Frankie about to get crushed in a rare moment of action

On Sunday we (me, Jayne, Chrystal and Charlie) went up to Essex to see an American football game. We are not mad sports fans, it is just that Frankie has started playing for Sussex Thunder, they were playing an away game in Billericay, and my family live up there so there were several birds to be killed with one stone.

Just to show that I would be the last person in the world to be offered a job writing for the sports pages of a US newspaper, here is my match report:

Sussex won and at no point did I have any clue what was going on.

These are all players waiting for their chance to get on the pitch. There are another bunch already on the pitch.

From the perspective of somebody who doesn’t know the first thing about the game, it is a strange sport. The teams are huge – at least 50 per side – but only a few are on the pitch at any time. Every few minutes everything stops and all the players change.

It is a bit like rugby, but play seems to be in spurts of about 2 minutes, if you are lucky, followed by several minutes of huddling, plotting and substituting everybody another few times.

My dad used to describe football as just about the only game which a visiting alien could watch and quickly work out the purpose and most of the rules. American football is very much not like that. I think the Americans like their sport complicated and capable of being turned into reams of statistics – which is why I am surprised they never went for cricket. I know it can’t be that difficult because in America 10-year-olds and Republicans can understand it, but the frequent interruptions to play didn’t really give me any great desire to learn more.

The half-time score

What I can say is that the Essex Spartans had a much cooler outfit. It was all black. The team looked more like some form of riot police from Robocop. Unfortunately that didn’t help them much because they got thrashed 28-0. Frankie says he ended up as MVP, which turns out not to be some sort of motorcar, but the equivalent of man of the match.

On that basis, we like the game because it turns out that Sussex Thunder are pretty good and Frankie is doing well, and so we don’t care that we have no idea at all what anything means or that supporters are outnumbered by players by a significant margin.

Also I got some nice photos, a few of which will be suitable for making soem new banners for the top of this site.

The way I see it, either she did it in which case she deserves everything she gets, or she didn’t, in which case she might think back to how she has treated the presumption of innocence in the past. Anybody arrested in connection with a high-profile murder or child kidnapping seems to be all over the front pages with lots of dirt dished, before they are released without charge. In a way I kind of hope she is innocent so that she will get a taste of how all that feels.

Bit uncharitable of her old man to call it a witch hunt, but I suppose he knows her best.

Also for a change, I regretted having a proof copy because it only has placeholders where the foreword, acknowledgements and author biography would be and as soon as I finished I wanted to find out a bit more about the author, specifically whether he has written any other books. (It turns out he hasn’t yet)

Anyway, here is what I wrote about it:

The subject matter is quite dark but written in a light way that lets the writer get away with killing women, children and pensioners without traumatising the reader. It is black comedy with just enough comedy to stop it just being depressing.

The comedy is laid on thickest at the start with some genuinely hilarious descriptions of young Geldof’s cringeworthy home circumstances, but done well enough to let later levity rely on references and memories of the pre-apocalypse situation when necessary.

Like all good apocalyptic stories it does make you wonder exactly how a government would respond to such events. Would they be better or ever worse? There are satirical undertones to this that do encourage such questions, but you don’t get to ponder them too much as the story keeps pulling you along.

I do have a small problem with the plausibility of some bits right at the end, but not enough to spoil my enjoyment of the book and to even mention the specifics would be a spoiler for anybody else so I won’t go into details. Having said that, the very last bit of political satire involved in the zombie interview is very tasty.

And do look out for the John Selwyn Gummer spoof. A fine example of very, very dark satire.

If you enjoyed the film Black Sheep (the New Zealand killer sheep comedy and not the German/Russian WWII film) then you would enjoy this. It is a similar topic but on a much larger scale.

It is very , very depressing reading.

The way I understand it, from the book I was reading, the first chimps were bred for other experiments and Harlow raised them in isolation to try and keep them free of cross-infection but found out that the isolation severaly damaged the chimps emotionally. I think most normal people would have regretted that, but he thought that the emotional damage was interesting in itself and then continued. The results of these experiments have really shed a lot of light on the workings of the human mind, but I don’t think that justifies the nature of them.

It was another book that I got through Amazon’s Vince programme, which I might otherwise have missed out on.

Amazon don’t like the reviews on their site to be overly long so I’ll paste what I wrote there and then expand on it a bit because I can waffle on as much as I like here I found this to be a completely fascinating book. As well as presenting a theory about moral psychology it also covers the author’s journey to reaching that theory.

This does mean that it takes a while to actually get to the point of explaining ‘why good people are divided by politics and religion’ because, for example, it outlines a theory and then mentions how that theory turned out to have a flaw and then describes how the author revised it and then lays out the new version, so you end up with several iterations of the theory. This is a 400-page book with the last 100 pages being references, acknowledgements, notes and bibliography, so really 300 pages of the proper book and it is not until the last few pages that the question of the title is really addressed, but that is not a problem because you really do need to build up to it.

There are two main metaphors used in the book. One is to picture the mind as a rider (representing the logical mind) on an elephant (representing the emotional mind). By coincidence I have now started reading abook about decision-making processes which covers a lot of the same ground regarding the relationship between logic and emotions, and draws on some of the same references. I’ll admit that I found the metaphor a bit cute at first but eventually came to terms with it.

The other metaphor is the description on the human mind as being 90% chimpanzee and 10% bee to explain how we sometimes act for our personal benefit and sometimes for the benefit of the community.

This was where it got especially interesting as it picked up on some of Darwin’s ideas about social evolution and developed them.

Along the way the book provides a way to classify moral matters into six categories, which the author calls moral foundations, and presents the results of large-scale studies to show how people of different political beliefs possess (or use, or are guided by) different foundations in different proportions.

This is, of course, just a theory and in a field where absolute proof isn’t likely, but it is all plausible enough to be useful, and for a leftie like me a little bit depressing because I am used to seeing my side as being the goodies and the other side as being the baddies. Instead I have the challenge to consider that the other side might have valid reasons for thinking what they do (while still being wrong of course).

The religious aspect is also disturbing reading for a confirmed atheist like me, because the book makes a good case for religion having a positive impact on the development of human society – regardless of whether gods exist or not.

At the very least this book has made me think more about the relationship between my points of view and those of my political opponents. It has the potential to be life-changing if you totally buy into the theory and use it to guide some decisions. For example, the centre-left could make a careful study of the moral foundations to find ways that their manifesto could address all six and not just concentrate on two to make itself more appealing to more people.

Even without deciding to let this change your outlook completely, there is plenty to dwell on and it is very clearly written and summaraised at every step.

So why was it so challenging and potentially life-changing?

Well, as a rule we tend to read things that support our own opinions rather than challenge them. Wooly liberals don’t read the Daily Mail and mad right-wing plutocrats don’t read Socialist Worker. It can set off some serius cognitive dissonance if you find yourself reading something from the oppsite end of the spectrum, especially if you find yourself agreeing with parts of it, because contemporary politics has become very polarised and tribal.

This, however, is not a book written from a right-wing perspective that challenges some aspect of policy. It is worse than that; it is a mostly scientific but sometimes personal explanation of some theories that undermine some fundamental beliefs.

Just so we know where we stand, I’m a pretty staunch republican, atheist and averagely tribal member of the Labour movement, and this book gives very good reasons to not just do away with religions, the monarchy, and the Tories. Even more depressing, it gives some very plausible scientific reasons why liberals (in the broader American sense) are doomed to have a narrower appeal than conservatives (again in the broader sense).

Having said that, with some of this Haidt was pushing at an open door to an extent as I have felt for a while that politics is far too combative and polarised and that while gods may not exist churches (other religious establishments are available) have and continue to perform some useful services alongside the less appealing aspects like institutional child molestation, ritual suppression of women and perpetuation of inequalities.

I’m not going to, and can’t fully explain all that here because I’m not good enough at it and I would have to quote so much of the book it would qualify as piracy. As a rough approximation, there is some investigation of the way the mind works and the relationship between the emotional and rational parts of the brain. As a sort of side-challenge this undermines a lot of what Plato and Mill thought and I’ve always rated them. Anyway, it turns out that a lot of our opinions and beliefs are due to the emotional side of the brain and the rational part does not so much lead us to our answers but is used post hoc to rationalise what our emotions have come up with.

One practical reason why this is bad for us on the left is that we do tend to try and make our case by reason. How many times have you heard somebody at a Labour gathering complain that if only the voters read our well-argued wordy leaflets instead of being swayed by the tabloid heart-string tugging of the Tory leaflets they would realise who is right? We are getting a bit better but generally we try to win arguments (and elections) with logic while the Tories go straight for emotional dog whistles (and the Lib Dems, of course, have their dodgy bar charts). I don’t think we will ever get over this because it is Labour’s instict to think we are above that sort of thing, but unfortunately that sort of thing works because that is how human minds work.

The book closes with a decent argument for why both liberal and conservative attitudes are necessary. Without the liberal influence we would never make advances, especially social advances like equalities. We would still have women not allowed in pubs, homosexuality illegal, children up chimneys and so on. Without the conservative influence though, we would advance too quickly without letting society adapt and adjust to the changes. That clashes with the instictive attitude we are supposed to have that the world would be better if we won every election and won every seat. It may just be that it is better for the balance of power to change every now and then and for whoever is in power to have the other lot existing as a strong and viable opposition.

This is a lot harder to stomach these days. In the past the small-l liberals and small-c conservatives were spread around the parties more. There were socially conservative socialists and socially liberal Tories in far greater numbers. There were more shades of grey, but now we have become entrenched in ever more polarised positions.

I would still happily see an end to all religions, a fully elected second chamber and head of state and all the rest, but I can see how you can’t do that without identifying the useful functions they perform in terms of social evolution and make sure something else is in place to cover them first, and that isn’t an overnight task but one that could take generations – especially as even the concept of social or cultural evolution is still hotly disputed.

Maybe on its own the book hasn’t made me change what I think or do, but it has at least made me realise that perhaps I should. Really I can’t recommend this highly enough.

1. 100% mandatory
2. In Glasgow

And I decided to do it as a day trip. My four colleagues went up Tuesday afternoon, but I figured that since I live right next to the airport it was feasible to do it all in one day. It was, but it made for one long day.The shame of it is that I had never been to Scotland. Newcastle was the closest I ever got to the border. It always bugged me a bit that I had done a fair bit of globe-trotting in the past, visiting or passing through some pretty far-flung places but never set foot in Scotland. I can’t say that any more, but on the other hand I can’t exactly say I have seen much of it.

To make matters worse, I went by EasyJet both ways. They really have sucked all the joy out of flying haven’t they? I know that draconian (and possibly futile and pointless) security measures contribute to the misery, but EasyJet have certainly done their bit.

Arriving at Glasgow I took a taxi and was treated to a potted history of Paisley and had pointed out to me where Alex Ferguson was raised, where Billy Connolly used to work and where Robert the Bruce’s daughter fell off her horse. Really. I was also told about every ex-landmark we passed which had been earmarked at sometime as a site for Tesco. At least I got to see a little bit of the locality I suppose – though I suspect the meter was wired up to charge not only by the mile but also by the word. It would explain the size of the fare.

I had allowed a little bit of leeway in the schedule in case of small delays, but we actually took off a little early and made good time so I didn’t have to rush and arrived onsite just a few minutes after my colleagues. I may have been tired from the early start and the uncomfortable flight but at least I wasn’t hungover. They had all enjoyed a night on the town and the dubious delights of a haggis pakora at a local curry house.

The course details had 5pm as a finish time so I had decided not to risk booking the 6:30pm flight back just in case and went for the next one – 7:55pm. It turned out that the course finished early and we could have made that one after all as we told each other at regular intervals during our long loiter at the airport. To make it worse the flight back was a little late and I ended up back home at about 10pm.

So it was do-able, but I’m not sure I would want to do it again. It may be an internal flight, but I have to remember that Glasgow is further away from here than Brussels, Amsterdam or Dusseldorf. It is twice as far from home as Paris – a bit ironic because I could never do Paris as a day trip. Partly because of the time difference but also because you can’t fly there from Gatwick so and up going by train.

If anybody else is similarly hooked I can recommend Sanbrook’s book State of Emergency which covers 1970-1974 and also Andy Beckett’s book When the Lights Go Out. There is obviously an overlap in timescales and material but the two books co9mplement each other very well. Both are hefty books: the Beckett one is about 570 pages and the Sandbrook one about 750 pages. Being a bigger book about a shorter period, the Sandbrook one is more detailed and has room to cover a lot more popular culture but the Beckett one gives you a better overview of the whole decade.

So far the TV show has been about 10% politics and 90% popular culture, fashion, sociology and everything else. The book is more balanced with more politics in it. Mind you, the politics of the 70s were depressing as hell – but then that is the same of just about any time.

With YouTube, Spotify, on-demand TV and all the long tails of internet sources we can actually enjoy the bits of the 70s that we want to whenever we want to. Fancy seeing clips of Morecambe & Wise or Bowie on TOTP? Bound to be on YouTube. Want to hear the early Elton John albums? They will be online. What we don’t get is the joy we had the first time round when something great came along, because we can now limit ourselves to only the good stuff if we want to. We no longer have to eat all our vegetables to get our Angel Delight; we can just gorge ourselves on Angel Delight and its not so delightful in that context.

The ongoing BBC experiment of showing complete editions of TOTP has given us a bit of a reminder of what it was like to sit through Our Kid and Pussycat because there was the possibility of seeing Thin Lizzy later on – although the chances are you will be watching it time-shifted on V+ or Sky+ and have the temptation of the fast forward button.

Maybe episode 2 will contain more actual history than cultural history but even if it doesn’t I’m sure it will be a joy. How can it be otherwise with the decade that brought us punk, disco, glam, reggae and prog during the golden age of British TV and American movies?

Business card - probably late 80's

While I was sorting out some old books to get rid of recently (I only managed to force myself to get rid of about a dozen or so) I came across an old business card of mine that had been used as a bookmark.

To be honest, most of my business cards from that, or any other, time got used more as bookmarks than as business cards. We could only order them in boxes of 100 and before many were used either your job would change, or the company would reorganise and your division would change, or the company name would change. I think that only particularly prolific salesmen ever had to re-order.

I used to get mine with my home address and phone number on the back so at least they had some shelf-life for personal purposes.

Judging by the logo, this one was probably late 80′s or maybe early 90′s and two things stand out for me. First of all the telephone number – we still had 01 for London so it was before the changes to 071/081 and 0208 and whatever they have now up in that London. The other thing was the email address, or lack of email address.

I think we had email then, but it was internal. Even when we got internet mail addresses it took a while for people to start putting them on cards because nobody really used it. There was a Telex number on there though, and note that the fax number is on an extension.

Younger people might wonder how you could fax to an extension, but of course back then you used to talk to people before you actually sent a fax – you would have to ask them what type of fax machine they had and make sure your one was set up the same. Possibly you had to agree on a baud rate to use – all the handshaking stuff that later fax machines would do automatically.

Add those technological remininscences to the personal and career memories, there is a lot of wistful nostalgia associated with this one tatty bit of card. I think I will hang on to it and the next time I get users complaining that they found themselves unable to access email from the back seat of a taxi in Indonesia or something I shall look at it and an inner calm will descend as I remember that we would spend weeks at a time on trips overseas without any real connection back home at all.