Cocktails and Records

If there’s one thing that miserable old me likes even less than people going on holidays for charity, it’s pop stars recording songs for charity. So you’ll imagine that I was delighted to hear that national saviour Simon Cowell has gathered together all of our very favourite musicians (Rod Stewart, Susan Boyle, someone from Westlife) for an over-emotive mangling of REM’s classic ‘Everybody Hurts’ for the people of Haiti.

Great. Lucky them.

Why are charity songs so lazy and so bad? Increasing the profile of a cause is almost always welcome, as is raising money, and I’d like to think that the motivation behind the charity single is largely genuine (and I dare say it was once upon time – in 1984). Somehow I suspect though that the opportunity to generate some column inches in a non spouse-cheating/my-drug-hell/help-I’m-having-nervous-breakdown kind of way is the real selling point for ‘the artists’ involved these days.

Honorable intentions or not though, doesn’t it make more sense to choose a decent song in the first place? Being associated with dirge like ‘Rocking around the Christmas Tree’, hideous sap like ‘Earth Song’ or point-missing remakes of ‘Perfect Day’ might raise some much-needed cash, but it’s hardly helping the long-term credibility of either party is it?

The original versions of ‘Do They Know it’s Christmas Time?’ and ‘We are the World’ worked not just because raising money to alleviate famine in Ethiopia is a good thing, but because the actual songs weren’t cynically chucked together in five seconds flat à la Band Aid 20 and everything ever featuring the X Factor finalists.

So who buys these crap charity singles? Who is encouraging their recording? Is it you, dear reader? Have you ever bought a charity record? Come on, be honest now.

Right, so I haven’t blogged for over two weeks and during that time I’ve completed a formidable amount of work, narrowly refrained from killing a few people, seen a fab gig (Portuguese Fado wonder Mariza), been to the movies five times and even met some of you – so you’d think I’d be able to write something interesting wouldn’t you? But no, I’m just going to moan.

You see, this weekend someone asked me if I wanted to go on a trek to Nepal – for charity.

Now call me selfish, naive… downright mean if you will, but this is something that I really don’t understand.  Oh, I know that people sponsor you for your efforts and it can raise lots of money, but it’s really just going on holidays for charity. It’s not particularly honourable and it’s certainly not showing your level of ‘commitment’. Cycling the the length of the Alps or climbing K2 may be a personal achievement, but it’s hardly the same as actually doing volunteer work or campaigning for a cause day in, day out. It’s more like guilting someone else into financially indulging your foolhardiness.*

So as much as I would like to visit Nepal one day, I won’t be going for charity. And if I want to support said charity, I’ll take the less glamorous route and simply send them a cheque.

* Speaking of which, if you need an excuse to give money to a not-so-good cause, you can sponsor my annual JJJ Hottest 100/Countdown-athon where I stay up all night with a bottle of vodka and watch old Cure, Stone Roses, Mondo Rock and Marilyn videos and mourn my lost youth. I promise the money will be going to worthy cause, even if its just my Asprin Fund.

In 1946 George Orwell wrote an essay called ‘Books v. Cigarettes’. In the essay he examines his personal expenditure and works out that he spends around £25 a year on books and magazines. This might seem excessive to some people but, he concludes, compared to the £40 he spends on alcohol and cigarettes (a packet of woodbines every day and half a pint of mild six days a week), the cost of reading is pretty reasonable.

Inspired by this, I decided that it would be interesting to work out my own spending habits. Of course, the minute I even started thinking about how much just one recent excursion to the excellent Gerry’s Wines and Spirits emporium in Soho had set me back, I concluded that this probably wasn’t a good idea. I couldn’t face the truth.

Instead, I turned to the trusty National Statistics site for some national figures. The 2007 Family Spending survey tells me that the average yearly household expenditure for cigarettes and alcohol is £577.20 (of this, £234 is on ciggies) and for books, newspapers and magazines a lowly £176.80.

Orwell himself dug up the national stats from 1944. These revealed that individual spending on booze and smokes was around £23 per head per year. With no figures available for book sales, Orwell speculates on how much the British public spends on books -  £1 a year, on around three books, is a reasonable assumption he decides.

So taking into consideration that these figures come from the midst of World War II and that books are most likely cheaper now, the market for books has actually improved. But probably not so much in other, less financial, ways. To sum up his essay Orwell writes:

‘…[this] is not a proud record for a country which is nearly 100% literate and where the ordinary man spends more on cigarettes then an Indian peasant has for his whole livelihood. And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed are too expensive.’

Or perhaps as delightfully snobby Guardian writer and English Professor, John Sutherland, says in his 2006 book How to Read a Novel, ‘90% of books are crap’.

I’m sorry to be getting all angsty this past week, but what is wrong with this country at the moment?

It was only earlier this week that I was bemoaning the fact that nearly half of the British population allegedly believe that the BBC isn’t good value for money. Now I discover that the nation’s favourite author is Enid Blyton.

Now, I’ve nothing against Enid Blyton. I devoured her books when I was a child and there will always be a very firm place in my heart for the faraway tree, the wishing chair, Mr Meddle, Mr Pink Whistle, the naughtiest girl in the school, Julian, Dick and Anne, George and Timmy the dog et. al.

Enid taught me all about the mysterious ‘English’ world of ginger beer, school monitors, lacrosse, conkers, bluebell woods, secret passwords and hidden passageways, wobbling blancmanges, sugar mice, moors, mists and marshes and outsmarting smugglers  – but I would never say that she was my favourite author.

Although I loved her imagination and her alternate world where fairies bake ‘pop biscuits’ and children are always right, even as a child I knew that Enid’s stories were simplistic, repetitive and churned out at a rate of knots.

Citing Enid Blyton (or indeed Roald Dahl and JK Rowling, second and third on the list respectively) as your favourite author when you’re over the age of 12 is more than just longing wistfully for some nostalgic past that never existed, it’s a refusal to engage with adult issues full stop. Surely the people who voted for her don’t still read about the adventures of the Secret Seven with a torch under the blankets? Haven’t they moved on?

On the positive side, it’s nice that people don’t have to pretend that they love Chaucer or Shakespeare; they can unashamedly state that their favourite author is the woman behind the ghastly Noddy…

Rant over. Normal service (i.e. boring anecdotes about public transport etc.) will resume next week.

I read in today’s Guardian that their exclusive poll (aren’t they all?) reveals that 47% of respondents disagree that the BBC license fee is good value for money.

Are these people the biggest bunch of cheapskates ever?
And what the heck do they think is good value for money?

The license fee presently costs £139.50  a year. For that you get ten ‘interactive’ TV channels, a plethora of radio stations and a pretty damn good internet service – all without ads. Granted, there is some absolute tosh on the BBC which I do resent paying for, but there is also some great stuff as well and, as an entertainment / information / learning resource, I think that the BBC does pretty well.

To put it into perspective, £139.50 (at London prices) gets you approximately one of the following:

1. 50 pints and min. 25 evenings of pub politics
2. 18 mid-priced CDs
3. 5 trips to see a typical band or comedy act at a typical mid-capacity venue
4. 18 trips to the movies
5. 116 chip butties
6. entry to 12 ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions at the British Museum, Natural History Museum or V&A
7. 3 quarters of a typical 12 week language course

OR

a whole year of all of:

1. the Today programme
2. Gideon Coe, Gilles Peterson, Steve Lamacq, Tony Blackburn, Stuart Maconie and Mark Radcliffe
3. Later… and Just a Minute
4. Mark Kermode’s film reviews and repeats of the proper Batman on BBC4
5. Masterchef and the Food Programme
6. Simon Scharma, David Starkey, David Attenborough and Melvyn Bragg
7. excellent online language learning support materials

But then again I live in London so, according to the survey, I would say that.

Such a simple question, such big issues. For much of my working life I have had to deal with the inevitable ‘ethnicity’ questions which are a fact of life for anyone who deals with statistical monitoring in the public sector, or indeed for any organisation who cares about who their users are.

For despite what various members of the general public think, it is actually useful for organisations to know who their users are – the age groups they fall into, the areas they live, whether they have a disability or not, and yes, their ethnic or cultural background. It gives you an indication of whether your products or services are appealing to all of the different people who live in this country – which, if you’re receiving your funding from the tax payer, is the responsible thing to do.

Yes, the categories for ethnicity that are forced upon us from central government are crude, presumptuous and tiresome. They expect people to fall neatly into categories like White (British, Irish, ‘Other’), Black (Caribbean, African, ‘Other’), Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, ‘other’), Chinese, ‘Mixed’, ‘Other’ etc. etc. and don’t separate ‘ethnic identity’ from ‘cultural identity’ (e.g. people born in another country, but who consider themselves to be British).

But people can always write in their own description and, even if they’re limited and not as precise as we would like, the categories do have their uses. They allow you to compare your organisations data to the national average for example.

Still in the organisations I’ve worked for,  users routinely take matters into their own hands, crossing out the standard government classifications and writing in their own versions. Typical responses I’ve seen over the years include:

1. crossing out British and writing in English, Welsh, Scottish
2. crossing out British and writing in Yorkshire, Essex etc.
3. crossing out British and writing in Londoner, Glaswegian etc.
4. crossing out everything except ‘White’ and annotating it e.g. I’m not British, I’m a London, a white Londoner, one of a dying breed.
5. the life story. e.g. my mother was Russian, my father is Spanish, his mum lived in Malaysia etc.
6. the novelty response e.g. ‘I live in my own little world, but it’s alright, they know me there.’
7. the indignant response e.g. ‘I do not like filling in ethnicity – we are all human beings, whatever creed, colour or race’
8. the paranoid torrent of abuse e.g. ‘*£$&% you! I will not be spied on by you or anyone else’

As I go through the responses, I’m always alternately fascinated / disturbed about, not just what the responses say about how people feel about national identity, but being asked about it. No one ever complains about questions asking whether they have a disability or not, or even if they live locally, but there is something about the ethnicity question which just touches a nerve with people. And it can’t just be the limiting tick-box categories.

I dragged myself out of bed this morning to the sound of Andy Burnham, Culture Secretary, telling me that illegal filesharing is wrong and that 6 of the biggest UK ISPs will now be spying on us on behalf of the government to help put an end to it.

Well, I for one am not reassured by a Culture Secretary who thinks that criminalising music fans is a positive move towards encouraging culture to flourish. Of course, I believe that musicians should be paid for ‘services rendered’, but why are fans always seen as the problem when it’s record companies who are responsible for the situation?

Research has long shown that people are prepared to pay for digital music if it’s an easy service to use. How else would iTunes and Emusic flourish? However, these services are by no means perfect – a result of record companies floundering for almost a decade about how to deal with changes in technology. They can’t sort licensing agreements, they can’t cope with ‘non-music’ companies like Apple, they stuff around with DRM/copy protection all the time. Hell, they don’t even seem to understand how people buy or listen to music these days. Music fans should not be penalised because major labels are still living in the dark ages and cannot figure out how to sell digital music.

Andy Burnham has suggested that in the long term there should be a yearly levy of £20 – £30 pounds to cover music downloading. Great, but based on the track record of record companies in this area, I’m not holding my breath.

Having said all that, I tend to view music file sharing on blogs as a form of home taping. It’s about both sharing a passion for music and discovering things you might not have heard otherwise. And believe me, since my father’s first illegal home taping of the family’s Beatles and Elton John records for me at age 5, the music industry has made a killing out of me. If Andy Burnham wants proof that, despite what he thinks, filesharing does actually ‘support the creative industries’ then he should look at my bank balance.

It’s the London Mayoral elections tomorrow. As usual I don’t know who to vote for. Of course it’s easy to decide who not to vote for. That would be pretty much everyone running.

But still, I decided to be responsible and consult my London Elects booklet, kindly provided by one Anthony Mayer, the Greater London Returning Officer, to find out just what my options were beyond the usual suspects.

And what an education it’s been. I’ve learnt that:

1. ‘The Christian Choice’ want to ‘end the (alleged) corruption at City Hall’. Yes, stop that ‘well-it-probably-exists but then-again-it-might-not and we-don’t-want-to-face-a -law-suit-anyway’ corruption.
2. If you’re Irish you should vote British National Party (BNP) because they ‘are the only party that care about the indigenous people of these islands. Our jobs are under threat from economic migrants and only the BNP will protect our interests’. So, I guess it’s a bad thing that the American and Australian public didn’t vote extreme right in the 19th/early 20th centuries and kick all those bludging Irish economic migrants out?
3. The English Democrats seriously believe that a vote for them will ‘save London from Labour’s tartan taxes’ because ‘London’s money makes Scotland’s world go round.’
4. UKIP (UK Independence Party)’s main platform is still ‘a vote to say no to the Lisbon Treaty, European Constitution, European Union, mass immigration’ etc. etc. All of which I somehow suspect that the post of London Mayor has absolutely no power over.
5. The Left List doesn’t think that Londoners should have to subsidise the Olympics. Good luck there folks.

So it’s back to the major parties then… Sigh.

We are going to a family wedding in a few weeks. Weddings are becoming more and more frustrating for me. This is not because I don’t wish the couples well or I resent helping re-equip the houses of people who’ve lived together for years and earn more than I do, but because at every wedding we attend, I and my ‘Significant Other’ are beleaguered by people asking us when we are going to tie the knot ourselves.

Weddings are quite possibly the least appropriate time to ask this question. For one, I never know how to respond appropriately. Do I brush the question aside (as I usually do) or just be honest and risk offending the asker?

I have been thinking that the time has come to be honest. It’s that or people continuing to ask the same question for the next 20 years. So I am going to throw caution to the wind, come out on this blog and rehearse my response.

Initial short answer:

‘We are not getting married because we don’t want to. We don’t really think that it’s right for us.’

Longer answer for more persistent, curious people:

‘We’ve decided not to get married for various reasons.

1. We don’t particularly feel that we need to have our relationship either recognised or validated by the state.
2. We are not religious so we don’t really need the church involved either.
3. The marriage ceremony is fundamentally sexist. If marriage is based on equality, then why is the actual ceremony full of old-fashioned traditions like the couple being pronounced ‘man and wife’? Why is it still traditional for the father to hand over his daughter to her husband to be? Why does society only ‘permit’ a woman to ask a man to marry her on one day in every four years?
4. The high divorce rate makes a mockery of marriage. We can’t understand how a piece of paper and a public declaration of love make someone else’s relationship any more secure than ours.
5. Marriage for us is not a romantic concept at all. It’s an economic transaction and it always has been. Why dress it up as anything else? [Sadly this last point will probably get us in the end if anything does. The one real reason to get married, particularly since we don't want children, is tax benefits.]

Defensive, angsty answer for after I’ve had a few drinks:

‘We just don’t want to get married ok. Why are you even asking – why did you get married? Do you honestly think that I would want to dress up like a pavlova anyway?’

Somehow I don’t think that Grandma is going to respond well to any of these…

Here’s a confession for you: I’ve never really bought into the idea of the Olympics. Although I’ve consistently failed to understand the point of competitive sport throughout my life, it probably all started in 1984 when I realised that Misha, the cute mascot bear of the Russian Games in 1980, hadn’t made it to LA.

Since then it’s been steadily downhill for me and the Olympics, but as a former resident of Sydney (leading up to the 2000 Games) and current rate-payer in London, I’ve adapted and learnt to live with my Olympic friend who keeps following me around. I know that most people disagree with my opinions and I’ve learnt to keep my mouth shut and not use the phrases ‘Olympic games’, ‘obscene waste of money’ and ‘we’ll still be paying for this in 50 years’ together if I want an easy life.

However, I think I’m actually beginning to feel sorry for the Olympics. To use market research speak, if the Olympics was a person he, Mr Olympics, would probably be one of the good guys. He just wants people from around the world to get together and play some sport. He’s even willing to let people who do synchronised swimming and beach volleyball pretend that they’re playing a real sport.

In fact, Mr Olympics is so nice that everyone wants a piece of him. He’s become the kind of corporate brand that everyone wants in on – even other fundamentally ‘good’ concepts like the arts, culture, regeneration, sustainability and social inclusion are trying to elbow their way in under his umbrella. And that’s why I’m starting to feel some empathy.

The Olympics in London is going to be very busy. When its not transforming and ‘regenerating’ East London it will, through the guise of the Cultural Olympiad, be showcasing Britain’s artistic talent. The Cultural Olympiad is, according to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, a ‘four-year period of cultural activity designed to celebrate the Olympic spirit throughout the UK’ and will ‘inspire people around the country to participate in a range of cultural activities, which will reflect and celebrate the diverse communities which make up London and the UK.‘ All very laudable, but why? How can what is essentially a glorified sports day possibly deliver anything for the arts? And why should it?

I suspect that since the government and organising committee, LOCOG, have so far failed to put aside any actual money for the Cultural Olympiad that someone somewhere has already decided. It can’t work and if it does, well it’s not a priority. And they’re right, the arts shouldn’t be a priority in the Olympics, the Games are about sport – that is the core brand, nothing else. Just don’t expect me to get excited about it.