Thick Creamy Podcast 29-03-2013

Here's the sixteenth Thick Creamy Podcast, bands playing live at the Sounds XP Easter alldayer and me talking.

RIGHT CLICK SAVE AS

The bands were recorded live at the Windmill in Brixton, there were loads of bands playing, but I only taped four of them; Simon Love, No Cars, Viv Albertine and Big Wave.

Plimptons final show bootleg

It was the final ever Plimptons show last Saturday, and it was great, I know cos I was there with my digital recorder. I didn't record all the set mind, cos that would detract from the fragility and transience of the live music environment, if you wanted to hear it all, you should have been there.

Anyhoo, here are the tracks I did bootleg, have y'self a rightclick save as

Drink Y'self Sober
I Learned to Dance
Help the State
Animals and Rockin in 99
Pride comes before a fall
Everyone knows everyone else

If you listen carefully you'll hear in the background me, the missus and Alan speculating on the nature of the universe.

Praying to false gods

Oh, I used to have a passion for blogging. I used to churn out writings all hours of the day on all topics that bubbled up, from the state of my jobbies, to the vagaries of the UK jobs market. I used to think it all meant something, that it was gently prodding my readers and society in some positive direction.

But as I've grown older, and faced the trauma of unemployment and just plain getting on with life, its all faded away. I no longer have the passion to write.

Other people do.

I still read blogs, I still click on links on twitter, but its all like a sheet of tracing paper has been placed over it all, its all opaque. Its less meaningful. Its just plain wrong.

Moments ago the member of parliament for West Bromwich East, Tom Watson re-tweeted a link to the No More Page 3 campaign's blog.

At this point I should point out that I don't buy The Sun newspaper, and when it is the only newspaper lying around in the canteen at work, I skip past page 3. Although, I fully appreciate that it is the most popular newspaper in the UK and that it arguably represents a centrist political viewpoint.

Anyhoo, the thrust of the No More Page 3 campaign blogpost seems to be that if only The Sun newspaper stopped publishing photos of topless women on page three then 13 to 16 year old girls wouldn't have their skirts lifted by teenage boys in the queue at the school canteen.

I think this is foolish. There's plenty of nudity and objectifying women in every other newspaper and magazine. The are plenty of websites that offer nudity for free.

Stopping page three will do nothing to stop teenage boys lifting girl's skirts.

Why are schools tolerating sexual abuse in their canteens? Why aren't teachers and headmasters disciplining teenage boys and educating them in the acceptable ways to behave in polite society.

What makes a 16 year old girl think that banning a page in a newspaper will change the behaviour of teenage boys? Its just so tenuous that it astounds me.

Does the member of parliament for West Bromwich East actually agree and believe that if The Sun newspaper stopped printing titties in their newspaper then it would affect the behaviour of teenage boys? Does he actually think this?
Does he really think that cause and effect work like this?
Is this really the sort of belief that the residents of West Bromwich East want in their representative in parliament?

I spent most of this morning investigating the tabloid monstering of Lucy Meadows. There's a variety of petitions out at the moment lobbying for the Daily Mail to sack their columnist Richard LittleJohn.

At this point I should point out that I don't buy the Daily Mail newspaper, and on the rare occasions where I have the opportunity and inclination to read it, I usually skip past the columnist pages. Although I do appreciate that its the second most popular newspaper in the UK.

I'm still unclear as to what degree Richard Littlejohn monstered Lucy Meadows. He wrote a column about her, but the press intrusion that she complained about wasn't about opinion pieces, it was closer to home. She wrote a series of emails to a friend as follows (source):

I was lucky to have a supportive head, but I think I’d have done it here regardless as I couldn’t put it off any longer and I have family and financial commitments as well. The guidance I’ve had from the trans community has been generally sound and very much appreciated, and I’d like to be able to say I’ve given something back. I suppose the best way for me to do this would be to educate the people around me and children at school – I am a teacher after all!
[...]
I know the press offered parents money if they could get a picture of me.
[...]
I became pretty good at avoiding the press before Christmas. I live about a three-minute walk from school so they were parked outside my house as well as school. I’m just glad they didn’t realise I also have a back door. I was usually in school before the press arrived and stayed until late so I could avoid them going home.
[...]
[M]any parents have been quite annoyed with the press, too, especially those that were trying to give positive comments but were turned away.

Richard Littlejohn isn't a reporter, the sort of intrusion that Lucy was talking about seems to be the work of people like:-

• Lisa Woodhouse from The Lancashire Telegraph
• Stuart Pike of the Accrington Observer / Manchester Evening News
• James Tozer and Nazia Parveen the Daily Mail's northwest correspondants.

I see no petitions calling for these people to be sacked.

Even if Littlejohn's career did meet an untimely demise, then Lisa Woodhouse, Stuart Pike, James Tozer and Nazia Parveen would still camp on people's doorsteps, and wait outside their places of work, and hassle parents for photos and juicy details. At no point in their line of work would they think, "I better not do this, remember what happened to Littlejohn". That isn't going to cross their mind, ever.

Here's a picture of Stuart Pike, and presumably his wife Alia Pike, that I grabbed from his Facebook page. How much guilt does his feel for the death of Lucy Meadows? Is he wondering if he'd done something different, Lucy would still be alive, the pupils of St Mary Magdalen's School in Accrington wouldn't be mourning the loss of a popular teacher.

This is Lisa Woodhouse from the Lancashire Telegraph, I ripped her photo from her twitter account, although for a journalist, she doesn't tweet much. I can't find her on Facebook, so I'm guessing she's got something to hide.

This is 30 year old Nazia Parveen from The Daily Mail, I ripped her photo from twitter. She was named Young Journalist of the year in 2011, when she worked at the Lancashire Telegraph. Her prize for being a young journalist was £500 and a week's work experience at The Daily Mail, presumably they liked her work.

Anyhoo, my point is, that rather than tenuously going for trophy heads on spikes to change behaviour and society, people should be going for the people who commit the offences.

If 16 year old boys are abusing 16 year old girls, then discipline the specific 16 year old boys rather than signing a petition about a page in a newspaper.

If tabloid reporters are hassling someone to the point of suicide, then have a go at the tabloid reporters who are doing the hassling, rather than signing a petition about a page in a newspaper.

*** UPDATE1 *** 24/03/2013 13:44
Just to be sure, I used twitter:-

Eagerly awaiting a response.

*** UPDATE2 *** 24/03/2013 15:17
Looking through other tabloids for reporters who may have monstered Lucy Meadows, I find that in The Mirror, reporter Steve White reports Lucy Meadows's death with the headline "Nathan Upton: Sex-change teacher found dead at 32".

Its a little unclear why Steve White is referring to Lucy as Nathan, when the main thrust of the story, of both the sex change and the suicide, is that Lucy wished to be referred to as Lucy, not Nathan.

30Km walk to Rough Trade

My 2013 exercise regime has now taken me on a 30 km walk.

I wandered up my usual route up to Tottenham Hale, then a Veronica Falls song came on my ipod, so I figured I ought to walk down to Rough Trade in Brick Lane and get the new album, so I strolled down the A10 through Stoke Newington and Hoxton.

It got there in good time, almost persuaded myself to buy a Korg Monotron, but chickened out.

On the way back I went via Victoria Park then back up the River Lea by the Olympic park. There was a dead fox floating. When I went to get a photo, two swans swam up and started showing off, so I ran away.

So 30 km (18.6 miles) in 4:54:20

2012 in numbers

Just a tote of various personal numbers and statistics from last year. Could really do with being an infographic, maybe later.


Weight change
+6 Kg

Distance walked or run (exercise)
385 miles
(164 miles in 2011)

Distance travelled by car
8197 miles (5803 miles approx in 2011)

Petrol Spend
£1014.85 - 758 litres
(£724.00 in 2011)

Foot/car ratio
1:21
(1:35 in 2011)

Distance flown
2876 miles

CO2 emissions from travel
1587 Kg
(Air - @0.21 Kg/mile; Road - @0.115 Kg/mile; Foot - @0.105 Kg/mile)

Change in wealth
+£6393.93
(+£5389.49 in 2011)

Stocks & Shares change
+9.58%

Gigs attended
20
(15 in 2011)

Gigs played
1
(nil in 2011)

Songs recorded
3

Programming, markup and scripting languages used
8 (Java, Javascript, Python, html, php, SQL, R, CSS)

Xbox games completed
7

Websites created
4

Website unique visitors
13600

Items knitted or crocheted
5

Starbucks and lower prices

I had this idea the other day over lunch, a frothing at the mouth libertarian Ayn Rand kind of thought about multinational companies and tax, and the sanction of the victim.

The idea was that Starbucks, instead of giving the government a voluntary donation of £10 million, should instead reduce their prices by whatever the amount that they are being accused of avoiding. So the money stays in their customers pockets and the HMRC, the taxman is cut out of the equation. I thought it was a fine idea.

Besides, don't businesses usually expect something in return when they give the government voluntary donations? It seems a bit corrupt if you ask me, there should be no place for it in government.

Elsewhere, a Times journalist called Alexi Mostrous claimed that it was "One Reuters story reut.rs/Xcs29h yields £10m to UK taxpayer..." somehow equating paying money to the tax man was the same as paying money to the taxpayer. I had a bit of a rant at him, the taxpayer is the complete opposite of the taxman. Alexi has it completely the wrong way round, money that goes to the taxman is explicitly not the taxpayers, it ceases to be the taxpayer's money as soon as it is paid. That's what tax is, money that no longer belongs to the taxpayer.

Anyhoo, cast your mind back to my second paragraph, maybe this is what businesses already do, they keep their prices as low as possible, to keep money in people's pockets as any excess money, profits, would go to the taxman, and thus be of no use to the business.

Businesses strive for perfect balance between prices, turnover, profits and tax. If any of these things chance then the business becomes unbalanced.

Anyhoo, just to very carefully remove any doubt from the reader's mind, I believe that businesses (and people) should pay the exact amount of tax they owe, and not a penny more, nor a penny less.

And there hangs a problem.

For personal banking I don't have an ISA savings account, I just have a regular savings account. So I pay tax on any interest I receive. If I moved my money into an ISA then I could avoid some tax, but that would be morally wrong.

I have a free choice here, and I choose to pay all the tax that I owe.

The neverending awesomeness of Indiepop Eyespy

Days have past, hundreds have died elsewhere in the world, but still I keep on hammering away at my keyboard. I keep on pushing, keep on fighting for something I believe in, something I've fought for for years, and that is Indie Eyespy.

Here try this
London Indiepop Eyespy

What you've got there may look pretty basic, but under the hood I've pushed the envelope of my skills. Its got html, JavaScript, php and MySQL.

It even looks pretty good when you view the source.

The list of bands and band members comes from a database that's 5 Normal Form, so the same person can be worth more points depending on what band they're in.

Now I just need to add a few more bands, and use the magic of CSS3 to make it look pretty.

And also do something slightly different for dealing with scenesters, promoters and DJs who aren't necessarily in any bands.

And then maybe I can work on adding a highscore table, and maybe a page to add new bands and band members, and then a special thing that looks up how many listeners each band has on last.fm and splits them into divisions based on how popular they are.