I say ‘this time’, because I’m old enough to remember the first version of the song, recorded in aid of famine victims back in 1984. Back then, the idea of a charity record was relatively new and the people behind it were young and not particularly wealthy. Fast forward 30 years, and Geldof, yes our old mate Bob (net worth £32 Million according to The Sunday Times) seemed to have come out of that gig extremely wealthily. He and his band were disappearing into obscurity back in the eighties and now he’s worth a small fortune. It seems Band Aid has been more beneficial to him than any person or country the money was being raised for. But even after all that, Bob is a comparative pauper next to the other prime mover, Bono (what I particularly admire about Bono is his ability to keep a straight face telling others to reduce their global footprint as he flies round the world preaching his gospel), whose net worth is now thought to exceed £400m.

Both have made a secondary career out of haranguing both the UK government and UK public into giving more money to worthy causes, but here’s the thing that gets me ... despite their huge wealth, neither man pays any tax in the UK and both enjoy non-dom status. Do they pay tax at all – anywhere? Do they give any of their own money to charities? Well nobody really knows, but Geldof recently flew into a rage when questioned on the subject by a journalist from a National UK newspaper and suggested that simply ‘giving his time’ was a tax. I really must try that one the next time I get a brown envelope from the governing tax officials.

And I’m probably the last person to question how someone spends their own money.

I think if you’ve earned it, it’s nobody’s business but yours how you spend it (legally of course). Nor do I think you should be obliged to pay any more tax than is required by law. But… and this is a big but (no not Kim Kardashian’s, but more on her later) … it just doesn’t seem right to me that extremely wealthy individuals attempt to shame governments into giving money to worthy causes when they have decided not to contribute to the pot from which that money comes. Nor is it right that they implore ordinary folk to give the little money they have while hanging on to their own. And these two things are inextricably related.

When Geldof or Bono ask the UK government to give more money to their pet cause, they are asking you and me to give more money, just as surely as if they ask us to download their latest charity single. The government doesn’t have any money other than that which it raises from taxes. It’s only a finite pot of money, and one to which neither Geldof nor Bono contributes.

Geldof and Bono aren’t alone in this of course, and this latest campaign is typical of a society in which wealthy show business and sports personalities ‘give their time’ to persuade poor people to hand over their cash to charity… charity records… Children in Need… Comic Relief… Sports Relief… the list goes on and on. Meanwhile, those ‘giving their time’ freely, benefit financially from the valuable exposure their participation brings.

You could easily argue that it’s a win-win situation, (and I’d have some sympathy with that) but l I’ve got a much better idea. Let’s just cut out the middle man. Instead of ‘giving your time’, use that time to do what you’re good at and give your hard currency instead. One Direction (one of the main attractions on the latest single) earned £47 Million last year. Just one week of their earnings would go a long way on its own. But how much of the money being raised actually hits the ground anyway?

Even the cause is flawed this time round. Up until recently in the US more people had been married to Kim Kardashian than had been diagnosed with Ebola. And in the UK, there have been more cases of people marrying Katy Price (aka Jordan) than catching Ebola. So my argument here is that it looks like celebrities are even worse for your health than Ebola! They’re certainly more contagious. But that’s Celebrity for you isn’t it? They think they are bigger and better than the people who put them there in the first place. I personally have no interest in Celebrity culture and the hyper inflated ego’s that that adorn it, especially those of the non tax-paying preachers variety I refer to here.

This is exactly what’s wrong with this world at present. These tax dodgers and our capitalist system are the prime causes of why this world is in such a mess, and then these people who are well and truly part of it stand on their soapboxes and tell us, the little people who are the victims of it, that we should be putting our hands in our pockets, when we are the ones who are already paying our taxes and being further heavily penalised to make this whole mess right again!! 

These people need to put their own money where their mouths are 

and prove they are doing it for a change.

And I now ask you, did the money from the first record make any real difference anyway? If so there should now be far less starving families in far off lands needing charitable support and aid from various governments. My guess is things are now worse not better than they were all those years ago.

And then when one acts like a grown up and doesn’t take everything the media pumps out at face value, but checks out other (more verifiable) sources of information, it seems that yet again we have a well hyped up issue with the Ebola scare. This is probably infecting less people than many other diseases. And leading back to my first comment; if all the charitable money pumped into the 3rd world had been used effectively over the years, those inhabitants would by now have a much higher standard of living and therefore generally be healthier. I think this too, is not the case!

It seems that so much of the planet’s wealth has now been sucked into the hands of a relatively few elite families, celebrities and others by several dubious methods over the years and it is my opinion that these are the ones that should now be giving back to the poorest parts of the world, not us. They won’t though, because to them the more money they can retain the more power they wield to feed their greedy, selfish, egotistical lives ... and above all else, they are also the biggest hypocrites on the planet.

The time has long passed for the adults in this world to act with maturity; it’s not difficult to see through the endless scams, perpetrated by the powers that be, to suck even more of our hard earned wealth from our bank accounts. But there is so much else that needs our attention and wealth to help make changes for the better.

And finally to show it isn’t a pipe dream to believe the rich can take a greater part in things, check out a man by the name of Andrew Reynolds an ordinary guy who found a business formula that made him wealthy (Andrew Reynolds is a professional street skateboarder. He is a co-founder of Baker Skateboards and is the brand's owner; he is a part owner of Brigada Eyewear; a partner in Baker Boys Distribution, and head designer at Altamont Apparel). And what does he do? Well he spends some of that wealth by going out to a poor nation (can’t remember exactly where), where he identified a local group who were providing food for starving children and as far I know he is still sending currency to support the project... No registered charity required. No administration costs swallowing up the cash. Just honest to goodness benefits where they are needed most.

Just think, if everyone with more money than they actually needed did something like this, poverty would probably by now be a thing of the past!

Needless to say, I just checked it out and the latest charity single had sold 340,000 copies the first week at 99 pence each. Even if it eventually sells ten times that number, that probably still amounts to less than the people performing on the record would earn in a day.

So what the hell is the real point in inflicting another bloody version of that song on us BOB?

Older readers from the UK will remember those blissful days before FM radio when evenings were spent trying to listen to chart music on a beloved Radio Luxembourg, as "All The Young Dudes" would fade in and out of the wall of static that was European broadcasting. That and those Peter Stuyvesant ads. Oh and anti-spot cream Clearasil... Hey Kids, don't let acne get you down: have another fag!

Anyway, if you do remember, you'll also recall the little fanfare identification signal from Tirana that would rise and fade morbidly in the background. A complete mystery to us teenagers, the signal was there purely to locate the Albanian National Radio Service whilst it was off the air, and to stop anyone using the wavelength in their absence.

I mention this purely because I feel that is what this post is about.

I have nothing to say tonight, but if I don't post anything people will give up looking, which would somewhat impair the moment when I DO have that shrewd insight, or inspired wit to impart with you, and no-one's looking.

Please keep this channel open; I'm sure SOMETHING will turn up.

And there's not a lot of people know that!!

Mingus the Penguin wore sunglasses and a pork pie hat, and inhabited a pretty "cool pad" at the north pole, where he was seen to have "hung out" with a picaresque collection of beatniks, misfits and somewhat loose women.

Unfortunately the name Mingus was quickly dropped when the family of Jazz Trombonist Charley Mingus opposed the use of the brand. In their objections, they cited Mingus the Penguin's substance abuse, bohemian lifestyle and indifference towards social propriety.

"Let's face it," commented a spokesman "the portrayal was a clichéd interpretation of the jazz scene, and a frankly disturbing misrepresentation of the natural world, presenting both environments as feckless, hedonistic and degenerate!"

After ranting for some time, the spokesman concluded:

"actually, this isn't really anything to do with Charley's legacy. Let's face it, he's dead, and probably couldn't care less what this animal gets up to, but we feel that it's important to let the world know that penguins are a hard-working social species with little use for extravagant and hedonistic individualism. This show is nothing more than anthromophism gone mad!"

Anyway, the dispute continued for some years until the project was quietly dropped, only to be rediscovered by younger, trendier, up-and-coming TV execs inspired by the opportunity to broadcast low cost programming with little need for being creative themselves.

However, by the time the penguin scripts reached the filming stage, "Pingu" had not only been renamed, but divested of his louch accoutrements and sanitized for the modern day audience, with little more than an appetite for fish.

Pingu was also said to be the late Margaret Thatcher's favourite television programme. Really intellectual stuff then.

I have a healthy contempt for pretty much all modern politicians, but occasionally, one may break with tradition and say something that makes perfect sense. And so it was this week, when one such policy maker suggested that entrepreneurship and enterprise should be taught and celebrated in schools.

The gist of his argument is that it’s through entrepreneurial effort that jobs and wealth are created – and I wouldn’t argue with that – but I think there’s another reason it’s important… one that is central to every one of us reaching our full potential. And it goes way beyond what being an entrepreneur normally means.

Much as it pains me to admit it, not everyone agrees with me all of the time. (in fact in my own household, nobody does – ever!) And even here, in the comparatively safe company of you people who read my blogs, I get the odd protest. “That’s all well and good” they say “but not everyone is an entrepreneur. Some of us have to work for someone else for a living.”

It’s a fair comment – much of what I write here and elsewhere IS written with fellow entrepreneurs in mind. So what about everyone else then? Well here’s the thing – I reckon employees should be entrepreneurs too… or to be more accurate, employees should at least think and behave like entrepreneurs. In fact there’s no other sensible option for running your life. Let me explain what I mean.

A typical employee mentality might be expressed something like this… 

“I’m an employee of this company, I work for them, and they pay my wages. I rely on them for my wages and financial welfare. It’s up to the company to look after me and ensure that I’m trained correctly to do the job. I get paid to do a job for them, and that’s what I try to do. No more and no less. If the company don’t need me any more at some point in the future, that will be a big problem for me... My income will disappear and I might find it difficult to get other work. There’s little I can do about that though, other than hope, I don’t have any other income, and this job is pretty much all I’m trained for. My financial destiny and lifestyle are in the company’s hands.”

An employee with an entrepreneurial thought process would

 look at the situation very differently though. 

“I’m managing director of my own company… Me Ltd. It only has one employee… yours truly. At the moment I have a contract to hire out my companies services to a larger company in return for a regular fixed fee. I’m always looking for ways to improve on the contract I have with them, and to get a better return from it. I know that if I provide better value, the contract will probably become more lucrative. I consistently try to find new ways to increase the value I offer. This one contract doesn’t define my business though. No company should ever rely on just one contract. I’m always open to the possibility of new projects and contracts to run alongside the existing one.

Like all businesses, mine has several departments and functions which need regular attention… finance, marketing, human resources, training to name but four. I need to keep on top of all of these if the business is to prosper. If I take my eye off any of these functions, I put the whole company at risk.

Because I only have the one employee, it’s particularly important that I manage his welfare well and train him up to be the best he can be. Without him being at his best - physically, mentally and intellectually – the business is going to suffer. It’s nobody else’s responsibility to ensure that this happens. It’s my business, and it’s up to me to manage it properly.”

Can you see the huge difference between the mindset of a typical employee, and that of one with an entrepreneurial approach? As a typical employee, you prostrate yourself at the feet of an employer and effectively say, “Do as you will… my fate rests with you”. As an employee with an entrepreneurial approach, you take full responsibility and control over your own destiny. And the good news is it takes little more than a change in mindset but the resultant effect on actions and outcomes is likely to be huge.

I now have a suggestion for you; take a sheet of A4 paper and write ‘Your Name’ Ltd at the top. Make a list of your assets and liabilities, just like a regular company. Draw up a profit and loss account. Write out an analysis of the opportunities and challenges the enterprise faces. Be honest about any shortcomings in your ‘workforce’, and resolve to take action to plug any gaps through development and training. Look at all the departments in turn… finance, marketing, human resources, training… to see where there may be room for improvement, and then make an agreement with yourself to have regular ‘board meetings’ where progress can be assessed and monitored.

You may think I’m taking the analogy too far, but you would be wrong. And I know one thing for sure… if you take this approach on board, you’ll work a lot harder and more effectively for ‘Your Name’ Ltd’ than you ever would for some third party employer. And when you do that, you’ll provide greater value all round, and the rewards will come harder and faster as a result.

Everyone wins in this scenario, but the biggest winner of all will be you.

To get to a place in New South Wales called Newcastle from where I live, you have to travel along the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Brisbane. And as I discovered a couple of Friday mornings ago, this is almost certainly one of the most boring stretches of road in the whole of Australia. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it has a fairly poor accident record too, and I think I know why... it’s extremely tempting to steer your vehicle into oncoming traffic just to relieve yourself from the the tedium of the hundreds of kilometres (that feel like thousands) you need to cross. My wife, who really should try lapsing into unconsciousness rather than driving from the back seat of our putt-putt on even the shortest journey while I’m driving, stayed resolutely awake on this one as per usual. Not because she had to tell me how to do things better, oh no not this time... This time, I’m sure she was genuinely terrified that I would fall asleep, such was the lack of any real sensory stimulation along the way.

Kilometre after kilometre after kilometre after kilometre of straight, flat tarmac stretches before you on the Pacific Highway, every inch of it bordered by hedgerow-starved fields. Most seeming to contain nothing…or what could be as much use as cauliflowers. The en-route ‘architecture’ too is a mix of what appears to be abandoned old farm buildings and crappy 1960’s style bungalows surrounded by unkempt gardens, scattered randomly across the landscape. There are a lot of bungalows out there and to be honest, I don’t think people in New South Wales have a head for heights. Or maybe it’s just not worth building a bedroom with a view when there’s nothing to actually see.

Occasionally you will come across a larger house surrounded by 40 foot leylandii. Where I’m not sure whether the owners are trying to block the view of the house from the road, or the view of the road from the house. The latter would definitely be a good idea though. At one point I even noticed a sorry-looking motel and marvelled at who might ever stay there…and why (we writers do that sort of thing). I came up with a short list that included breakdown victims, truckers, hookers and escaped prisoners holding hostages, but quickly ran out of any sane ideas after that.

Abandoned, rusty cars must be status symbols around these parts too, because everyone seems to have one in their front garden. The only other things of note are myriad discount retail emporia, heralded by signs that look like they’ve been written by a dyslexic hyperactive seven year old let loose with some paint. It’s sort of how you’d imagine the whole country might look about 20 years post-holocaust, when some signs of civilisation are starting to return, but you are still painfully aware that something awful must have happened.

Anyway, in an attempt to relieve the boredom, we embarked on a game of I Spy. It didn’t last long…

Her: “I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘f’.”

Me: “Is it ‘field’?”

Her: “Bugger!”

Eventually though, the road passes over a bridge traversing a muddy river and you end up in Coffs, which isn’t bad at all. The tarmac starts to turn, the landscape starts to roll, and trees which haven’t been purchased from a garden centre, solely for their fast-growing and eyesore-masking properties, start to emerge. We eventually arrived at the hotel we’d booked, which was excellent. It had some interesting elements to its pricing and customer services offering which I’ll come back to in a moment. But the only reason I got to thinking about that at all, was a chance encounter with celebrity during the next couple of days.

Are you still keeping up with this? I’m glad someone is!

When we booked the hotel, it was a very open and transparent process. The room wasn’t cheap, but the cost was clearly explained, as was the price of an upgrade and what benefits that would bring. When we arrived there were no nasty surprises – in fact quite the reverse. We were offered complementary newspapers, informed that all phone calls from the room would be free of charge, and were directed to a cupboard containing free drinks and home-made cookies. We actually got more for our money than we thought we were getting when we booked the room. Now compare that with a typical Ryanair experience.

The basic cost of the flight will be relatively low, but from there on it is only the most cautious and diligent passengers that emerge from the process having paid anything like what they expected. You need your wits about you. Take a bag that’s slightly too big or heavy, or fail to have all your paperwork in order, and you’ll face additional punitive charges which are out of all proportion to the original price, or the incremental cost of dealing with the transgression. This isn’t the sort of upsell process which American companies do so well, in which customers are coaxed into spending more than they intended, but rather a seemingly deliberate attempt to make things difficult so that customers unwittingly fall foul of the rules and become forced to pay extra. Add in the fact that anything beyond a basic seat on the plane incurs an additional charge, and the initial price quoted is unlikely to be a close indication of the final bill.

There’s nothing illegal about this of course, in fact Ryanair have ensured that they are watertight in this regard, but it does illustrate the opposite end of the spectrum from which companies can deal with pricing and managing customer expectations. At one end you have a hotel that quotes a price, sticks to it and even throws in some bonus’s after the contract is made. At the other you have an airline that quote an initial price, charge for every conceivable extra and then use the rest of the transaction fulfilment process to squeeze as much additional money out of the customer as they can.

Now I’m sure Ryanair would argue that the average customer still ends up paying less with them than their competitors, and that doing things this way benefits those who are ‘savvy’ and don’t want to pay for things they don’t really need. Both of these things are probably true, and the company is extremely successful. And just because I don’t happen to like the way they do business, and choose to spend my money elsewhere, certainly doesn’t mean we should reject the lessons of the business model wholesale. But all of this does raise an important question.

What would be the best pricing model for me and my business?

Is it one like the hotel, where everything is open, transparent and included – and where customers get more than they expect after the contract is under way. Or is it one like the budget airline, where you hook people in on a seemingly low price and then put systems and processes in place to extract as much additional revenue as possible from the transaction afterwards?

I think a lot will depend on personal ethics and what I feel most comfortable with. It’s proven that both approaches can work. Companies like Ryanair survive and prosper for a reason. A large part of any market is prepared to tolerate an awful lot of pain in pursuit of what they perceive to be a low price. The success of businesses offering transparent pricing and ‘beyond expectation’ service shows that there’s a significant market sector for whom price isn’t the primary consideration, and they’re prepared to pay more for better.

Choose the Ryanair route, and you may find yourself looking over your shoulder, struggling to retain customers and constantly fighting a customer service fire. Choose the spa hotel route, and you may find yourself frustrated as you see a large part of the potential market gravitate towards the cheap and cheerless, irrespective of the true value on offer. There are no right and wrong answers.

The reality of course, is that there is a continuum in place here, and there are numerous alternatives to consider between these two extremes. And I think you should consider them. You see, once you set out down one path it’s not easy to go back. Nobody is going to easily accept Ryanair as a born-again premium service provider any more than they are likely to accept Claridges Hotels as the epitome of cheap and cheerful accommodation. You become what you’re perceived to be and perceptions don’t tend to shift easily.

Anyway, as we headed back home at the end of our weekend gig, back down the Pacific Highway, a belligerent caravan tower reduced the entire carriageway to a 20kph crawl and then refused to pull over for about 7 kilometres. I discerned from the honking horns and hand gestures that this wasn’t very much appreciated, or indeed the ‘done thing’, but for once I was fairly relaxed. I realised that the driver probably lived locally, and having the power to irritate a couple of hundred motorists for 15 minutes had to be a very poor recompense for that.

Ok guys I know it’s my job to write and yours to wander by without comment but I need your help with a conundrum. The answer, I would imagine, is to be found somewhere in economics, psychology or a mixture of the two. It concerns a situation and mode of behaviour, which to my mind, is illogical and irrational and yet almost without exception, everyone adheres to it and accepts it as normal.

Here’s the conundrum:

In a private transaction between two individuals, why is it always expected that the buyer of a product must relinquish control of his money before receiving the goods, rather than the other way around?

This was brought home to me again recently when I bought a used car privately. The car was privately owned but situated in a workshop where it was having some work done. The buyer was very clear that he must have the money in his bank account before he would authorise release of the car. I would have to trust him with my money, but he wasn’t prepared to trust me with his car.

Well as per usual, I was feeling a little mischievous that day, so I sent him the following email, which sums up my point pretty well..

“Do you think a seller is more trustworthy than a buyer? Neither do I. So why is it perfectly acceptable (expected even) that a buyer take a risk by giving money to a seller in advance of receiving anything, but it’s totally unacceptable for a buyer to release his goods until he has money? It makes no sense, in fact it’s contrary to logic. Take our deal. If I pay you in advance, I run the risk that you take my money and run. That money can disappear very easily and quickly. You can spend it anywhere. You give me your car before funds are cleared and I don’t pay? Well we’re in a pretty similar boat except I can’t do much with a car I don’t have legal ownership of. You wouldn’t want it to happen, but I can’t spend your car in the way you can spend my money. The point I’m making is that buyers are expected to take a greater risk which sellers are prepared to even consider. Given that they both have equal financial interest in the deal (otherwise there would be no deal) it makes no sense.”

He didn’t have an answer, and neither do I. But there’s little doubt that this is what’s universally expected. I’ve bought and sold a lot of stuff online – deals done with private individuals at a distance – and the expectation is always the same. The seller insists on seeing money in his bank account before he will send the gear through the post. So the buyer is expected to trust the seller, but the seller won’t trust the buyer.

This would only make some logical sense if the seller had more to lose than the buyer, but that can never be the case. To use wristwatches for a moment, if I’ve offered to buy your watch for £2,000 and you’ve accepted my offer, then we’re both agreed on the value of what we each stand to lose in the deal. It’s £2,000. The risk of you sending me the watch in advance of payment is exactly the same as the risk of me sending you the cash in advance of receiving the watch. And yet one is viewed as expected and the other as far too risky to contemplate.

So what the heck is going on here? I have my own theory, which doesn’t really answer it satisfactorily in my view, so I’ll keep it to myself for now. I don’t want to influence any ideas you might have... but... Oh what the hell... you guys don’t say much anyway.

If you consider a typical commercial transaction, done at a distance, the buyer is usually the one asked to bear some risk. He or she has to pay money to the seller before goods are despatched. So if you order something through Amazon, for example, you pay first and then they despatch the goods. They don’t send you the latest Celine Dion CD (You didn’t, did you?) and then ask you to pay if you’re satisfied. It’s not how it’s done, and there are good reasons for that.

To continue with the Amazon example for a moment, the company deals with tens of thousands of transactions every day. It would be impossible for them to chase up every customer who neglected to pay for whatever reason, and so they ask for payment first. Amazon is a company of prominent standing and so they are unlikely to renege on their side of the deal. If they did, they would be very easy track down and be brought to book. And so although their customers are expected to take a risk, it’s a minimal one.

Most commercial organisations doing business at a distance work like this, and by default, private individuals dealing with other private individuals follow the same model – despite the situation being totally different.

In a private transaction, there is just one buyer and one seller. The issues faced by Amazon (and yes, even little old me) are not present. The two parties to the deal are in exactly the same position, with exactly the same value to gain or lose and pretty much the same hassles and opportunities for redress if it goes wrong. But everyone behaves as though the seller is a high profile commercial organisation, and the buyer is a potentially unreliable customer who might disappear with the goods without paying.

So I believe the reason people behave the way they do in private transactions is that they simply mirror the relative positions of buyers and sellers in commercial transactions. They take a transaction model from one environment and dump it into an unrelated one – just as it is.

We have a phrase for this kind of thing around here… it’s called ‘chicken on the head thinking’. Why? Well it comes from a half-forgotten parable about a woman who sold cheese at the market. In order to transport the cheese and keep it cool, she wrapped it in muslin and carried it on her head. This was very successful and the product arrived at market cool and fresh. After a while, she decided to move out of cheese and into livestock. She now needed to transport chickens to market, and so encouraged by her previous success, she wrapped them in muslin and… well you get the idea. She took a solution that worked in one situation, and imported it wholesale into a situation with completely different issues and problems.

That’s what I think is probably happening here, and it’s not really unusual. As human beings we’re pretty lazy, and so if we work out a solution to a problem, it’s very tempting to apply it to a different problem. And we do that without employing any critical thinking to determine whether the circumstances are the same or not. We have the perfect solution – but to the wrong problem.

This sort of thing happens more than you might think. For most of us, the biggest danger comes over time – just like our lady carrying a muslin wrapped chicken on her head. Circumstances change, but we don’t really recognise the fact. We have a solution that once worked, but we are now applying it in a different environment. It no longer works nearly so well, and we can’t figure out why.

So are you using solutions which have proved to work in other environments, but not working the same way for you? Are you using solutions which you’ve used successfully in the past, but they are no longer giving the same results? Maybe it’s worth considering whether… to use the terminology of the day… you’re applying commercial rules to private transactions, or using the transportation arrangements for cheese to move chickens!

One simple question will usually set you on the right track…”Why the hell do we do it like this?”

And now... Over to you!

I’m always entertained by the results of so called ‘research’ reported in the so called national press. You know the kind of thing...

Obviously it’s a junk science of the worst kind, and it's usually commissioned by whelk fishermen and owners of home sauna emporia. or cigarette companies (global warming)  or Monsanto (world starvation... but was that before or after they have had a go?).

Just this morning for example, I read the results of yet another survey, attempting to discover the best place to live in the UK. Allegedly it was carried out by online comparison site, Money Supermarket, but I suspect the Bristol tourist board had a hand in it too, because that was the city which came out top of the list. Of all the places you could live in the UK, Bristol is the best. (and for the sake of the lawyers... allegedly)

Now I’ve got nothing against Bristol – I’m sure it has its virtues – but I don’t ever recall it ever ever coming high on anyone’s list of… well… anything ever before. You might bring it to mind if asked to name a city with two dire football league teams, or one with a crude association with breasts, but apart from that, it doesn’t normally come to mind at all. And that wasn’t the only thing that was odd about this research.

Apparently, one of the best cities to live is Leeds, and the worst of the lot… Bradford. I’ve been to both. I’ve even been to both in the same day. In fact I’ve been to both in the same minute, because they’re right next to each other. I’m not sure at what point on the road between the two, it all turns from paradise to pathetic though, but I think we should be told. I mean, imagine not knowing, and then hitting the border. It must be like someone just switched out the lights.

The reality of course, is that the two cities share many characteristics and factors which underpin and determine their desirability as places to live. There are good (and not so good and even terrible) places to live within each. What’s really important in defining things though, is not so much your post code, but your personal circumstances. If there are ten rungs on the ladder, someone on rung nine living in Bradford is likely to be living in a much ‘better place’ than someone on rung six living in Leeds.

And I think this is something people fail to take into account when they attempt to improve their own environment or their circumstances. They over-attribute the impact of geography on their level of happiness or satisfaction. Yes, location is quite often the icing on the cake, but as any experienced baker knows, even good icing can’t salvage a badly made cake.

Many who emigrate (yes that includes me too), discover this to their cost (maybe not so much me). After the euphoria of being in a new place with a more agreeable climate has subsided, the same underlying problems, dissatisfactions and shortcomings persist. The cake is as it always was. They may have a nicer sun tan, but they are not living in a ‘better place’ as such, in any meaningful sense of things.

The uncomfortable truth is that you can’t really escape yourself (which is fine if you are me because I am awesome and I MAKE the sun shine wherever I go). Wherever you go, it’s the only thing you’re forced to take with you. You don’t have a choice in that. And paradoxically then, the one thing you have to take with you everywhere will determine whether you’re in a ‘great place’ or not – no matter what any map or survey might tell you.

So we can realistically say that geography solves nothing. It merely provides a backdrop for what really matters. And so the first stage of any realistic ‘escape’ plan is to work on yourself and your own situation first. Concern yourself with where you are, only when you’ve fully dealt with who you are, personally, psychologically and financially. (Just like me LOL).

Footnote:

In any event, I have to add that there are few locations so dire, that a couple of steps up the ladder won’t make things a lot better. I should know, I’m originally from Rawtenstall :)

The Group of Twenty (G20) is the premier forum for its members’ international economic cooperation and decision-making processes. Its membership comprises 19 countries plus the European Union. Each G20 president invites several guest countries each year.

The G20 leaders meet annually and in addition, Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meet regularly during the year to discuss ways to strengthen the global economy, reform international financial institutions, improve financial regulation and implement the key economic reforms that are needed in each member economy. Underpinning these meetings is a year-long program of meetings among senior officials and of working groups coordinating policy on specific issues.

The G20 started in 1999 as a meeting of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. In 2008, the first G20 Leaders' Summit was held, and the group played a key role in responding to the global financial crisis. Its decisive and coordinated actions boosted consumer and business confidence and supported the first stages of economic recovery. G20 leaders have met eight times since 2008.

Apparently the G20 is an apt model for global cooperation in today’s world. Its response to the global financial crisis is a testament to the impact G20 members can make when working together. The G20 introduced trillions of dollars in fiscal stimulus packages (at a cost no doubt)  worldwide, which saved or created millions of jobs that would otherwise have been destroyed. It also put in place measures to limit the collapse of financial markets and helped maintain consumer and business confidence.

How very noble of them I say, but are they really as good as the blurb suggests? Yes they averted a financial crisis, but did we see any of the benefits? The banks did. They were bailed out at the expense of the tax payers and while some of the more dubious of the banking practices were shut down, very little has changed regarding the status quo for the man in the street. He’s the guy that has borne the brunt of any changes made while the banks have been left to carry on regardless in their pursuit of making huge profits by any means possible. But what do I know?

The official line reflects that over the past five years, the G20 has framed the world’s efforts to restore growth and build the resilience of financial institutions and national economies. It led the world out of an economic crisis and through the initial stages of the recovery. And with the world now free from immediate economic crisis, the G20 can increasingly shift its attention to driving practical actions that will lead to sustained global growth. Oh goody, let’s create a war, that’s always good for business no doubt.

The challenges that now confront the global economy are less pressing and urgent than those faced at the height of the global financial crisis but they are no less important. But never mind eh? We are all after all; eternally grateful for the opportunity to endure higher taxes and a lot less value for our money in as far as public services go.

In 2014, the global economy continues to produce far less than it would have if the crisis had not occurred; there are tens of millions fewer jobs and global trade growth is still too slow. While always remaining vigilant to risks and vulnerabilities, the G20 is now more focused on improving the future of the global economy, without any foreseeable changes to the lowering of living standards for the man in the street.

Let’s face it guys, The G20 is supported by international organisations, including the Financial Stability Board, the International Labour Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. All the key players in the pursuit of profit for their investors with very little thought for the people their policies will ultimately affect. These and several other organisations are invited to attend key G20 meetings. The G20 committed in its Fifth Anniversary Vision Statement to listen carefully to institutions and countries (yes institutions and countries, not the people left struggling to make ends meet) which are not in the group. Accordingly, Australia continues to work with non-members to develop international understanding of the G20’s 2014 agenda, to promote the agenda's benefits to the global economy and to seek views and input.

So much so that all the common man in Australia gets to hear about is all about the anti-terrorism measures we have put in place. Really? Mr, Prime Minister, Abbott? If the G20 were as good as you would have us all believe, shouldn’t you be preparing street parties instead? Something really isn’t adding up here? Are you so insecure about your electorate (a usually happy go lucky kind of people by all accounts), that we have to be subjected to daily displays of war planes and military helicopters flying in formation over the skies of Brisbane?

I mean, in a world where a meagre $30 billion would be sufficient to feed, clothe and house a (much happier because of it) global population of 8 billion, why does the need still exist for defence budgets running into the $400 billions? Why hasn’t the G20 pledged their efforts towards the more obvious savings to be made in this direction rather than looking into future methods of driving the populace into further hardship and therefore reluctant servitude? Why were the instigators of the last GFC not taken to task and still allowed to retire on pensions and bonuses higher than the GDP of some of our present third world neighbouring countries?

Amid the 1980s, the word quango was repeatedly bandied around as the UK press went to town on the wasteful, non productive and highly expensive foreign excursions of government officials that were exposed and shut down on a near daily basis. Isn’t the current G20 just another instance of the same old, same old happening again? World leaders having a right old jolly up while giving very little if anything back in return? Isn’t it just a collection of the largest of financial institutions, set up to further the political agendas of their corporate backers, bullying the small guy (or countries) into policies that nobody really needs or wants? I for one think that it is and I’m sure I’m not alone in the way I'm thinking.

We’ve seen it all before Mr Abbott. Before the G20, it was the annual meetings of the (relevant to my last post about name changes) Bilderburgers. They wore pretty much the same political hats back in their day and where did they ever get us? So, isn’t it time to actually start doing your doing for the people who count for human rather than stock-market values? 

You don’t have to answer that Mr Abbott; I already know what the outcome of this shambolic gathering will bring us. Your only job now, is to prove me wrong. But I won’t be holding my breath.

Does anybody in the room remember Windscale? It was a nuclear power station mid Cumbria that had what we could call ‘a bit of a meltdown’ and subsequently got itself a bad name.

In the wake of World War II, the United States government enacted a legislation which prohibited any other nations from receiving the scientific bounty derived from the Manhattan Project (their dabbling into nuclear). This meant that despite the participation of British scientists in the project, Britain was to receive none of the benefits of their research. And the year after the United States' first successful nuclear bomb test in the July of 1945, the British government decided that they must now go it alone and develop a nuclear program of their own in order to maintain their position as a world power. This pilot project eventually developed into the Windscale Nuclear plant. OK?

Alas in October 1957, after several years of already successful operation, the workers at the Windscale plant noticed some rather curious readings from their temperature monitoring equipment as they carried out what should have been standard maintenance. It appeared that the reactor temperature was slowly rising during a time that they expected it to be falling. The remote detection equipment seemed to be malfunctioning (or maybe they were now in the wrong place for the plant’s change of purpose), so two plant workers donned protective equipment and hiked to the reactor to inspect it in person. When they arrived, they were rather alarmed to discover that the whole interior of the uranium-filled reactor was ablaze.

The fire was the worst nuclear accident in Great Britain's history, ranked in severity at a level 5 on the 7-point International Nuclear Event Scale. The two nuclear piles there had been hurriedly built as part of the British atomic bomb project. The accident occurred when the core of the Unit 1 nuclear reactor at the nuclear plant caught fire, releasing substantial amounts of radioactive contamination into the surrounding areas. The fire burned for three days and there was a release of radioactive material that spread across the whole UK and parts of Europe.

Well that was back then and it was always a big ask for people to forgive and forget and at the same time carry on regardless but nonetheless, that’s how the story sort of went, amidst further failures, leakages, and a whole shitload of bad publicity along the way.

The marketing people finally solved the worsening Windscale problem by renaming the now fast breeder reactor plant ‘Sellafield’ while at the same time slapping a visitor centre alongside it, and everyone thought it was all of a sudden, a different, new and improved nuclear power station and the whole fear of nuclear disaster went away forever... so to speak.

And since that day on, renaming any failing institution is now deemed 
the best way to improve things... and it is also by far the cheapest, 
so it's a win-win situation all round!

The proof of this can be seen within the UK education system. In fact my old school Roger Carter Secondary Modern (name changed to prevent being sued), which was always a bit crap, was renamed (again but this time for the sake of the story) Carter Community School (specialising in SPORT, so don't worry about Maths and English and stuff like that, everyone's going for gold here!), and is now only the TENTH worst school in Britain! Hoorah!

Mind you, our old rivals Raquel’s Welch have been renamed (again and again for the same reasons as previously highlighted) TWICE! First as Rossmore Community College and now as the St Abacus Academy, and THEY'VE just been awarded the prestigious ‘worst school in Britain’ award for their efforts, so I don't know what happened there?

According to the local journalistic rag:

Just three percent of pupils leaving the St Abacus Academy last summer scored the benchmark of five A- C GCSE grades, including English and maths. That’s a drop of 11 places in a year for the former Rossmore Community College, taken over by new sponsors; the Boffin University in September 2013 in a bid to raise standards. Today the Education committee has demanded urgent improvements at the school and action from the sponsors to boot. It has also offered to help the school. Yes, and probably because the one town now has two schools in the country’s worst ten!

Is it social deprivation to blame? Well not really, we’re talking about quite an affluent area without the unemployment desolation of the (grim up north) North East or the inner-urban blight of many major cities. It's not even racial, as most of the kids are predominantly white, and in fact it's the sort of area that white supremacists might even move to. (Most of the racism I witnessed as a kid came from the emigres from London and the Midlands).

No, it's actually all about the success of the local Grammar Schools. You see the area never tolerated the country wide move to Comprehensive schooling, and stuck to the old two-tier education system, where the children of the middle-classes and the brightest of the lower orders were prioritised into the Grammar schools for a proper education, whilst the rest of us were basically abandoned or put on hold until they're old enough to work for fast food outlets, go onto the dodgiest of building sites or enter the prison system (assuming they hadn’t all got high on heavy drugs or pregnant beforehand). And until it's recognised as a problem solely derived from SOCIAL attitudes towards working class children, I'm afraid the problem will persist unchallenged.

Now if you could just excuse me a moment, for my mind has gone blank... Oh yes, I had a question for you. Is there a name for this sort of thing or did they change it already?

Did you know that it is commonly perceived that Neil Armstrong’s first words on the moon surface were “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”? 

Well I'm sorry dear readers because what he actually said was “Wild Thing, you make my heart sing, you make everything — groovy”.

 

Cue Micheal Jackson...

Do you remember the days when we were all amused to discover that Rolling Stones bass player Bill Wyman had acquired himself a hobby in the form of metal detecting? The thought of a Rock Star supplementing their excessive lifestyle with such a mundane pastime seemed at best, faintly ridiculous. 

However, those of us that sat through the news coverage regarding the collapse of the UK XL travel group back in the mid 2000’s, will have witnessed the spectacle of Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson being interviewed in his capacity as commercial airline pilot, describing how he and his employers were about to take part in the global 'air-lift' in bringing the stranded tourists home from Sharm-el-Sheik in Egypt and The Greek island of Kos!

And very smart he looked too, in his uniform and cap, and there was not a skull in sight! Although Bruce describes his second occupation as a hobby, he's wrong, it's a job. And a highly qualified, highly paid job with enormous responsibility at that.

And it doesn't stop there. Remember Skunk Baxter? He was the guy playing lead guitar on Steely Dan's 'Reeling in the years' and played on their first three albums before moving on to the Doobie Brothers. A virtuoso, and former sidekick of Jimi Hendrix, he built himself a sterling reputation as a major session axeman from the seventies onwards and was the “epitome stoned cool.” 

Well, how times have changed! These days Skunk is better known as a US government weapons specialist! Seems he got himself a whole other job working for the main man!

Meanwhile, over in the beau-monde, Red or Dead designer Wayne Hemingway has been moonlighting as an urban planner! Better known as the son of Native American wrestling hero Billy Two Rivers, Hemingway, like Skunk, has become a government advisor, in this case on housing and urban development!

Now, I'm not putting these guys down, they have after all, gained a solid reputation in two different careers, whereas I've yet to manage even one, but I'm of the generation that believed in a popular culture that was opposed to the establishment, and existed solely to question the status quo (or even Status Quo come to think about it). Yes, it may not have been a real rebellion, but it felt like one at least, and you were sufficiently reassured that all your heroes, when not rocking and cutting a dash, were out there debauching themselves in the decadent underworld of louche living.

I am therefore sad to announce I am not fully equipped for a 'brave new world' where the ‘rebellion's’ role models all have day jobs supporting the very channels they once took pride in debunking.

I once caught my thumb between a stationary 4 inch nail and a rapidly moving hammer head. And after a black-nailed sleepless night, and an un-remittent day of a throbbing swollen digit, I returned home to my shared house where I relayed my plight to Jade, she was a newly qualified doctor.

"Oh, you need to go to the hospital to get your nail pierced!" She advised, in her alluring Scottish accent (Before the invention of the Indian practitioner, all British doctors were once Scottish for some reason. I think it was the law or something), "That will release the pressure." But then she said "Or, I can do it for you now if you want?"

Now, two things: 

First off, I was in pain, and could not bear the thought of a four-hour wait in casualty with all the junkies and the drunks for company.

And second, apart from her sultry-yet-authoritative accent, Jade was possibly the most sexually attractive woman I have ever shared a confined space with and this day, we were talking about a very small kitchen here. A very confined space indeed.

So obviously, "Yes" I heard myself reply only too eagerly, and expected her to go fetch a doctor's bag, although I had never actually seen her with one, I just assumed doctors were issued with them as soon as they qualified.

Well imagine my dismay as she just turned and began to rummage around the adjacent kitchen drawers, searching amongst all of our accumulated crap until she uttered an "Aha!" and turned towards me holding aloft a paperclip!

"Right!" she enthused, "let me just get the gas on!" 

At this she then seemed to sense my apparent dismay, and began to reassure me with a description of the procedure that she had in mind for my only reason for being at the top of the food chain, my opposing thumb:

"I'm going to heat the paperclip until it's red hot, and then I'm going to burn (melt) a hole through your nail to relieve the pressure of the blood building up behind it!" she purred in her seductive Caledonian brogue.

OK, I know. I should have begun running the moment she produced the paperclip. I should have kept running to the nearest phone box and phoned the medical authorities, and then run some more; but I didn't.

Why not? Well like I say, I was in a confined space with the type of lubricious professional female than only James Bond usually gets to meet. And let's face it, she was offering the only chance of penetration I was ever likely to get to ever experience with her. And it wasn't just my thumb that was throbbing now... despite the pain.

"OK!" I stupidly agreed, and placed a trembling digit upon the worktop...

Then, as the paperclip finally glowed a bright and vivid orange she smiled to herself, turned, and approached with the words "Now, this is really going to hurt!"

She grabbed my thumb and proceeded to push the scorching metal through my thumbnail, which began to immediately emit an acrid ammonia smelling smoke at around the same time I began to feel an agonising pain, at which point I had an involuntary spasm and pulled my hand away.

"Oh no!" she cried, ambiguously "I was nearly there!" and appeared to be genuinely disappointed, possibly with my lack of manliness.

"OK," I replied, calming myself, "I'll do it!" and took the cooling paperclip from her beautifully delicate, yet masterful hands.

I reheated the clip, and then, with her leaning over beside me to get a closer view, I found myself grimacing, taking a deep breath, and after pausing for a contemplative second, pushed a burning piece of metal into my own thumbnail!

The pain was indescribable, and I let out a sizable "Aaargh!" as the fiery stylus burnt its way through and pierced the blackened nail. Yet then, as the all-consuming agony rapidly accelerated, there was just as suddenly a release, not just of the trapped blood which gushed from my smouldering finger up onto the galley walls, but from the pain itself, accompanied by a shrill scream from my accomplice who threw her hands to her face as the spurt gushed outwards at her.

The relief was as indescribable as the pain itself. I exhaled, dropped the paperclip, and shook my haemorrhaging hand, as I eased myself back against the cupboard. Jade held her own hand to her chest and said "My! That was exciting!" before asking to inspect the wound, and volunteered to expertly bandage my traumatised limb.

How we both laughed as we wiped my emissions from the tiling.

And then, that was it. Just me, Jade, a kitchen, and a not so black fingernail. 

I don't think I ever got that close to her again until I came home with a nosebleed or something, but that, dear reader, is another bag of plasma!

Oh and by the way, my fingernail eventually dropped off, and took an AGE to grow back again. They never tell you that bit do they? And as for Jade, well in the end she married a balding advertising man. So it seems I dodged another bullet and bleeding to death one more time... 

Smiley face.

As the pictured news article from the trusty old BBC states, you can pay 499 Euros and you'll get the chance to take off - and strip off - up in the air. And naked you'll stay until the plane touches down in a nudist colony place called Usedom, out on the Baltic coast. Yes you are now free to move around the plane cabin completely stark bollock naked.