Gertsamtkunstwerk

On not blogging

I never wanted this blog to become something that becomes an obligation to me. I have been updating it since February 2002, and intend to carry on doing so infinitely.

I know with all 'leisure' activities that as soon as they become less attractive than, say, work or household chores, it's time to give them a rest.

I was feeling a bit this way about the blog, and, as I have said several times before, Twitter doesn't help - I think I share this with several bloggers. It's easier to dash out 140 characters when an instant thought occurs. 140 characters is only sufficient for one thought; you expect the reader to realise that and not demand clarification, expansion or illustration. It takes considerable skill to write a truly memorable tweet, but, like headlines or soundbites, the mundane and functional takes little effort for anyone who has writing as second nature.

I was guilt-tripping about this blog, then I just decided to stop guilt-tripping.

1 September seems a good time to take a deep breath and start again.

I have often expressed my indifference to the official New Year starting on 1 January, that, the depth of winter is actually the worse time to resolve to self-improvements, and it's an arbitrary date that bears no resemblance to the natural rhythms of life.

Easter is a far better time to consider renewal, Easter being a corruption of the pagan festival of fertility and renewal. I don't consider myself a Pagan, but prefer their rationale for Festivals than the Christian rationale for stealing them.

Although I have been out of the formal state education system for 21 years, there are still good reasons for seeing 1 September as the start of a new year. Parliamentary terms are similar to school terms, which influences the headquarters of government departments. The retail world is geared to 'Back to School'.

The football season starts in mid-August, but I always feel those first few weeks are skirmishes; it's only in September that the League tables start to take on any meaning.  The Last Night of the Proms, for all its ghastliness, is a signifier of the end of summer, and it coincides with the start of the new season for the opera houses and concert halls.

So I am resolving that from 1 September I shall re-apply myself to blogging with diligence. But only to the extent it doesn't interfere with all the other duties I am resolving to meet!

On going for a bike ride

I have been massively quiet on the blogging-my-exercise-routine front of late. This isn't just because my blog needs a massive kick up the rear end and an injection of adrenaline, but...I don't think I need to explain what you're already guessing. (I kind of decided to take August off, except when I felt driven to write!)

One of my character failings is having initial enthusiasms that then wear off. One of my strengths is being acutely aware of my failings and knowing how to correct them or turn them into strengths.

To recap, a couple of years ago, after several years of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Fibromyalgia, I was acutely aware of how unfit and overweight I am and decided to address that by going to my local swimming pool. Inspired by the Olympics, I bought a bike, and blessed by a glorious Indian summer I spent several months of exercising three or four times a week. I knew then I wouldn't keep it up indefinitely, as other distractions got in the way. But last summer was good, in that on several Mondays Jimmy and I went out on excursions by bike.

But the past ten months have provided glorious excuse after glorious excuse. Going on holiday and developing the inevitable post-holiday phlegmy cold and lingering cough. A particularly long, cold and wintry winter. Clapham and Streatham swimming pools closing and being knocked down, creating exceptional pressure on Brixton which embarked on an extended refurbishment period. The General Election which took up time and energy. The post-Election political intrigue which demanded endless hours of sitting on my arse. Going on holiday. Heatwave. Simon Boccanegra. You can see the excuses becoming thinner and thinner and petering out. Culminating a couple of weeks ago in 'Oh, it looks like it might rain sometime in the next four hours'

We have booked a holiday in the New Forest in November which seems like a risk, and we recognise this. But it's not far away, we're going to a village which seems to have several restaurants that boast a 'modern British' cuisine of fresh local ingredients, near a town which seems to have a wide range of eateries. The risk isn't that the weather will be cold, we can dress for that, we just hope it won't piss it down all week long, which will put a downer on things. If we get a few fine bright crisp autumn days it will be nice to take to the forest on bikes; a basic level of fitness will be welcome for this.

It seems a bit silly to have given up smoking but not be addressing the other part of fitness and, of course, putting on weight is silly. It's ultimately unsightly, and I don't want to be squeezing into the various nice clothes I've bought over the past couple of years.

In a way it's frustrating to acknowledge how many backwards steps I have taken. Sometimes I can sit there and feel my once temporarily firm thigh and arm muscles turn to jelly. It was annoying last week to take so long to recover from a short - though intense - ride round Tooting Common and yesterday it was annoying to feel my thighs hurt at trying to make the long but very gradual incline. Especially when I know I ought to be able to go out and cycle tens of mile in a day at a leisurely pace and taking breaks.

I keep telling myself that though it's easy enough to weaken in one's resolve, there are very few resolutions or endeavours that cannot be revisited. I tend to the 'oh, I've slipped, that's over', when I must actually tell myself to try again. Yes, I've lost the momentum of exercising regularly, but I am still considerably fitter than I was two years ago. I've proved to myself that I can do, and sustain it for a year. So there's really no reason not to take up where I left off.

Ramble over!

On competitive school sport

I suspect that this blogpost is likely to be dismissed as the rantings of some Guardian-reading Lefty but hey ho!

It seems that a particular bete noire of mine from the Eighties has surfaced again -  the idea that all school sport should be competitive 'because life is'. I think it's a nonsense promulgated by dullards who can only define themselves by their erstwhile ability to have represented their school or Borough/County at some team sport for a very short period of their lives.

In practice, for most adults, life is horrendously competitive, but sport is often the one area they can actually escape from formal competition. What on earth can sport teach you for the numerous competitions in life? Why schools should be teaching kids sports skills which have no further purpose beyond school?

Take football out of the equation for a moment. Football is unique among sports that it dominates the national discourse and dominates public spaces. It is beautiful because it only needs a strip of land and a ball to make it possible. Fancy kit and equipment are optional extras.

Life is competitive. We compete against other candidates in job interviews and for promotions. Even when not actively seeking promotion we generally want to do at least as well as our peers and often want to out-do them. Not particularly out of pure competition but to get a bigger bonus, more interesting assignments or to ready oneself for a promotion in the medium term - playing the long game.

We often find ourself competing against obstacles. In our paid jobs, or many life tasks such as Do It Yourself, planning a holiday, or fighting chronic ill-health to cope every day.  Many of those obstacles come from within ourself, many more from the external environment. If we care enough, we fight to win, if not, we don't bother.

The biggest competition many of us face is in human relations - to win that man (or woman) and then to maintain that relationship, as well as competing for the attention and affections of myriad friends whilst fighting the jealousy when they appear to favour another (or is that just me?)

I have never played hockey since leaving school, and have only played netball and rounders a few times and not for years. I can't find any benefit from having learned those at school.

My chosen forms of exercise are swimming and cycling. For many other people, 'going to the gym' or other forms of 'keeping fit' where the objective is on 'keeping fit' rather than vanquishing another human being.

Even for those - runners in particular - who do compete, they spend a lot more time battling themselves and the elements to get themselves up to standard than they do 'competing'. I do not think that most people who enter Marathons do so in order to win - they do it to conquer the environment and their physical weakness (relatively speaking!).

Playing team sports does not prepare you for this, and for people with no emotional involvement, their motivation is zero and they soon learn it really doesn't matter. As opposed to that competition to get the job, to do the job properly, to get promotion, which always matters, at least up to a point!

I would think that schools and others charged with nurturing children need to equip them with the means to manage adult life. This includes skills such as hard work and determination; teamwork; when to co-operate and when to look after one's self-interest; working towards goals; conquering one's fears; overcoming weaknesses; and having the ingenuity to find alternative solutions and the wisdom to accept one's shortcomings.

Some of these can be taught to a certain extent by sports, be they competitive or not, in teams or solo. For the majority of adults - and children and teens - the greater challenge is to become and stay fit. If that is through country walks or dance classes, that is so much better than forcing lumpy adolescents to charge up and down a hockey field doing a passable imitation of Quasimodo. Someone who learns the art of hiking or gets into a swimming habit young is far more likely to maintain this into middle-and old-age than someone who is taught that physical activity is only worthwhile if you win.

Competitiveness is learnt through numerous activities. For many of us, it's sibling rivalry, competing for parental attention, which then transfers to the classroom and teacher. Some of us competed to out-do our friends in exam marks -  this is deemed to be discriminatory against dullards and boys for exactly the same reasons that makes competitive team sports a torture for physical inadequates and girls. We compete in quizzes and board/card-games, these days kids do it with computer games.

Almost anything creative ends up competitive, be it prizes at the inter-school festivals, exams for dancing, drawing competitions. Bright and/or talented non-sporty kids don't need to be dragged down to competing in sports they care little about any more than sporty kids need to be bullied into painting a picture or writing a short story.

I took football out of the equation. I'm going to conclude with an observation about elite football. Following England's shambolic World Cup disaster, Alan Shearer was forthright in his views that there is too much competitive football at a young age. English boys do not learn the football skills that kids from many other nations do because of the obsessive focus on winning and competing.

It made me very sad to hear Alan Shearer, former England captain and one of the most important players of his generation, say this. He's about the same age as me, and when he and I were teenagers way back nearly thirty years, it was an ongoing theme in Match Weekly and Shoot, and on Football Focus. The kids play too many competitive matches, very few have the ball-skills and far too many are exhausting themselves when they should be growing to physical maturity.

Sadly, although is an old problem, it is not one that is being addressed. So it seems even our elite athletes, the footballers who are good enough to play for England, still the Seventh best team in the World, are deemed inadequate because they played too much competitive sport. Surely that must also apply for the part-timers in the depths of non-League and to the hundreds of thousands who play for their pub or works team, reinforcing the argument that schools really shouldn't be playing more competitive sport, but in fact less.

Schools should be on the one hand teaching the skills of the specific sports they favour, and on the other, teaching all pupils how to exercise for enjoyment and to be fit through their life, and to have the determination to push themselves beyond their comfort zones, physically and psychologically.

On having a parcel delivered

On Monday I ordered some goods online. It was only after completing the transaction I thought that it would almost certainly be delivered while I was out. Sure enough, when I got home on Wednesday, there was the familiar Royal Mail P739 on my doormat.

Moan moan, I thought, have to go all the way down the hill to the sorting office on Friday morning. Moan moan moan, have to come all the way back up the hill carrying parcel from sodding sorting office.

Thursday evening I get home and there is another card on the doormat, this time a green one, from Hermes courier. Puzzled, I couldn't remember ordering anything but the parcel that's sitting waiting for me in Brixton Delivery Office. Part of me thinks - maybe it's the prize from some or other competition I entered weeks ago. A larger part suspects it may be for one of my neighbours. I initially think the card says to call 'Mark' on Phone left blank but closer scrutiny reveals the parcel has been left in my 'Secure Front Porch'.

Strange, I think, I don't have a front porch, secure or otherwise. In any case, a porch that's open for couriers to leave parcels is by definition not secure enough to prevent nefarious parcel-stealers doing what they do.

I looked on the pathway and there was a parcel, with Hermes logo, as well as Lakeland. Lurking behind, but not really concealed by the wheelie bin. Yes, you have read that correctly. A parcel, wrapped in cardboard left on the path on a day when the rain has been fairly steady and quite heavy.

I look at the address label and see it is correctly addressed to a neighbour, Mark, at The-Cottage-in-the-Corner. Hmm, I think, it's from Lakeland (nice shop). Mark won't know it's been delivered to my path, after all, it's correctly addressed to The-Cottage-in-the-Corner, not Gert Cottage. Should I steal it?

Of course, I didn't steal it, but walked it round to my neighbour, and he thanked me - and I pointed out that they've now opened a shop in Kingston. But you know, I could have been away on holiday or anything, and poor Mark could have been waiting weeks for his kitchen equipment.

Back inside, I re-read the Royal Mail P739. Apart from the 'Has been returned to the Royal Mail Delivery Office at' almost ten minutes' walk away, the only other options are "As you requested your item has been left: In your 'Safeplace' on your property/with your designated neighbour'

See that, they don't randomly dump it on the path of a neighbouring property like Hermes do, nor deliver it to a neighbour who happens to be in, like Amazon's couriers do - could be a thieving neighbour, or one you don't wish to be under an obligation to.

No, they keep it safe in their custody unless and until you issue specific instructions otherwise. I know people - not least me - knock the Royal Mail, but sometimes, it's telling that their service is markedly better than their commercial rivals.

Dear Diary

I have just been watching the programme of the same name, the first in a series, this one presented by Richard E. Grant, less annoyingly than I feared, and at least it wasn't Hugh Grant, who someone told me was Richard E's brother, which I believed for years, largely because I am insufficiently interested in either to bother finding out the truth.

I kept a diary from the age of twelve until I got my first PC at the age of 30. The owning of a PC changed all that. Ironic really - it should have been the key to more writing. If the truth be told, I was probably the world's crappest diarist in the 1990s, although some of my efforts from the 1980s are immortalised in this blog.

I've actually come to the conclusion that my best diary writing was as an adolescent, because I was actually quite clueless about how to write a diary. I had this vague notion it was important to express an opinion about important things in the news, even though I lacked the maturity or wisdom to work out what was important and what was fluff. But the use of a single sentence to sum up my reaction to, oh, I dunno, the Falklands War or glasnost is hilarious, to me anyway.

When I became more self-aware, or introspective, or analytical, and started to use my diary to analyse my feelings, it became all very tedious.

Pages and pages of pretty much the same mistake being made time and time again. Pick a name, any credible male name, and slot it into a narrative which runs like this

"I have a crush on him, I want to go out with him, this isn't reciprocated, if I keep crushing on him he will learn the error of his ways, I'm going to keep telling people how much I crush on this bloke, they're getting impatient because nothing is happening and it's a non-story".

And I utterly failed to realise - amidst all the self-analysis and emoting that my supposed emotions were false, an illusion.

Reading back over the diary, I am surprised at how entertaining a fairly straight narrative is, how much seeps through the seemingly dry prose. Looking back nearly thirty years it is easy to pinpoint the changes made by technology, and, perhaps in societal attitudes, but, actually, it's amazing how little fundamentally has changed. 

I'm trying to get back into writing a paper diary. It has to be paper, which I know is silly, but for me it's important sensually. I've been through phases of writing for an imagined audience, assuming I'll be famous and the world will want to read my teenage diaries. I've also considered using them as a basis for fiction. But it has recently occurred to me that they may actually have a value in being the real  - though obviously edited - diaries of a slightly odd 1980s teenager. In all cases a word-processed version would actually be more useful!

Anyone know how I go about getting a publisher for my 80s diaries?

I'm still laughing at my entry in 1982: In Maths we played on the computer. It is most interesting

Wot no audit?

Nothing like starting a blogpost on a tangent. I started my political existence in opposition. I was politicised by the 1979 Election, and joined the Labour Party in 1984. I was 29 before I really experienced a government of *my* colour. I realised in the past three months that many of my young comrades are the mirror image, too young to remember really a Tory government, they flounder at being in opposition.

One thing I have learnt from experience, it isn't necessary, as an activist, to oppose absolutely everything the Government does. Parliamentarians have a specific constitutional responsibility to oppose, but the rest of us should choose our battles wisely and sparingly, in order to make a greater impact when it really matters.

But I couldn't let the abolition of the Audit Commission go by without comment.

I have never worked for the Audit Commission, but I started my career at the National Audit Office, have worked for a large Accountancy firm, and in Internal Audit . For over twenty years.

There is no case for saying that any organisation must continue existing in perpetuity, nor that any particular function should always be delivered the same way.

When I worked for the big firm, it was on contract to the Audit Commission. They were responsible for appointing auditors to all Local Authorities. In many cases they appointed auditors from what was then known as the District Audit Service, in other cases, from private firms - I always understood the firm I worked for to be a Limited Liability Partnership, but I read in Wikipedia it changed its status - somewhat surprisingly - to 'co-operative' a few years after I left.

Councils had no real say in who was appointed their auditor, and they were in no position to dictate how much audit they be subject to. The amount depended upon how much was needed. The firm employed mainly trainees and potentially disastrous contractors (such as me, I wasn't disastrous!), in order to keep the cost down. Of course, that also risks a reduction in quality, but, hey what does that matter!

Audit isn't glamorous, and it's very difficult to persuade people that it's essential. Its necessity is usually more noticed in its absence.

I don't feel a need to shed tears over the demise of the organisation known as the Audit Commission. It's difficult to find out precisely what is happening to various different functions. I have read that the Value for Money work will transfer to NAO, which I feel relaxed about. There may be difficulties in the details, but that is for those closer to the initiative to work out. Possibly some work could be done by the Care Quality Commission.

But what scares me is the fact that councils will be able to appoint their own auditors, from the private or voluntary sectors. I am bit surprised to find that there are voluntary sector audit providers, unless that covers 'co-operatives' like my former employer. Perhaps for most councils, those that are moderately competent or better, it won't be a big deal, for a while.

But, to be honest, even in those circumstances, I am fearful of what it means.

I don't think Local Government yet knows - but can guess - how savagely they will have to cut expenditure. It will be exceptionally painful to slash the big spending budgets, especially schools, and care for the elderly.

It will seem like a no-brainer to go for the cheapest possible audit option. Even the most senior officers and elected members think that audit is there to prevent fraud, and that alone, and will claim to have great corporate anti-fraud structures.

Many of them will need to be persuaded of the need for Internal and External Audit, thinking them to be duplicate functions. Internal audit looks at the management of risks and the adequacy of controls, whereas External Audit exams the financial statements, and, where necessary, the systems that support them.

Irrespective of the cuts agenda, there is a need for Internal Audit to re-examine its role: when I started twenty years ago, no one but Internal Audit carried out any sort of scrutiny of risks, systems and controls. Nowadays, in most mature(-ish ) organisations have, at least to some extent, the tools to self-scrutinise. But the operational independence of an Internal Audit service is crucial.

In some councils, officers and members may welcome the opportunity to appoint their own auditors, swallowing the guff or believing the myth that 'bright people in accountancy firms' can offer us so much more. I simply don't think this is true. Sure, they have some great economies of scale in firms, being able to develop specialisms by client, by theme (eg Housing Revenue Account, infrastructure assets) or in use of a specific accounting system, for example. But I assume that the Audit Commission is also large enough to sustain that level of specialism.

And I have seen in firms I have worked with and worked for, that the standards are really not very high. I won't say more, for reasons of commercial confidentiality.

In the near future,  deep cuts will bring about massive changes, not least significant staff reductions. At a time of change, when staff are departing, morale is low, remaining staff are under pressure to 'deliver more for less', corners will be cut, and there is a very real risk that controls will be ignored, and internal scrutiny will be scrimped. Appointing a poor quality external audit - and reducing internal audit -  will exacerbate the problems.

But no one will notice. Eventually, service users will see a sharp deterioration in service levels, but that won't come as a surprise to anyone. We will blame it on the underfunding of services, it will be ridiculous to try and blame it on the absence of adequate audit.

It's impossible to imagine a Lambeth, or Westminster Homes for Votes, or Doncaster, happening again, because history doesn't repeat itself. In any case, if such scandals do happen again, will we know?

Things that annoy me in TV dramas

I know that fiction is fiction. I can suspend credibility to know that time passes at a different rate in TV dramas (and films and plays).

I know they edit out all the inconsequential actions. It would be boring if they showed every meal, every visit to the loo, every time they check their emails or buy something - although it does mean that checking of emails, going to loo, or, indeed, presenting a credit/debit card is a shorthand for 'watch out, something is going to happen and it will be an axis on which the plot rotates.

I'm relaxed about juxtaposition of locations - except where they are iconic picture postcard locations: I'd be worried if they showed Buckingham Palace to be on the river, but I'm relaxed about a residential road I happen to recognise seeming to emerge onto the wrong main road.

I'm also very relaxed about the 'he/she wouldn't do that' because, just because you or I would wouldn't, or most people wouldn't, doesn't automatically prevent someone else from so doing.

What I hate is pure basic factual errors. It shocks me that with the number of people who go into making a TV drama not one speaks out and says "That's wrong!". Loud enough to get a researcher or unpaid intern scurrying off to Google.

Two classics from the past. One was in that comedy series starring Jack Dee that started off funny but deteriorated. He made some joke about some company highlighting their anti-environmental practices, which immediately caused their share price to plummet (unlikely but possible). As a direct result of their share price plummeting, they went bankrupt, notwithstanding whatever reserves they held, how many contracts they were fulfilling. Okay, I can envisage a situation where loss of reputation can lead to withdrawing of credit, but not overnight.

In some political drama or other, there was utter confusion between a White Paper and a Bill. I can't remember the error but it was so basic that it scared me they were making a political drama without consulting someone who knew anything about basic Parliamentary procedure.

Mistresses the other night provided another classic to add to the list - the retrieval from a house of the Title Deeds to that same house. A house that laid empty for several months. there was no evidence that the deeds had been stored in a fireproof waterproof safe. And in any case, didn't one person on set question this? Who stores the title deeds in the actual house?

Do they think we are really thick? I've cited three examples where I've spotted the flaw. The first - well, I'm an accountant, admittedly, but even so, I suspect there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people more familiar with the relationship between share capital, turnover, cash flow etc of a business than I am.

I have an A-Level and a degree in Politics, but so do countless others, and there are many many more people who have experience and knowledge of the political process.

The final one is even more ridiculous. How many millions of home-owners are there in this country. Admittedly, most will be on a mortgage and therefore will have no dealings with the title deeds. But I thought it  was just one of those things that is widely known, even if not universally.

I know no one's perfect, and we all mistakes, but it surprises me that they let these programmes go out with such glaring errors on matters so fundamental to the plot.

I have to say though, Mistresses has become very silly, pushing credibility to the limits. The scene in the kitchen where Trudie declares the buns need another '45 seconds'. Not to mention that she's flouting all the rules on good safety by wearing the wrong clothes, not having her hair covered and so on.

Then you get the wedding of the New York woman, who is marrying the ex of one of the mistresses, Siobhain. It's not unreasonable for an American woman to get married in her British husband's home town - I've been to a wedding where precisely that happened. And, inevitably, the friends/relatives are going to be predominantly his. But how likely is it that a significant proportion of the wedding party is made up of the friends - and their husbands - of the groom's ex-girlfriend? And yet, the groom's daughter seemed to be absent from both ceremony and reception.

I suppose I get annoyed by these programmes predicated on a friendship group. I will stand corrected but I doubt that any such group remains unchanged for decades, irrespective of who has kids, emigrates (and comes back). Don't most people have a network of friends, picked up from various places - old friends from school and Uni, people you've worked with, people with common interests, people whose kids are friends with your kids, and friends who you have to think what the actual connection is - maybe they are the sister of the ex-girlfriend of the housemate of someone you worked with briefly ten years go.

I think Mistresses is a good laugh and harmless fun. It's rather nice to see their ridiculously affluent lifestyles begin to crumble, based on an unsustainable basis of debt. But the message these programmes send out, if taken seriously - as immature insecure people may well - is that this is some sort of 'normality' something to aspire to. And that's very sad, because aren't they just the dullest self-absorbed people ever, not one of them having an interest in anything but themselves, their lovelife and - occasionally - their jobs.

“小丑”---多明戈

Fabulous pictures of Rigoletto in Beijing!

Update: And video, too

And another video! (thanks to Stephanie) - obviously CNTV.cn don't let fact-checking get in the way of a good story.

And also thanks to Stephanie, a rather wonderful thirteen minute video/interview from last week in Madrid - Siempre Plácido