side. Although, of course, Mark Oaten is about as white as you can get.

So, I've basically been making disgusting comments for five years. I'm frightfully sorry everyone. I'm normally quite a lady. I have a tweed skirt and pearls you know.

Please, take my uterus :: 08:10 PM :: easyjetsetter

Consider the child.

From its conception it can only make your life a misery: first it makes you sick, then makes you fat. As if that's not enough, it gives you hemorroids and cracked leaky nipples and damages bits that make you eventually into one of those old ladies that smell constantly of pee.

Once it's born, assuming no complications like scarring you for life or poisoning your blood, it will be for quite a long time, to paraphrase chomsky, a shit-and-vomit production unit, with not a word of thanks or apology. Ever.

Even once it starts talking it won't have anything interesting to say until it's about 22, and that's assuming you spent about double the £100,000 it takes to raise a child theses days so it could go to a decent school.

No matter what it does with its life, it will almost certainly not be able to live up to your hopes for it and end up doing something (and married to someone) unutterably dull and pointless, like a biochemist (as spouse OR career.) This is assuming it didn't all go wrong around age 12 and got (if girl) pregnant or (if boy) imprisoned.

And even in the best case scenario where they have a decently paid job and a not too retarded spouse and children of their own, once you start giving them a taste of their own medicine by losing control of your bodily functions, talking utter rubbish at them and needing financial support because you spent your pension on that pony/quad bike for its tenth birthday, they'll pat you on the arm and lead you gently into a boat, which will be floated out into international waters and sunk with you on board.

The worst bit is, there is nothing I can do about this process.

In seven, eight years or so, I'll start melting into a simpering smile every time I see something pink or undersized. I'll look wistfully at the kind of people I once pitied and wish I had their baby-spew covered clothes from primark. It's hideously inevitable.

I was reminded by an event that occurred during the holiday season, however, that there is a solution.

When the overactive toddler in front of my standard class eurostar seat vomited in the first twenty minutes of the journey, while my delightful boyfriend was locked by conscientious staff away from the plebs in his first class seat enjoying champagne and a pheasant terrine, I realised that a hysterectomy is urgently required.

Please, take my uterus.

The Government wants to keep you poor :: 05:16 PM :: easyjetsetter

Self-invested personal pensions. Sipps. It sounds sorta sexy dunnit? The idea being, people could put exciting things into their pensions, as long as they appreciated in value, such as vintage cars, fine wines, a holiday home and so on.

The more astute (synonym: cynical) among us knew it would not stand. It was too....sensible, too free and fabby for the dour money counter from Fife.

The Chancellor knew it would cost a lot (a fair chunk of £5 billion). He knew there was no way to police that people weren't enjoying the assets (other than the wine) before retirement. But he went ahead, because it was supposed to make saving 'sexy' and anyway, the general election was around the corner.

So why the U-turn? Leaving thousands of middle earners overextended and if they sell things that were supposed to be tax exempt facing whopping capital gains tax? How is this good for the economy? Making the middle class poorer?

I think I have found the answer: "A senior Treasury official explained that abuses in the system had come to light. People were "enjoying the investments", he said. "

My friend Jim, graduate of LSE's social policy programme and current columbia law student, once asked me what I thought a Gordon Brown premiership would be like.

"Well," I said. "There'll be no dancing on Sundays for a start."

MTF pointed out to me that while he looks at a guy driving an aston martin and thinks "right, I'll work bloody hard so I can have one of those one day" the late lamented robin cook looks at one and thinks "right, I'll work bloody hard to make sure that that guy doesn't get to keep that."

Fuckers. Looters. Ayn Rand was an abject loon, but she had a bloody point.

I can drive! I can drive I can drive! :: 03:41 PM :: easyjetsetter

I passed my driving test! At the test centre with the lowest pass rate in scotland. In the winter. On a rainy day. I was the only person to pass out of the group of eight who took the test at my time.

Of course, I am five years older than them all.

Parents eh? :: 02:20 AM :: easyjetsetter

Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are fighting away with their lightsabers.
Zooommmm, zooooommm, thrum, kstch!
They flay at each other wildly, in a fight to the death!
Thrum, bbbzzzt, ktsch, krrrrrccck, ktsch!
"Luke" says Darth "I am your father."
"NOOOOOOOOO!" says Luke.
"I bloody well am, I know what you're getting for christmas" counters Darth.
"How?" cries his son in anguish.
"I felt your presents"

My mum has rather the wrong end of the stick on gift-giving. Christmas and birthdays are an occasion to give people things that they would not otherwise buy for themselves. My mother is from a very Scottish family. This means she rarely buys anything at all, even doing without some fairly essential things. She therefore wants these practical, necessary items as gifts.

This year, she asked me for a whiteboard from ikea for the kitchen. I took one look at the billboard sized office panels and said I would try Crocketts, the specialty kitchen shop in town. "But that'll cost a fortune!" So, rather than buy a new whiteboard, mum is re-laminating the old one. (Mend and make do!)

While in ikea looking for the whiteboard, I had purchased a new plastic chopping board for the house, as the old one had meal preparation debris from 1998 in the grooves (waste not want not!) When I took it out of the shopping bag at home to put away in the cupboard she exclaimed "ooh, that can be my christmas present."

A chopping board. It cost £1.29. At least it was red. I topped up the gift with a little trip to John lewis today...

Because she must be taught. You see, she doesn't stop at herself. Our little cousins are victims of the crossed wires in the gift-giving parrallel universe of my mother.

The older boy, 13 years old, likes computer games and blowing things up with chemistry sets (he wants to be a forensic scientist) is getting an electric toothbrush. "Is it at least shaped like a lightsaber and makes whooshy noises?" I asked. "Oh no dear, he's had such trouble brushing his teeth since he broke his arm. I just thought he needed one."

His younger sister, a ten year old girl, who like riding, sailing and the colour pink was going to be getting books "because she doesn't read." Thankfully, mum saw sense and got her pink fluffy fairy lights instead.

My sister Caroline was going to get a mop that we saw at yoga class, but she's been talked out of it and is now getting her....a grey carpet.

I've been teasing her a lot about this lately, which isn't really fair, because I asked her for a practical, necessary present this year myself: a proper, grown up filofax. It was she that telephoned from the shop to say she thought the brown and black ones a bit dull and did I want a lizardskin fuschia pink one?

She's begun to get a bit prickly about my constant ribbing about her somewhat unexciting, though infinitely sensible, approach to gift-buying.

Even she saw the funny side today, however, when for their anniversary my dad got her a painting she had admired recently and she got him....nail clippers.

Punch and Judy politics :: 01:28 AM :: easyjetsetter

I was watching PMQ and noticed someone shouting between questions from the backbenches "that's the way to do it!" in a falsetto voice. Anyone know who it was?