What-a mistake-a to make-a!

Fabio Cappelo, the world's most overpaid employee (discuss), has got himself into a piss-up in brewery situation. Apparently he can't go to his son's wedding because it clashes with the England friendly against Spain on Saturday.

Now, here's a bloke who is surrounded by minions and gophers of one sort or another, thereby freeing him to do nothing except watch football and meet with his financial advisers (difficult to know which must be the most time-consuming) and he can't even get his son's wedding to coincide with any of the gaping blank space in his diary. As well as being the most overpaid man on the planet, is he the most inept?

This reminds me of a previous suggestion of mine which is that the England football manager post should not be filled by appointment in the normal way but rather it should be given to the winner of a lottery. The argument is that it really doesn't matter who does the job (check out the performance in the last world cup), not least because there's so few top English players to choose from that a reasonably well-informed 10 year-old could do it just as well as a £6m p.a. Italian. The other advantages would be that the lottery would raise a lot of money for charity; you wouldn't have to pay the winner a tenth of what Fabio earns; it would give a huge boost to national morale and goodness knows we could do with that.

Excuse me if I'm repeating myself but this all begs the question, why stop at the England football manager job?  Next on my list for the Jobbo Lotto would be MEPs. These people do nothing of any value and are, in effect, completely unaccountable. But this doesn't stop them trousering large amounts of our money. An obvious case for job-by-scratch-card.

I'm sure you can think of other candidates. In the meantime, we now have the proof that, as we suspected, Capello doesn't even know what day it is. 

Cuts - what cuts?

You will recall that we solved the financial crisis months ago. The problem was too many people in the public sector doing non-jobs and more or less everyone in the public sector being paid too much. Especially when you include their pensions: if the private sector can't afford decent pensions, how come it has to shell out to pay for the gold-plated public sector ones? If you want to know where this ends,  check out Greece.

The governor of the Bank of England, clearly a Marshside blog follower, put it even more succinctly the other day. The problem, he said, was governments spending too much. The "governments" to which he was referring are those of the western democracies. If we ask why it is that so many governments like spending money they don't have, the clue could be in the word "democracy". With an election always round the corner, there's nothing like splashing out some cash to buy a few votes. Don't have the money? Never mind, we'll borrow some more and worry about it after the election, or not at all if the other lot get in.

It's a bit different in China, where they continue to pile up the loot and lend it back to the rest of us. Could the fact that China is not a democracy have anything to do with this? Would you rather live under the Chinese system of government, with their piles of cash or under ours, with our piles of debt? Hmmm....this is one for the campers at St Paul's to think about. And Michael Moore, the US documentary film maker who gave an asinine performance on Newsnight the other day with a totally incoherent justification for the equally incoherent protests going on at St Paul's, Wall Street and elsewhere. He thinks that capitalism has failed. Or is it democracy that's failed? I blame the baseball cap - why do otherwise sensible Americans feel such a strong need to wear one?

Anyway, I'm rambling. The point of all this is....you would think that the "cuts" which everyone is moaning about must be right to the bone. But in today's local paper, I see that one bit of the NHS around here employs not only an "assistant director of citizen engagement" but also a "citizen engagement manager"!! (They had the front to both appear in an unpixelated photo - that's very brave.) You will have spotted that if there's an "assistant" director, there must be someone who's plain "director" of this curious line of business known as citizen engagement (or probably "strategic director", my previous post refers). There might even be more than one "manager" and even people so lowly that they are not directors or managers at all. Plus they're bound to have a secretary or two and they all occupy office space, with computers, laptops, mobile phones, etc. Probably bloody iPads as well these days.

The public sector just doesn't get it. While they are shelling out huge sums on these people, they are probably cancelling operations and extending waiting lists. This is a sin. They should take a red pen in one hand, a list of all administrative jobs in the other and apply one to t'other.

Either the cuts are only skin deep or they're in the wrong places. Or both. Our government, like many others, is still spending far too much. Sorting this out is painful but not sorting it out is more painful. I wonder if the people at St Paul's would have been there when Jethro Tull's invention of the seed drill put thousands of agricultural workers out of a job (never mind the catastrophic effect of the combine harvester). Apparently, according to Michael Moore, they want the end of capitalism. So it's the Chinese way for them then. Good luck with that.

The medicine of change often has an unpleasant side effect but it's necessary, just like many other medicines. Just ask the people at your local NHS's Citizen Engagement division.

Marshside blog still alive! Light at end of building works tunnel!

Stop worrying dear reader - we are still here. I expect you thought we'd spent the latter part of the summer relaxing on our luxury yacht, bobbing gently on the waters of some tropical paradise, while celebrities were helicoptered in to share a cocktail or two. Surprisingly, you are wrong. We have continued to paint this, rub down that and rip up the other like nobody's business, with an endless succession of tradesmen coming and going, bashing things around and making serious dents in the Marshside balance sheet.

Here's a photo of our temporary vaulted ceiling feature, easily achieved by tearing down a couple of internal walls and the old ceiling. We thought of  leaving it like this but only for about 10 seconds. But now here's an "after" picture of the new front room. The "before" one's in the earlier post, the one with alarming holes in the walls.

Aha! Unrecognisable, eh? Having the carpets laid last week was a major event, as it signals the end. Or at least the end of the beginning: we now have to get some furniture and curtains, re-route the satellite cables, put in a hi-fi system and goodness knows what else. When will it end? In the meantime, there's a new ceiling in the other room, which has been re-plastered and painted. Next job there is to tile the floor (next week) and then it's carpenter time again, for skirtings and architraves. And then it's done? No it's not. We still have the big new window to worry about and we have to deal with the planners again before we can bash a hole in the wall and put that in. In the meantime, we're after a baby grand piano (we gave away the old joanna) and probably a new dining table.

Roll on Christmas!

Building works update - house still standing!

I know you're desperate to know how the work on the house is going, or has it even started yet? Well yes it has, as the noise of a drill wafting up the stairs attests. I'll bung in a couple of photos, showing alarming holes in walls, etc. I can reassure the anxious reader that work has moved on a bit since these photos were taken and the house is still standing.

The work we're having done is not really that major, despite what you might have inferred from the pictures, but it does involve a large number of people: a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, a plasterer, a painter and bits and pieces from us. Now you can do these things by employing a builder, who will then contract in the various trades people leaving you free to let them get on with it and not worry (as if not worrying is possible under the circumstances.) But I seem to have ended up in the role of "builder/project manager" and it's a bit stressful.

So why didn't I just get a builder in to run the show? Well, if you do that, you have no control over the blokes he's going to use. In our house, the timber is vital so we have to be sure the chippie knows his stuff. And we happen to know a good chippie. We also happen to know a good plumber and electrician. The plastering and painting was a little harder to organise but not much and, touch wood (not too hard in case there's a bit of rot there), it's all going pretty well.

The chippie and plumber are about to go off on their hols so a bit more delay will happen but while they're away, we can get the plastering finished, paint it ourselves, get the outside painted (I'm not going that high up a ladder with my back - what were you thinking?) and get the electrics finished. Then in a week or two, the plumber can do his stuff and the chippie can finish off, hanging doors and the like. Then there's a sort of phase 2 to consider but can't worry too much about that just now.

The other reason for this self-managing lark is cost. If you get this putative builder chap in, he's going to add his not inconsiderable profit margin on top of what the blokes get paid. Plus, he's probably registered for VAT. Add these two things together and the cost can near enough double. As an example of this, we have just had a couple of quotes for the outside painting, one from a small firm and one from an individual. The former was nearly 3 times as much as the latter! Can you guess which one we're going to go for?

My point, if there is one, is that markets are funny things and it seems that the same product or service can be sold for two very different prices. This can only happen due to market imperfections, like lack of knowledge. Or VAT. Did you know that you can never get a true market equilibrium when you have indirect taxes? They should all be abolished. Campaign for this now and put builders on a level playing field (and make booze and fags much cheaper)! And if you're selling something to Joe Public, avoid registering for VAT if you can: it's hard to compete when you're suddenly 20% more expensive than the bloke down the road.

I refer the reader to my previous comments...

Just a couple of quickies. Conscientious readers will recall an earlier post about how "survey" results often tell you more if you switch them round. In this context, I read the other day that "40% of people are feeling worse off in August". Which means of course that 60% of people, i.e. the majority, are not feeling worse off. Given the way the world is at the moment, that strikes me as pretty remarkable.

This links nicely to another previous post which lamented the decline in freedom of speech. One of the examples given was a government advisor who'd had to resign after saying that, far from suffering from the current global economic woes, many people would actually be better off, due largely to the low cost of borrowing. If you needed any proof that he was right (but being clever, I'm sure you didn't) then this survey seems to provide it. Don't expect the advisor got his job back though.

Along the same lines, the historian David Starkey has come in for some serious flak for daring to suggest that there's a racial element, or at least a cultural element linked to race, to the recent riots. Who knows whether he's right but as he himself said, there are some things one is just not allowed to talk about these days, no matter that they may be correct and therefore of not inconsiderable help in solving problems.

I wonder if this happens in science? I do hope not. Can you imagine a situation where a particle physicist was simply unable to float an idea simply because the science world regarded it as taboo or not politically correct, for some obscure and/or misguided reason? Goodness knows what discoveries we might have missed: no chance of a cure for cancer becuase no one will fund the research due to it being contrary to the fashionable views of the day.  

That said, we are pretty much there when it comes to green stuff, aren't we? There's a huge amount of doubt about the nature of global warming but despite this, governments are taking far-reaching decisions based on the absolute, 100%, unchallengeable need to be green. There's got to be a good chance that one day we are going to wake up and realise that diverting massive resources into windmills and the like was a waste of time and money and has got us into a complete mess. How silly will we all feel then?

When your lights go out because there's not enough power stations and all the money's been blown on a few becalmed windmills, and when you get that next thumping increase in your electricity bill, remember that it's all down to limitations on freedom of speech. Well that and the fear amongst so many of us to say things which are unfashionable.

Ah, yes - fashion. I feel another post coming on...

Cause of the riots revealed: it's the smoking ban!

I thought I ought to say something about the riots. An appalling business. I'm trying hard not to go into hanging and flogging mode, which is tough, and think creatively about causes.

One obvious thing is that if the police stand around and allow people to nick stuff then a lot of other people will want a piece of the action. Who wouldn't enjoy a night out watching fires and breaking glass with the bonus of coming home with a new TV and some upmarket threads? Sounds good to me. Of course most of us don't do that sort of thing but clearly there's a fair number of people who are less inhibited by those annoying moral scruple things. The original trouble was pretty obviously due to a local Tottenham gang trying to get some retribution from the police who'd gunned down one of their number. Unjustified, undesirable but understandable. But the way it spread was due to the kind of opportunism I've mentioned, no doubt also fuelled by gang culture and I expect some of those shady class war anarchist types who lurk about in society's dark corners and who would have seen the Tottenham troubles as a golden opportunity for giving "the man" a bloody nose.

Let's nail this idea that it had something to do with the oppressed "deprived underclass", desperate for a square meal and some shoes for their unshod urchin children. I'm not even going to give this argument the dignity of examination but what I will do is give you a kind of related hypothesis to mull over.

The basic premise is that people want to be free to do what they want. Now, if "what they want" involves stuff like violence and theft then it's hard to find a society anywhere where there's not a consensus which says this sort of behaviour should be discouraged and punished. But the laws in most countries go way beyond this and all sorts of minor freedoms are restricted in all sorts of ways which are not necessarily supported by consensus.

How about parking as a for instance? Continuing my series of undergraduate reminiscences, I often used to drive the couple of miles to university and I could park the car, completely legally and completely free, just a short stroll from the lecture theatre.  Just try doing that in Manchester today, or anywhere else for that matter. More pertinently, given recent events, I used to drive regularly to Tottenham to watch the might Spurs play and park just a stone's throw (excuse unfortunate metaphor) from the ground. You'd find it hard to park for free in the same borough these days.

I find this really annoying and I'm not at all sure it's justified. It has more to do with local authorities seeing parking charges as a revenue stream than merely a way of regulating supply and demand for parking spaces. I also find the smoking ban annoying and unjustified. I imagine that other people would say the same about any number of other restrictions on individual freedom.

If you try and squeeze an inflated balloon into a box, you will find that when you push one bit in, another bit will pop out, the volume of air in the balloon being a constant that no amount of squeezing will reduce. I'm suggesting that an individual's desire for freedom of action is also a constant and that if you restrict people in certain ways, this desire for freedom is likely to pop out, balloon-like, in other ways and those ways may be very unwelcome.

It may not be the complete answer but my recommendation is this: cut people a bit of slack. Get rid of a few laws, like the smoking ban. Make it easier to park the damn car. Abolish the hunting ban. Stop nagging people to death with all this green nonsense: having to shove different bits of waste into different bags is enough to make anyone want to start a riot. I'm not sure that all this would absolutely guarantee no rioting in the future, ever, but it would certainly help.

If people aren't on the streets, they won't riot. Want to get people off the streets? Let them smoke in pubs.

Festival update - Hayseed Dixie rule!

Well we survived Cropredy. Actually that's not saying much as this is one of the more genteel festivals, in keeping with the advanced age of most attendees. You park right next to your tent (no lugging of stuff across muddy fields, in deference to those of us with dodgy backs), the loos are a cut above the norm (they even have proper porcelain ones!), you can plonk your folding chairs on a prime spot first thing in the knowledge they will stay put all day and there's a special shop selling pipes and slippers. I'm joking on this last one of course - but only just. There is in fact always a surprisingly large number of youngsters there but they're probably the offspring of hardened Cropredy veterans (it's been going over 30 years) and are pre-programmed at birth to head, zombie-like, to this corner of Oxfordshire in the second weekend of August every year, come what may.

For those who don't spend all day dozing or pottering around in their caravan, there's some music of course. Given that Cropredy is run by Fairport Convention, it's known as a folk festival but anyone expecting fingers firmly placed in ears, wall to wall beards and Arran sweaters would be surprised at the eclectic mix on offer. Last year we even had Status Quo and they don't come much more non-folky than that. Unless you count the Buzzcocks and Nick Kershaw, other recent beat combos to appear. This year's equivalents were UB40 and the Blockheads. The final headliners are Fairport (natch) who always do a 3 hour set on the Saturday night. Yes you read right: 3 hours. It's quite an endurance test, for all concerned. The saving grace is supposed to be the "special guests" who come on to do a turn. A couple of years ago we had Cat Stevens/Yusaf plus Richard Thompson ("or God, as he's known around here") and before that, Robert Plant, no less.

 But things are going downhill. Last year we were treated (I use the word not just loosely but incorrectly) to a large chunk of some rock opera-type thing called Excalibur. I won't bore you but when I say the creator of this magnum opus is a French bloke you will be thinking, quite rightly, that we are slipping rapidly into Spinal Tap territory. This year wasn't too much better with Fairport doing the whole of their 1971 album Babacombe Lee (it's not great) and the closest we came to a special guest was Ralph McTell. With all due respect to good old Ralphy, he's no Robert Plant. At the end of this 3 hour marathon, Fairport always finish with Meet on the Ledge. It's the law. Everyone holds hands or waves their arms about and sings along, fireworks go off and we try and forget that the writer of this excellent song (yes it's Richard Thompson again) left the band about 40 years ago, since when they've done nothing new that comes close. Then we head off for one last night under canvas in a state of bliss...or something.

Never mind this though, Cropredy remains a great few days in the country. Cropredy's a super village, with a shop, a cricket club, two pubs and a canal. Or is it a river? There's narrow boats anyway, oh, and a canoe club. You know you're at the right place when the huge tarpaulins in front of the PA either side of the stage are not advertising a mobile phone but real beer: Wadworth's 6X to be precise. Tanker loads of the stuff are sold at what is apparently the largest outside bar in the universe. There is no backstage bar so you get to hobnob with the stars, even if the best we did was "whispering" Bob Harris and Steve Gibbons. But Robert Plant was spotted too, only spectating this year. Oh, and one of the blokes from the Coral.

The Coral were excellent by the way. But the real stars of the 3 days were Hayseed Dixie. They were absolutely fantastic: not only very funny patter plus of course their trademark bluegrass versions of hard rock songs (e.g. Highway to Hell, Ace of Spades and...Bohemian Rhapsody!) but boy can these blokes play. I may not be a bluegrass expert but I've never seen playing like it. I didn't know it was possible to play a Mandolin that fast. They finished with Duelling Banjos, which went very well with a T-shirt I saw someone wearing which carried the exhortation "paddle faster, I hear banjo music". No point me waffling any more - I'm sure there's plenty of Hayseed Dixie videos on Youtube. Check 'em out and if you get a chance to see them, GO.

Our festival season's not quite over. The boy is dragging his girlfriend off to the Green Man festival in Wales tomorrow. Rain guaranteed. Let's hope it's not the end of a beautiful friendship and let's hope he drives safely. But as for us oldsters, one dose of camping is enough. So until next year, it's...."meet on the ledge, we're going to meet on the ledge, if you really mean it, it all comes round again..."

See you on the ledge. By which I mean the bar.

Ambulance chasers 0 - Common sense 1

Result! A woman who suffered appalling injuries after diving into a neighbour's pool has lost her case against them. In a previous post I suggested that it was reasonable to expect children to know that roses had thorns. Following the same line of reasoning, the judge in this case has decided that it's reasonable to expect adults to know that diving into swimming pools is potentially dangerous.

I said previously that these cases are brought under the common law tort of negligence. Although the judge in the pool case seems to have applied the same tests, this case was apparently brought under something called the Occupiers' Liability Act. I'm not familiar with this myself but it's gratifying that despite (or perhaps because) some of this stuff has now been written down by parliament, no liability was found.

We need a few more judges to produce sensible rulings like this and a few more people prepared to defend themselves against Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Runne. Our local parish council is apparently agonising over the risks of taking ownership of a pond, despite no such risks having bothered the existing and previous owners for however many centuries this pond has been in existence. Perhaps this latest ruling will persuade them to stop being such a bunch of uber-risk-averse so and so's. But whether it does or not, it's a move in the right direction. Well done m'lud.

PS None of the above should be taken to sound like rejoicing at somebody else's suffering and one's heart goes out to the lady in question. It's just that we need to get a grip and get out of this "where there's blame there's a claim" culture. Unfortunately, as the judge decided in this case, the blame often lies with no one but the claimant themselves. It is to be hoped that the claimant's lawyers (and not the claimant herself) got stung with a hefty bill for the defence's costs...a case of pour encourager les autres, one hopes. That rare occasion when I'm in favour of outrageous legal fees.

Expand your mind with runner beans - not the TV

I've just carried out the first runner bean harvest of the year here at Marshside Acres. Yes, a major task involving a lengthy journey across the rolling fields in an expensive 4x4 but someone's got to do it and I'm afraid the recession and the immigration authorities did for the asylum-seekers we laughingly referred to as gardeners.

I've been picking runner beans since I was knee high to, well, to a runner bean stalk and it's a fascinating experience. Why? Because you soon discover that planting runner beans will solve the world's food shortage problems because the supply of runner beans is infinite. Blimey! I hear you say, that's a far-fetched notion if ever I heard one, and that's putting it politely. But let me explain. The thing is that however many you pick and however long you spend doing it, you never pick them all: go back again and there's always more. Ergo, there is no end to the supply of runner beans. QED.

I appreciate this may be wasted on those of you without a runner bean plantation but I urge you next spring to get some these little marvels in the ground and see for yourselves that I am right. Making this discovery will raise you to a higher level of consciousness and bring you closer to a more complete understanding of the universe than even Professor Brian Cox could ever hope to achieve. Never mind the Large Hadron Collider, just reach for the large bean colander!

Speaking of the mighty PBC brings me on to TV. Just to be clear, Marshside blog is a big fan of the Oldham Oracle but there was another scientist type on the box the other day who let the side down badly. Can't remember his name (and too lazy to look it up) but the programme in question was called "the Code". It was all about numbers and purported to show us how the world is held together by extraordinary mathematical patterns. I'm a big fan of numbers so was looking forward to this but it really was poor.

The programme lasted an hour I think but I could be wrong as it felt like days and in any case could have been condensed into 5 minutes. I won't bore you but it included such tosh as trying to suggest that the proportions of Chartres cathedral were based on the ratios between the frequencies represented by musical notes. This rather ignores the fact that in the 13th century they would have had no idea what a sound wave was, what a frequency was or that an octave sounds the way it does because the frequency exactly doubles each time you go up an octave. Plus, I'm pretty sure they used different musical scales in those days and that terms like "perfect fourth" and "major third" hadn't been invented.

So what am I saying? It's more evidence of dumbing down, is what. We read today that a worryingly large proportion of children leave primary school without mastering the 3Rs. What they've been taught for those 6 years or so is a mystery but they probably go on to make TV programmes like "the Code". I suggest that they could do worse than a lesson on "examine the Marshside blog hypothesis on the runner bean: is it true or is the writer a blogging idiot?"

Think about it over lunch and eat up your runner beans while you're about it - there's plenty more where they came from! 

Still alive and kicking!

It's all been a bit quiet on this blog recently, for which I apologise to my many thousands of followers. I'm not sure what the reason is really but one cause for non-blogging is that we've got the builders in. Well, I say got them in, waiting for them to come in is more like it. And what a wait it's been, like waiting for Godot (I'm sure he must have been a builder.)

We've had some bits and pieces done but the main work has still not started. I thought there was a recession on and people were desperate for work but not the trades people we know. They seem to have plenty of work and it's all more important than ours. Eventually they might deign to favour us with a few hours of their time,  probably doing 30% of the job before disappearing to another job (or their villa in Barbados) leaving us wailing and gnashing our teeth, stressed out of our gourds and back in en attendent Godot mode.

I've just been slapping a bit of paint on here and there in a kind of random fashion, this being the only fashion I know when it comes to painting. I am really bad at it and I hate it (not too sure which way round the cause and effect works here.) My wife is much better than me at painting and I am only too pleased to acknowledge this (quelle surprise!) My painting attempts usually last about 5 minutes until the paint goes somewhere it shouldn't and I start to panic and call for my other half to come running, howling with anguish like a 3 year-old with a wasp sting. I managed today's exercise without this performance but did get a bit of paint on a new t-shirt (yes I know I shouldn't have been wearing it) which drew withering comments from 'er indoors. So I guess I came out of all this roughly brownie-point neutral.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Reading the above, I think I've just come up with a couple of acronyms which could sweep the net like IMHO and IANALB ("I am not a lawyer but", in case you were wondering.) So that's STROOOG (stressed out of our gourds) and BPN (brownie-point neutral). What do you think? Give it a few months and then check out the OED.

Must go - I hear a white van. Could it be that Godot est arrive? One lives in hope...

Don't mention the L word...

Bloody hell! This blog's still covered in adverts for lawyers. I am starting to get paranoid about this: have a bit of a dig at the legal eagles and they're all over you in a trice. Work continues to try and banish these forces of darkness and fill the blog with delightful and pointless fripperies.

By the way, what's the difference between "illicit" and "illegal"? One's against the law and the other's a sick bird...

Sex and holidays and cars and food. Oh, and the News of the World

Apologies for the misleading headline. This is a shameless attempt to get some better adverts on the blog. I've noticed that recently it's been liberally festooned with ads for lawyers, ironic given the nature of the posts but that's what happens when you're at the mercy of some cyber adman. So now you've finished clicking on ads for marital aids, weekends away in New York and you've bought yourself a car and booked a restaurant, let's get down to business.

And my word this News of the World lark is a business, eh? The whole thing feels like a box of fireworks thrown onto a bonfire: dangerous and unpredictable effects shooting out in dangerous and unpredictable directions at similarly unpredictable intervals. Unless you've got more time than I am inclined to spend poring through the detail of all this, it's very hard to assimilate the ins and outs of it all. Plus, at the end of the day, do we really care much and if we do, what exactly are we to care about? Personally, I wouldn't give two hoots if someone hacked into my voicemail. If they're really interested in messages like "If you're in ASDA, we're low on washing powder" or "It's me dad, please send money" then good luck to them. But of course I'd still be straight on the phone to Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Run for a quick bit of no-win-no-fee action against Murdoch and chums. Max Clifford got a cool £1m out of them apparently: it's an ill wind, eh readers?   

Perhaps poor old Gordie Brown could do with Max's services. Looking increasingly like a man who can't even win when backing a dead cert in a one horse race, he now has egg on his face as we learn that his son's medical details didn't find their way into print as a result of hacking or blagging (there's another law I didn't know about) at all. Talk about a lose/lose. No, never mind the mobile phone, I'd be far more worried that if it's that easy to hack a phone, how about a bank account? No one seems to have mentioned this.

The Murdoch organisation of course has always had a touch of the Milwall syndrome about it, you know, "no one likes us, we don't care." Indeed, so unloved are they that the whole of the House of Commons has agreed to gang up against them in some kind of "stop being so horrid or I'll get my dad on you" motion. But are they the real baddies? Is parliament just projecting onto Rupe its own failures properly to stop this kind of thing? And what about the likes of us news consumers? If there wasn't such a demand for reading tawdry tittle-tattle about so-called celebrities then the newspapers (and is it really only News International titles up to no good here?) wouldn't spend the money on the private dicks and their dirty tricks in the first place.

The there's the police. I've been worried about them for a while. Now we learn that not only have some of them been taking money in return for juicy little titbits of info but through some combination of idleness, incompetence and, dare one suggest, an aversion to biting the hand that feeds them, their efforts to date to nail the hackers make Inspector Clouseau look like Sherlock Holmes (mind you, Sherlock bribed the police too.) One of the most senior of the coppers left the force a year or two back and now actually works for News International! Bloody hell! How convenient.

The police have, over the years, become quite literally a law unto themselves. One feels considerable sympathy for the honest rozzer trying to do his bit for society as he is constantly let down by the corruption, bungling and sheer laziness of so many of his colleagues. When we read that police policy guidelines have become infected by the rampant virus which is health and safety to such an extent that in some circumstances officers are told to avoid crimes rather than investigate them, we are entitled to wonder what madness has taken hold. And why does no government ever tackle the problem?

Governments have only two essential duties: to protect the country from its enemies and to protect the honest citizens from the dishonest. Everything else that governments do (and my goodness, don't they do a lot?) is either unnecessary or could be done by someone else.  It's about time that the UK government remembered this and got to grips with police failures. Elected chief constables would be a good start. And a bit more zero tolerance wouldn't go amiss. But that's another subject altogether.

So there you have it. It's not the Dirty Digger we need to be venting our anger at, it's either ourselves for buying this rubbish or the police for not doing their job. Or, ultimately, successive governments for not making sure the police do their job. I never bought the NOTW but I'm sorry it's gone. There's something sad (or wrong) that one man get get rid of a national institution - what next, the Times? Imagine if one man could get rid of other national institutions, like pubs. Or the House of Lords. Or fox hunting. Oh...hang on...

If you did buy the last edition of the NOTW, you will have been reminded of the many occasions when they were several steps ahead of the police in exposing serious wrong-doing. There's nothing to be gained here from the NOTW's demise. On the contrary, perhaps we need a few more fake sheiks and a few less bent and lazy coppers.

Goodnight all.

Get down with your baad self! The festival season is here!

It must be the time of year - I've bought a new guitar. It's a Fender Telecaster (left-handed, natch). I'll try and post a picture.

I think it must be seeing all these youngsters thrashing around with their mud-splattered six-strings that inspired me. Either that, or my dodgy back is making it increasingly hard to cope with holding  the very considerable weight of a Les Paul (a Tele is much lighter, as some of you may know.)

The number of music festivals these days is incredible and even us oldsters get sucked into the frenzy. last week we went to the Hop Farm do (just one day of it - can't go too mad you know) and this weekend it's a similar dabble with Lounge on the Farm. A slightly dangerous one this as it's close to home and is heavily populated by local teenagers determined to commence/continue their "experimentation" with drink/drugs/sex. As a responsible adult, does one report back to their not-entirely-unsuspecting parents or adopt a "what happens on the Farm stays on the Farm" approach? I think only if serious physical (or emotional) harm seems likely should one take the former line. We were once young too. Or so I'm told - I can't remember. And then in August we're off to Cropredy again, a slightly different kettle of fish where our presence actually reduces the average age.

In the old days, a lot of these festival things were free. How times change. You don't get much change out of £200 for a ticket for the full duration at a lot of these picnics and once there, it is very easy to get through eye-watering amounts of dosh on programmes, t-shirts, beer and organic vegeburgers (alright, not me personally on this last one but you take the point.) You could have a week on the Costas for this outlay, with cheaper beer and less mud.

In fact the whole economic model of the music business has been turned on its head in recent years. It used to be the case that the money was made out of records: playing live generally made a loss but was considered part of the marketing budget for the records. But now that recorded music is almost free, it's lucky for the music biz that they can make serious money out of live performance. This is because people are now prepared to pay huge sums for concert tickets. This is partly explained by the wider demographic of gig attendees nowadays. When I first started gig-going, you wouldn't see anyone over 21 in the audience whereas now those of us who are (much) closer to receiving our bus pass than our key to the door are a common sight, and we have more money than the kids. But then there's plenty of them too, aren't there? It's a bit strange.

No point me telling you that my first gig cost 8 shillings (that's 40p to you, spotty) as a lot of time and inflation has passed under the bridge since then. But think about this: when the Who headlined a one-day festival at Charlton in 1974, the tickets were £4. And it was a strong line-up. I can't remember exactly what an LP cost then but it was more than £2. For our one day at the Hop Farm, the tickets were £70 each and, with reasonable objectivity, I can say it was not such a strong line-up as the Charlton bash (e.g. the Who were at their peak in '74. The Hop Farm version of the Eagles are some way past theirs.) Let's say the average cost today of a CD (for those who actually still buy them) is £10. So a live:recorded ratio of less than 2:1 has become 7:1. And I bet you that this would be reflected, albeit to a lesser extent, in a comparison of concert ticket inflation vs. RPI over the period. Incredible, no?

And it's not just concerts: things like football matches have gone the same way. it seems that the nub of it is that "things" have become a lot cheaper but "people" a lot more expensive. The good news is that I can get a Telecaster for about the price of a family day out at the Hop Farm festival. The cost of a family day out to see the Who in 1974 would have paid for a couple of sets of strings and a plectrum or two. Seriously. It's a funny old world, isn't it?

See you at the beer tent and watch out for the brown acid!

A lawyer by any other name...

...would still stink. A deliciously apt paraphrase of the Bard given another story in the paper today about the "compensation culture", this time focusing on schools where, among other ludicrous wastes of taxpayer money, £3,000 was paid out because some little darling scratched themselves on a rose. We've read this sort of thing so much that we've become immune to it, which is dangerous. Here at Marshside we are not so blase. We will fearlessly investigate just what's going on here and see if we can find a solution. Gird yourselves!

The root of this is tort. That's not some kind of Germanic dessert but a branch of common law which, as you will all know, is that part of our law not written down anywhere but which has evolved over the centuries and is in effect made by judges as a consequence of their judgements which set precedents which must be taken into account in subsequent cases. There's about 13 torts (can't remember exactly), including assault, libel and slander. The one at issue here is negligence. A successful action against someone for negligence must show that the defendant owed the alleged victim a "duty of care", that the duty was breached and that the defendant suffered some real loss. A "real loss" normally means that it has a quantifiable monetary value. Not quite sure how a small child can lose money as a result of a scratch but the essence of a claim here would be that the school owed the child a duty of care (little doubt about that) and that it breached that duty by allowing children to come into too close proximity with those lethal rose thorns.

Now you might think this could easily be defended along the lines of: roses being a regular occurrence in the UK, including in the gardens of many children, not to mention public parks, etc., no "reasonable man" (a very important person in law) could regard the existence of unguarded roses as being in any way dangerous and thus this cannot be considered a breach of a duty of care. You might also add in that the child suffered no financial loss, neither immediately nor as a consequence of some kind of permanent disfigurement which could damage their future love life or modelling career (a lawyer acting for the claimant would suggest this might be the case. Well I would). No further witnesses, m'lud. So, having seen this off, how come we end up shelling out £3,000?

This is where the lawyers come in, not to mention the insurers. The school, having received a threateningly worded letter from someone at "ambulance chasing lawyers R us" they would have chucked it in the direction of their insurers. They in turn would have pushed it over to their own pet legal team who would have advised that although the ambulance chasers had a pretty feeble case, the costs of defending it, coupled to the costs in the event of losing it (even if a remote chance) meant that perhaps they should try and settle out of court and, having exchanged a letter or two with their brothers at law, advised that £3,000 would do the trick and that that seems like a sensible deal. Great. So the taxpayer (yes that's you, pay attention) has forked out £3,000 to these nasty little people plus the insurance premium paid by the school, out of which their own lawyers get a fee for their learned advice. Not to mention the insurance company's own costs and the time/cost of the school staff. Oh, and no doubt the school (i.e. you) then spent even more money by either removing or fencing off the offending roses. The net result is that a chunk of the money that comes out of your pocket to pay for our children's education has in fact gone on lawyers, insurers, school admin and fencing contractors. Educational benefit? Zero, unless you count the benefit of children learning what a rose looks like and that its stems are covered with sharp thorns. I don't know about you but I didn't have to go to school to learn that.

So what's to be done? One obvious problem is the cost of lawyers. It's a mystery as to what it is that keeps their fees so high. Of course the Law Society and the Bar Council do their best in this respect, plus the government does its bit by constantly passing new laws (every new law creates more work for the lawyers, if it does nothing else, and often it doesn't.) Perhaps most importantly, what's considered "reasonable" in terms of legal fees is ultimately decided by the judges who are...lawyers. So it's a cosy clique but it's still strange that the laws of supply and demand don't seem to apply to legal costs.

Then there's the evils of insurance. A former employer of mine, a very large UK company, decided some years ago not to have any insurance at all, except where it was legally obliged to. The logic is that over time, the costs of insurance will be equal to the costs of any claims plus the costs of the insurance company. So deal with the claims yourself and cut out the latter (this has become known euphemistically as "self-insuring". It sounds more professional than "not insuring"). More recently, another employer of mine forked out a six figure sum every year for insurance but virtually never made a claim. A colossal waste of money it could ill afford. How many of us have, over the years, received more in claims than we've paid in insurance premiums? Bad luck if your house burned down, you probably answered yes but you're the only one. As insurers can bung the cost of claims on premiums and as all insurers are likely to face similar levels of claims, there's little incentive for them to battle against high legal fees and do whatever else would seem sensible to keep claims costs down. (Something else which contributes to the maintenance of excessive legal fees). Plus, you may have discovered that if you do make a claim, the combination of your excess and the small print probably means they don't pay out and if they do, watch your premium rise next year! It's a lose/lose.

It sounds like I'm arguing that all insurance is a waste of time and money. Most of the time it is, exceptions being of the house burning down variety. Translate that to our rose-infested school and what that means is that they should only have insurance against major claims (e.g. roses turn out to be concealing triffids which eat child). Or more to the point, as they are part of the state and the state is obviously big enough to self-insure, they should have no insurance at all.

Given that the state is covering the school's backside, the school should nonetheless take any claims as a hit to their budget. In this scenario, they might have a different way of looking at solicitors' letters and would have an incentive to fight them. They need to understand the facts of the world as outlined above and especially, that the law is nothing like as complicated as lawyers would have you believe. Let common sense be your friend. take a leaf out of the book of that most sued entity, Private Eye. In the now legendary case of Arkell vs. Pressdram (Pressdram being the company that publishes Private Eye),  Arkell's lawyers wrote a letter which concluded: "His attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of your reply." Did Private Eye make panic-stricken calls to their insurers or lawyers? They did not. They wrote back, saying: "We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr J. Arkell. We note that Mr Arkell's attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off."

Problem solved!

Whatever happened to freedom of speech?

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." (Voltaire)

If you asked people in western liberal democracies what they valued most, I'm guessing that freedom of speech would be pretty high up the list. So why do we treat this cherished right with so little respect? When I say "we", I'm talking about the UK. In some places, like the US, they have this enshrined in their constitution. Maybe we should do the same. In fact the whole issue as to whether we need a written constitution has become a much hotter topic in recent years and will be the subject of future blogging. But in the meantime, let's just think about why even humble bloggers like yours truly have to be careful what we say.

Of course the attacks on freedom of speech are nothing new, as can be demonstrated by number 2 in my series of undergraduate reminiscences. One of the first things that struck me as a wide-eyed 18 year-old was how politicised the students union seemed to be. Politics came well down my list of priorities after girls, beer, rock music, etc. (and I speak as someone who'd studied politics at A level and was just about to study a fair bit more of the stuff) and ditto for all my friends, so why were the walls covered in posters advertising political societies? Get out more, for God's sake!

Needless to say, these "socs" were invariably of the left-wing variety: CP, IMG, SWP and other acronyms too boring to recall (never mind to spell out - look them up if you don't know.) One of the most popular subjects for debate was "no platform for fascists". I use the word "debate" here very loosely. The obvious hypocrisy of this slogan was breathtaking. Surely one of the key characteristics of fascism is its totalitarian nature and its rejection of pluralism, implying a refusal to allow freedom of speech. So refusing to allow fascists to speak, is itself an act of fascism. Yes?! My young head was spinning: it was time to check out the bar/female talent/record shops.

If you put this accusation of hypocrisy to a member of one of these acronym-clad societies, the response ranges from "yeah, but fascists are bastards so..." (student from one of those universities that used to be a catering college) to a full-on exposition of Marxist historical inevitability (Russel Group student, probably ex public school). The whole thing was brilliantly parodied by Malcolm Bradbury in "the History Man" (check it out...plus the BBC dramatisation which was superb...a young Sir Anthony Sher in the lead role). But what it boils down to is the cunning use by some people of trendy (or these days, politically correct) ideas to impose their views and stifle the alternatives.

More recently, this kind of oppression has surfaced in other forms. Almost exactly a year ago, BP was in Big Poo following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. There was some tragic loss of life but this was soon forgotten when apparently a couple of pelicans got a bit grubby and the local prawns tasted a bit off for a while. Tony Hayward, BP's head man at the time, tried to do the right thing of damping down the knee-jerk panic by saying that it was not that big a deal. Outrage! How dare he say that! What about the pelicans?! For this, he lost his job. If O'bama had had his way, he would have lost a lot more. But guess what? Hayward was right. But it seems that speaking the truth is not OK any more.

Here's another one. In November last year, a government adviser, "enterprise tsar" Lord Young, said that for many people the recession would be not be so bad and in fact for some it would be great news, as the reduction in interest rates meant they were saving a fortune on their mortgage repayments.  Quite obviously, and much more so than Tony Hayward's statements,  this is true. But it wasn't the sort of truth that the prevailing PC climate recognised, so he too lost his job. Similar fates have befallen drugs advisers Dr Hans-Christian Raabe and David Nutt who both dared to say things which while true or at least arguably true, the government didn't like.

Then there's Andy Gray and the other bloke on Sky who made a few sardonic remarks about female football officials. Never mind that these remarks were made in private, they had to go. Next up after defenestration for public comments and private comments, hard labour because of unacceptable thoughts: I'm sure the technology is not far away. The Brain Police are coming.

You can probably think up many more of these sorts of "just because it's true doesn't make it right" examples. The ones I've quoted may not seem so earth-shattering, especially in isolation but there's another much more worrying strain of oppression out there. There's a chap called Ben Goldacre who wrote a book called Bad Science (it's a must-read, believe me). In it, there's a chapter excluded from early editions as he was under attack from lawyers armed with obscure Latin phrases and powered by outrageous hourly charge-out rates, funded by someone called Matthias Rath. All Goldacre did was to state the facts about what Rath (a "nutritionist") had been up to, notably in South Africa where AIDS is a national disaster but one that Rath said could be alleviated, not by the accepted medical means but by vitamin pills. His vitamin pills. The fact that Rath and his lawyers could suppress Goldacre's writing is also a national disaster. Why can't we do something about it? Check out Goldacre's web-site or his book for fuller details. It will make you weep/squirm/write to your MP/furious.

I've not even mentioned super-injunctions. You may think that some footballer trying to prevent us knowing that he's been playing away while playing away is no big deal. But then there was the case of a company called Trafigura who tried and for a  time, succeeded, in stopping us knowing about the effects of its toxic waste-dumping in Africa. It's hard to know what other truths we are prevented from knowing by super-injunctions as, by definition, we're not allowed to know what the super-injunction is all about.

It's all gone much too far. "No platform for fascists" has become no platform for anyone to write or speak the truth if someone with enough money or power doesn't like the truth in question. Whether it's by changing the libel laws or by engraving important values like freedom of speech in tablets of stone, something needs to be done.

Marshside blog says: "Any platform for anyone!" Or as the Manic Street Preachers once put it, "this is my truth, show me yours."

"I'm a level 5 vegan...

...I don't eat anything that casts a shadow." One of the great lines from that best modern source for great lines, the Simpsons. As usual, they have hit the nail firmly on the head with their finely-honed satirical hammer. Just what is it with these faddy people who want to feel somehow better than others because of what they eat, or what they don't eat? Now I'm not talking about those who adhere to certain diets for religious reasons. Mind you, there may well have been very good health reasons for not eating pork many years ago - such good reasons in fact that Jews and Muslims agree on this point -  but surely not any more? Why not "modernise" (to use one of my most detested words...alongside "lager" and "Arsenal")?  But I'll leave that for another day. In fact maybe for ever. I don't particularly want to get into religious debate. The Marshside blog seeks to be non-denominational and even "inclusive" (there goes another of those hated words.)

But this business in Germany has made me wonder if the fact that the source of the illness was bean sprouts was not some kind of divine intervention. I don't know if they were "organic" bean sprouts but any kind of bean sprout seems to fit the bill here. My guess is that they were covered in some kind of organic fertiliser, i.e. feces of one sort or another, which was not terribly good for the old constitution. This is no laughing matter of course as a lot of people lost their lives but I think it just serves to prove what all right-thinking people already knew, that organic stuff is to be avoided.

I always steer clear of anything labelled organic like the plague, or like the e-coli. The reasons for this are that in the retail food trade, the word "organic" is a synonym for "high margins" which to you and me means "this way suckers" or "I saw you coming" (see earlier post). It isn't better for you health-wise, it just makes you feel superior. I guess it's maybe beneficial for your mental health but...

What we need is shops that guarantee to sell nothing organic and even better, everything genetically modified. I'm all for GM food. You've noticed that food prices have been rocketing. That's because the world is not producing enough. A lot of people in the world are hungry. They need cheap food that isn't going to poison them and non-organic GM food is the answer. The next time you're tempted by a few organic raspberries in Waitrose, ask yourself whether, by supporting the farmer who used his land to produce this over-priced delicacy, you are helping the world become a better place. Or are you just lining someone's pockets at the expense of those who are desperate for some GM grain at a price they can afford and don't give a stuff if it comes to them courtesy of a few vats of heavy-duty non-organic fertiliser?

Oh, and to return to our opening theme, here's my vote for the best comedy line of recent years, if not ever. It's from the Simpsons again and is in a letter to Homer from the New York parking authorities: "If you fail to remedy this malparkage immediately, your car will be thrown into the East River, at your expense." I think I could write an entire book on why this line is so funny. Other nominations? Leave a comment...

Pub update

I know you're all desperate for news of how our local's doing under the new management. Well last Friday we had the first day of food. They were inundated. Partly it was due to the novelty value plus I think I detected a few locals rarely seen in the place hitherto, probably because they were among those who'd fallen out with the old landlord at some time in the past, which was not a difficult thing to do. And one of his most endearing qualities.

The menu was largely based on the old one, with some slightly smaller portions and slightly higher prices (the price of beer's gone up too by the way, plus they've added a second -  "premium" -  lager!) And the food was kind of OK although it fell down in a few areas: the white bread surrounding my bacon and black pudding sandwich was very much of the supermarket sliced variety which is, frankly, just not good enough. But, to paraphrase Rupert Brooke (yes?) thank God there's black pudding still for tea!

The rumour is that the new tenants are both vegetarians which is a bit worrying when it comes to cooking meat. Also on the list of concerns, we know of one member of kitchen staff who lasted about a day, citing "personal differences" or words to that effect. There is pressure: last Friday they had to close the kitchen for a while, they were so swamped. I just hope they don't think it's going to be that busy all the time. In fact, there's a chance that that day will be the busiest in the kitchen that they'll ever have. Now there's a thought.

On the estates front, they've been dredging out the stream by the pub garden. Possibly looking for the bodies of long forgotten drunken farmhands or perhaps some kind of freshwater shellfish to add to the menu. They're also knocking out bits of the old "family room" which could certainly do with it. In recent years it's not seen too many families. All this is turning the car park into a tip, which won't help the passing trade. But it has to be the right thing to do so good luck to them.

I'm aware this blog doesn't have enough photos and the like, making it a rather "media poor" experience. So I'm going to whack on a picture of the recent Mummers play, as I know you're all keen to know more about this ancient and esoteric ritual. Wicker man not pictured.

British tennis rocks! Marshside blog in U-turn shock!

In the interests of "balance" (not that blogs need to be balanced - isn't that the whole point?) I thought I ought to say congrats to James Ward who beat Wawrinka at Queen's yesterday. A great result but I'm afraid still in the long tradition of unknown Brits getting one over a big name player at Queen's or Wimbledon. It's filed under "one swallow doesn't make a summer but one good win does make a British tennis season."

Before we start thinking that James Ward is the new future of British tennis, we have to remember that he's not a youngster like poor sacrificial Ollie Golding but, at 24 and the same age as Murray, Nadal and Djokovic, at his peak in tennis-life terms. So well-done James but one feels he is destined to be another Bogdanovic who's still slogging away and getting nowhere after all these years.

On a positive note, my tennis team had a crushing victory yesterday with me and my partner winning 6-0 6-0 and 6-1 6-2. We now expect the LTA to offer us huge sums for sponsorship and for us soon to be heralded as the future of British Tennis. Unfortunately, we are even older, by some way, than James Ward.

Anyway it's Andy Murray on in a minute. As usual, if he wins, he's British and if he loses, Scottish.

Give it some welly Andy!

New balls please

It's the tennis season again. Well it is if you live in the UK where the whole season apparently lasts only four weeks. The BBC puts enough resources into two weeks of Wimbledon coverage to televise a whole world war while ignoring the sport for the rest of the year. To be fair, the old red button had a lot of the French Open this year but you know what I mean. The problem has always been that we all go mad and dig out our dusty old raquets in late June and after a bit of a bash down the park, forget all about it again until next year. Those cheating foreigners, on the other hand, play all year round! No wonder the Brits are so bad at the game.

Of course we also see a fair bit of the annual Pimms-drinking fest over in West Kensington at Queen's Club, a social (and corporate) event that can be spoiled, it the weather's good, by a few blokes huffing and puffing around the grass. Most attendees though are able to cope with this without being distracted from their free lunch (at least it was free when I went! Plus a free tea in the clubhouse courtesy of some friends who are members. Can't remember the tennis at all.) This year we've already had the latest of our brave young hopefulls come and go. For poor young Ollie Golding it was a bit like watching a Christian against the lions or some kind of freak show, put on as an entertainment for the lunching classes. We all knew he hadn't a hope of winning but it makes us feel good to see a plucky young Brit sacrificed in the interests of proving that for us, it's playing the game and not the winning that counts. Which is a great justification for our habitually dismal results.

For the next few weeks, there is a law that says that all papers must run several articles on why the UK is rubbish at tennis, so I thought I'd get in first. The usual reasons given are: not enough of us play the game, especially at school; poor facilities; elitist tennis clubs that exclude you if you're not the "right sort"; too much dominance of British sport by football, etc., etc. While all these have an element of truth in them, they don't stand up to serious examination. So I've got two other answers for you.

First, we in GB regard sport as a hobby, not a profession. Nearly all sports were invented here, by newly time (and money) rich Victorians who wanted something to do on their lawns except drink tea. This idea lives on deep down in the British psyche and affects our performance in all sports, not just tennis, which is by no means the only sport in which we are woeful under-achievers. Johnny Foreigner has always been the underdog playing catch up and seeking to give us imperialists a bloody nose. Having been duly bloodied, we refrain from trying to compete and rise above all that ghastly winning business, congratulating the little chaps from the colonies and retiring to the marquee for a drink and a chat.

But the other problem is the LTA. Yes I know the poor old LTA is an easy target but there's a reason for this: it's the right target.   It is simply incredible that the LTA can pour about £30m a year into the sport and produce no one capable of seeing off those pesky colonials. In no other country does tennis benefit from the kind of cash that flies around in British tennis and in no other country is there such a history of failure. It's time to face facts and admit that there is an inverse relationship between money and results and for the LTA to stop chucking the stuff around.

Let the LTA give its money to charity and let our tennis youngsters devleop a bit of hunger, just like all those Eastern Europeans who have to practice in disused swimming pools (true) using fly swatters for racquets (or something). It is surely no coincidence that it's the Olavs and Novaks who dominate the tennis world and not the Olivers and Nigels. Still at least we beat them all at football. Hang on a minute...

Time gentlemen please - nearly

I thought I'd update you on  our local. It's now just two more days until the changing of the guard. We're all having a great time at the non-stop celebrations while holding back the feelings of depression at the imminent change of landlord.

Last night we had a special Mummers play (do a wiki on that one) performance followed by a quiz. This was a bit of a shambles as the pub was full to bursting point. So much so that we had to do the Mummers outside. There is nothing like retiring for bringing in the punters! There was a BBQ on the go and kids games yesterday and a jazz picnic today - plus I can smell from here that the BBQ's been fired up again which suits us fine. Amazingly the beer hasn't run out yet but it's surely only a matter of time: two of the three draft bitters have gone, plus the lager (which we don't really do here anyway - the landlord sells it at a ludicrous price so he can have a chuckle when someone buys it). Oh, and there's no gin, nor ginger wine, nor cointreau. Actually there probably is, it's just that the outgoing landlord can't be arsed to get the bottle down from the shelf. There is still an ancient bottle of cooking sherry which mine host managed to flog me a schooner of instead.

So the whole thing has the feel of the end of an era, if not the end of the world about it. We're all fiddling while the Gate Inn burns. As well as opening up a fiendishly complex spread betting book on exactly when the beer barrel runs dry, I'm thinking of organising some prayer sessions for the future of the pub. Or perhaps building a wicker man in the garden as a warning to the new tenants. If I can get a suitable volunteer for the Britt Ekland role we'll be laughing.

Pork belly economics

Those of you who frequent upmarket restaurants (unlike those of us for whom a trip to the chippy is a night out) may have noticed an interesting menu development in recent times. I speak of belly pork, the latest delicacy to find favour amongst the jus and confits.

I'd never heard of this part of the noble pig until I was an impoverished undergraduate. Our catering formula was one constrained by the need to leave maximum cash available for beer and fags. This meant we existed on the usual (for those days) student fare of spag bol, chili, sausages, fish fingers and the like. But our culinary curiosity was such that we were always on the lookout for meaty bargains to introduce a bit of variety, whilst keeping within our poverty-line budget.

To this end, you would often find me standing on a rain-swept high street in inner Manchester, nose pressed up against the window of the butcher's. Passing quickly over the steak, chops and other exotica and drawing the line at tripe, one day I spotted something that looked a bit like bacon but thicker and, most notably, bloody cheap. Nervously enquiring of the cheery blood-stained bloke behind the counter as to what this enticing bargain was and getting a reply along the lines of "belly pork lad, just bung it under t'grill - smashing" I decided to risk it. And it was a risk. (Previously I'd fallen for ox liver: well it looked, smelt - and tasted - like lamb's liver so surely you cook it like lamb's liver? You do not. Check it out - it's very cheap.) But the belly pork worked fine, except that it's about 90% fat so tested even our nutritional standards to their limits.

So for us struggling students, belly pork ticked all the boxes (just) and found a regular place on our shopping list. But the minute my living standards crept above socio-economic group Z, I never bought it again. So imagine my surprise at seeing it listed between the usual suspects of aged fillet steak and rack of freshly-killed baby lamb at local eateries and not amongst the bargain set-lunch menu but at prices which imply a mark-up that even trendy handbag manufacturers can only dream of.

How come? How can these places convince punters to pay £20 for something that cost them about 20p and requires no significant skill to prepare. Well it's ISYC ("I saw you coming") syndrome. The key feature of ISYC theory is that if you price something high, people will think it must be good. We've already mentioned handbags. Another recent example is that new clothes shop chain aimed at posh kids which manages to convince them that £34 is a fair price for a t-shirt. Imagine the hoots of laughter in the marketing meeting when they decided on that price.

This phenomenon has been expertly parodied in the past by the likes of David Nobbs (the Grot shop in Reggie Perrin) and Harry Enfield's "I saw you coming" shop in the TV sketch but people never learn. Basic economics says that the lower the price, the higher the demand. But ISYC theory turns this on its head. Don't pile it high and sell it cheap: pile it high, think of a price, double it and add on 20% for luck. Belly pork's had its day now I expect but I paid quite a bit for pig's cheeks in a restaurant the other day (yep, they saw me coming) so I'm off to corner the market in those. What's next? Confit of pigeon entrails in a garden snail jus. £25 to you sir. You read it here first.