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.
Sunday 29 May 2011
Saturday 28 May 2011
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.
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.
Monday 16 May 2011
50% of people think that half the population disagree with them
Surveys - arntcha sick of them?!!? I'm not trying to compete with Glenda Slagg but could think of no better opening. There's just so many column inches and broadcast minutes to fill these days that most editors resort to the desperate measure of saying to some hapless intern "get on the blower Toby and ask some punters whether they believe in fairies then churn out 1,000 words on the results. It'll get mentioned on the radio by someone like Steve Wright and we'll go viral!" Or with any luck, go down with a virus.
Today's version of this scenario is a headline along the lines of "50% of women believe sex discrimination is alive and well in the workplace." Which means of course, that 50% of women don't believe this, never mind if someone's "belief" actually accords with reality. This is actually an example of a new game I've invented in which you derive the alternative inference from the one in the headline. You usually find that this is much more instructive. But of course it's usually much less provocative and makes worse copy.
There's examples of this on a daily basis....keep your eyes open. There is a serious point though which is that our opinions are shaped by these sort of soundbites and people often don't have the time or inclination to delve beyond the headline. So the idea takes root that most workplaces are a vipers' nest of seething sexism...or that fairies really do exist (even if young Toby's survey unearthed only a couple of cranks, a headline of "20% of people believe in fairies!" would probably do the trick) or whatever.
The manipulation of the public's opinion on fairies may not be terribly important but back in the 1990s, the masterminds of the New Labour "project" realised that voting intentions could be altered in this way: what matters is not what governments do but what people think they do. OK so there's nothing very new in government propaganda but we in Britain are a fundamentally honest bunch who imagine that the propaganda machine only really revs up in wartime and that the rest of the time, we can believe most of what we're told. In its defence, HMG (of whatever hue) would claim it doesn't actually spout lies but it does help people to deceive themselves. And empolys armies of people to help them do it. And guess what? You pay for it! Great!
It's long been well-known that you can get almost any answer you like to a survey if you phrase the question the right way. I often wonder whether we would have a Scottish parliament, never mind the talk now of complete devolution, had the referendum in question been phrased along the lines of "would you like more of you income to be spent on the salaries of politicians and bureaucrats, rather than on holidays/cars/booze/fags?" Which self-respecting Scot could say "yes" to that?
So - think. Think beyond the headlines. Be wary of any story which starts "x% of people think...." and always realise it implies that y% of people don't think. Be very wary of graphs - in fact best not to look at them at all - whole books have been written on "how to deceive people with graphs". Remember, you don't know what the rate of inflation or the level of unemployemt is: you only know what you're told and what you're told may not be as accurate as you might think. And if you get a phone call from a nice young chap called Toby, just say no.
Today's version of this scenario is a headline along the lines of "50% of women believe sex discrimination is alive and well in the workplace." Which means of course, that 50% of women don't believe this, never mind if someone's "belief" actually accords with reality. This is actually an example of a new game I've invented in which you derive the alternative inference from the one in the headline. You usually find that this is much more instructive. But of course it's usually much less provocative and makes worse copy.
There's examples of this on a daily basis....keep your eyes open. There is a serious point though which is that our opinions are shaped by these sort of soundbites and people often don't have the time or inclination to delve beyond the headline. So the idea takes root that most workplaces are a vipers' nest of seething sexism...or that fairies really do exist (even if young Toby's survey unearthed only a couple of cranks, a headline of "20% of people believe in fairies!" would probably do the trick) or whatever.
The manipulation of the public's opinion on fairies may not be terribly important but back in the 1990s, the masterminds of the New Labour "project" realised that voting intentions could be altered in this way: what matters is not what governments do but what people think they do. OK so there's nothing very new in government propaganda but we in Britain are a fundamentally honest bunch who imagine that the propaganda machine only really revs up in wartime and that the rest of the time, we can believe most of what we're told. In its defence, HMG (of whatever hue) would claim it doesn't actually spout lies but it does help people to deceive themselves. And empolys armies of people to help them do it. And guess what? You pay for it! Great!
It's long been well-known that you can get almost any answer you like to a survey if you phrase the question the right way. I often wonder whether we would have a Scottish parliament, never mind the talk now of complete devolution, had the referendum in question been phrased along the lines of "would you like more of you income to be spent on the salaries of politicians and bureaucrats, rather than on holidays/cars/booze/fags?" Which self-respecting Scot could say "yes" to that?
So - think. Think beyond the headlines. Be wary of any story which starts "x% of people think...." and always realise it implies that y% of people don't think. Be very wary of graphs - in fact best not to look at them at all - whole books have been written on "how to deceive people with graphs". Remember, you don't know what the rate of inflation or the level of unemployemt is: you only know what you're told and what you're told may not be as accurate as you might think. And if you get a phone call from a nice young chap called Toby, just say no.
Sunday 15 May 2011
UK's budget deficit gone - at a stroke!
Among the cognoscenti (that's me and you, natch) it's long been well known that to understand the UK's financial problems, all that's needed is to get hold of a copy of Wednesday's Guardian. Turn, if you dare, to the sits vac section. Feel a faintness in the head and a weakness in the knees as you gawp incredulously at the words on the pages: "Assistant Teenage Pregnancy Co-ordinator"; "Anti-smoking Outreach Worker"; "Change Management Process Manager"; "Director: Equality and Diversity Interface Analysis", etc., etc. The pages are filled with jumbled jargon half-remembered by a half-wit HR minion from a distance-learning MA that they acquired free with a subscription to "HR Today" - incorporating "How to look busy while doing nothing monthly" or some such tosh.
After a few minutes browsing the headlines, few amongst us have the will to look further but persevere and your final reserves of life-force will all but evaporate when you see the salary figures these superfluous sinecures attract. Yes it's true: not only do these bizarre jobs exist but they pay more than you get my friend and you do something useful (well so you tell me).
Many of us have long known that public sector salaries have, over the last few years, courtesy of the generosity of Gordon Brown, taken off and locked into orbits ever more distant from planet reality. A recent study by some think tank or other put the gap between public and private sector remuneration at over 40%, when you include those meaty public sector pensions. I can believe it. It takes a long time to overturn a myth widely held as beyond debate but finally the penny is dropping: public sector workers get paid too much and this is why the country's skint.
So the answer to our financial woes then is easy - cut public sector pay. Oh, plus get rid of all the flaky jobs...any job with a title which includes the word counsellor/coordinator/process/change/pregnancy/diversity ought to more or less do it.
But having lanced the boil on the surface, let's consider the nature of the bacteria underneath. How did we get ourselves into this mess? The first, obvious (and true) answer is that Big Gordie threw more money at the public sector than it knew what to do with. But I've got another angle for you.
In the good old days when public sector people got a good pension and job security in return for working in a nasty little office on the wrong side of town and earning peanuts (they still get the first two of course but now they get the fat salary and the swanky office too), the head honchos were called "Town Clerks" rather than "Chief Executives" or "Hospital administrator" instead of "Strategic Director of Community Health". As their empires became increasingly bloated, they had to come up with more inventive names to justify that extra tier of management and it all added fuel to the turbo charging of the payroll. My answer then is to get rid of these silly overblown job titles and go back to basics. The use of the term CEO would be banned throughout the public sector. Ditto the title "Director" and don't even get me started on the "strategic" directors of this world: did you ever hear of a "non-strategic" director?
Let's get real. The NHS is there to cure the sick. It does not need armies of "directors", whether "strategic", "executive" or otherwise. And your local council is there to empty your bins and fix the pot-holes in your road. The fact that the public sector seems to think this requires a bloke on £200k a year and a Mercedes shows how detached from reality they've become. Giving them some normal job titles would be a big step on the way to bringing them back to earth.
After a few minutes browsing the headlines, few amongst us have the will to look further but persevere and your final reserves of life-force will all but evaporate when you see the salary figures these superfluous sinecures attract. Yes it's true: not only do these bizarre jobs exist but they pay more than you get my friend and you do something useful (well so you tell me).
Many of us have long known that public sector salaries have, over the last few years, courtesy of the generosity of Gordon Brown, taken off and locked into orbits ever more distant from planet reality. A recent study by some think tank or other put the gap between public and private sector remuneration at over 40%, when you include those meaty public sector pensions. I can believe it. It takes a long time to overturn a myth widely held as beyond debate but finally the penny is dropping: public sector workers get paid too much and this is why the country's skint.
So the answer to our financial woes then is easy - cut public sector pay. Oh, plus get rid of all the flaky jobs...any job with a title which includes the word counsellor/coordinator/process/change/pregnancy/diversity ought to more or less do it.
But having lanced the boil on the surface, let's consider the nature of the bacteria underneath. How did we get ourselves into this mess? The first, obvious (and true) answer is that Big Gordie threw more money at the public sector than it knew what to do with. But I've got another angle for you.
In the good old days when public sector people got a good pension and job security in return for working in a nasty little office on the wrong side of town and earning peanuts (they still get the first two of course but now they get the fat salary and the swanky office too), the head honchos were called "Town Clerks" rather than "Chief Executives" or "Hospital administrator" instead of "Strategic Director of Community Health". As their empires became increasingly bloated, they had to come up with more inventive names to justify that extra tier of management and it all added fuel to the turbo charging of the payroll. My answer then is to get rid of these silly overblown job titles and go back to basics. The use of the term CEO would be banned throughout the public sector. Ditto the title "Director" and don't even get me started on the "strategic" directors of this world: did you ever hear of a "non-strategic" director?
Let's get real. The NHS is there to cure the sick. It does not need armies of "directors", whether "strategic", "executive" or otherwise. And your local council is there to empty your bins and fix the pot-holes in your road. The fact that the public sector seems to think this requires a bloke on £200k a year and a Mercedes shows how detached from reality they've become. Giving them some normal job titles would be a big step on the way to bringing them back to earth.
What is it about the English pub that is so special? Dr Johnson's assertion that "nothing has yet been devised by man which has given so much please to so many as a pub" still holds true. But the pub is under threat from all sides. Since we've been here, we have seen many local hostelries close. It's been a tough road, trying to survive the drink-driving laws, the smoking ban, competition from other leisure pursuits (although which other pursuits beat going to the pub is beyond me) and increases in taxes. But probably the biggest problem has been the rise in property prices which makes pubs worth more as houses or development sites than as pubs.
Luckily, our local will survive, at least for the time being and we wish the new tenants well, whilst putting them under enormous pressure not to ruin the place with nasty lager and boil-in-the-bag food (lamb shank? Run for your lives!) But why on earth can the government not recognise the national importance of something which is now more quintessentially English (note - not British - pubs in Scotland and Wales are not usually quite the same thing) than any other institution and do more to protect it? You can see from the list of threats above that most of them are, like most evils in the world, government-made. So it is within the government's power to do something about it.
One concludes that in most areas of life, governments do more harm than good. I'm looking out for a small idyllic land with no government. I'll bet there'll be some good pubs and that you'll be able to smoke in them. (And if there is any bloody lamb shank, it'll be slow cooked on an open fire, probably by a team of local virgins who will also roll you a cigar on their thighs. Sorry, I'm getting carried away.) If not, I will open one. All suggestions welcome. But for now, it's a question of the landlord is dead, long live the landlord...and mines a pint of bitter!
Wednesday 11 May 2011
Alan Sugar - you're fired!
Last night we had more Lordsiralansugar than a reasonable man could stand. First off there was the start of the latest series of the parade of unhinged narcissists that is the Apprentice ("the nation's entrepreneurial elite" indeed!) But then as a special Sugary bonus we had his Lordship putting the world of football to rights.
It wasn't clear what problem he was trying to solve but the whole thing amounted to the bizarre spectacle of the country's greatest advocate of the free market trying to suggest that the football market should be anything but free.
Was this because football clubs are such an important part of society that they must be protected from themselves for the benefit of the fans and/or the "community"? Apparently not, as Sugar was all in favour of clubs going to the wall. Strangely, he poured scorn on the way that seemingly bust clubs rise rapidly from the ashes, ignoring the fact that this happens in other spheres of business life every day. Or was it a case of sour grapes, Sugar not having made the megabucks out of his dalliance with Spurs that some other owners have, or at least aspire to?
More likely it was just the kind of flailing extrapolation from the "these footballers are a bunch of overpaid pansies" assertion that most of us have indulged in down the pub at one time or another. The difference with Sugar is that he gets paid to make a TV programme out of it - the rest of us have to make do with the reassurance of a few sagely nodding heads at the bar.
The key point, correcly made (but not by Sugar) was that the world changed when the Premiership was born. At the time, many of us thought this a dark day for football that would sound the death knell for the game as we knew it. I still do - it's just that the patient has been more robust than expected with consequentially lengthy death throes.
Sugar should know better than anyone that market concentration, the process by which over time the number of players in any industry gets fewer and fewer and the players bigger and bigger, has changed every industry you can think of - except football. But it's only a matter of (a bit more) time. Already we have the "Big 4" as a kind of league within a league and the focus on the European Champions League now eclipses the FA Cup and perhaps even the Premiership itself. The inexorable next step is the expansion of the Champions League to include the top clubs from around Europe who will play only each other and leave their respective national leagues to the also-rans: the worldwide TV audience for Man Utd. vs. Wigan can never match that for Man Utd. vs Athletico Magnifico FC.
Those of us who still get misty-eyed at the memories of flat caps, rattles and a ten bob ticket to stand on the terraces think this is a crying shame. But why it should be something requiring Sugar to go trouble-shooting his way around the game's great and good and demanding the imposition of wage caps and God knows what other unworkable regulations is a mystery.
Alan, you're out your depth son, talking nonsense and wasting my time. Lord Sugar, with regret (or maybe not), you're fired!
It wasn't clear what problem he was trying to solve but the whole thing amounted to the bizarre spectacle of the country's greatest advocate of the free market trying to suggest that the football market should be anything but free.
Was this because football clubs are such an important part of society that they must be protected from themselves for the benefit of the fans and/or the "community"? Apparently not, as Sugar was all in favour of clubs going to the wall. Strangely, he poured scorn on the way that seemingly bust clubs rise rapidly from the ashes, ignoring the fact that this happens in other spheres of business life every day. Or was it a case of sour grapes, Sugar not having made the megabucks out of his dalliance with Spurs that some other owners have, or at least aspire to?
More likely it was just the kind of flailing extrapolation from the "these footballers are a bunch of overpaid pansies" assertion that most of us have indulged in down the pub at one time or another. The difference with Sugar is that he gets paid to make a TV programme out of it - the rest of us have to make do with the reassurance of a few sagely nodding heads at the bar.
The key point, correcly made (but not by Sugar) was that the world changed when the Premiership was born. At the time, many of us thought this a dark day for football that would sound the death knell for the game as we knew it. I still do - it's just that the patient has been more robust than expected with consequentially lengthy death throes.
Sugar should know better than anyone that market concentration, the process by which over time the number of players in any industry gets fewer and fewer and the players bigger and bigger, has changed every industry you can think of - except football. But it's only a matter of (a bit more) time. Already we have the "Big 4" as a kind of league within a league and the focus on the European Champions League now eclipses the FA Cup and perhaps even the Premiership itself. The inexorable next step is the expansion of the Champions League to include the top clubs from around Europe who will play only each other and leave their respective national leagues to the also-rans: the worldwide TV audience for Man Utd. vs. Wigan can never match that for Man Utd. vs Athletico Magnifico FC.
Those of us who still get misty-eyed at the memories of flat caps, rattles and a ten bob ticket to stand on the terraces think this is a crying shame. But why it should be something requiring Sugar to go trouble-shooting his way around the game's great and good and demanding the imposition of wage caps and God knows what other unworkable regulations is a mystery.
Alan, you're out your depth son, talking nonsense and wasting my time. Lord Sugar, with regret (or maybe not), you're fired!
Tuesday 10 May 2011
I lied
I know, I know...I said no more today but that writing bug will not be denied. The thing is, I'm listening to Atom Heart Mother and once again am reminded how overrated are Pink Floyd. This is so dreary and simplistic. Why are they so highly regarded? People talk about Radiohead being influenced by PF but RH are in a different league: a mighty Spurs compared to a lowly Dover Athletic (did I mention Dover yet?)
I'm only listening to this stuff as I'm recording it so we can sell the vinyl on ebay. One day we will have sold everything on ebay, our clothes, our house, even our organs (what am I bid for a kidney?) In the meantime, I'll be happy with a fiver for this drippy rubbish. Bid now!
I'm only listening to this stuff as I'm recording it so we can sell the vinyl on ebay. One day we will have sold everything on ebay, our clothes, our house, even our organs (what am I bid for a kidney?) In the meantime, I'll be happy with a fiver for this drippy rubbish. Bid now!
My first blog!
Well. This is it. My blog. Everyone seems to be doing it, so.....
Why am I blogging? Because I want to write and more importantly, I want to make money out of writing. So I am imagining, in my fantasist way, that hoards of editors and publishers will be looking at my words of wit and wisdom and rushing me offers - all of which I will accept! Yep, you got it, I am not proud and I am cheap...well, for the time being anyway.
A bit about me: I am an idle middle-aged male, early retired from the world of finance. I play a bit of tennis; intend to learn golf but never quite get round to it (and still subscribe to the Mark Twain aphorism on the subject); I support Tottenham Hotspur; I like beer...real beer that is; I play guitar and piano; I live in rural Kent but was born a cockney (kind of).
I am going to write stuff to entertain you! It will be on current affairs; economics; beer and music. And God knows what else. Think a cut-price Boris Johnson combined with a similarly low-rent Jeremy Clarkson. I will try and avoid writing about Spurs, because (a) so many others do it and (b) it's too depressing.
I'm not writing any more today...I've had beer at lunchtime and am playing tennis later, followed by watching Man City vs. Spurs. I refer you to the abridged CV above, with which this agenda seems to fit extraordinarily well.
Why am I blogging? Because I want to write and more importantly, I want to make money out of writing. So I am imagining, in my fantasist way, that hoards of editors and publishers will be looking at my words of wit and wisdom and rushing me offers - all of which I will accept! Yep, you got it, I am not proud and I am cheap...well, for the time being anyway.
A bit about me: I am an idle middle-aged male, early retired from the world of finance. I play a bit of tennis; intend to learn golf but never quite get round to it (and still subscribe to the Mark Twain aphorism on the subject); I support Tottenham Hotspur; I like beer...real beer that is; I play guitar and piano; I live in rural Kent but was born a cockney (kind of).
I am going to write stuff to entertain you! It will be on current affairs; economics; beer and music. And God knows what else. Think a cut-price Boris Johnson combined with a similarly low-rent Jeremy Clarkson. I will try and avoid writing about Spurs, because (a) so many others do it and (b) it's too depressing.
I'm not writing any more today...I've had beer at lunchtime and am playing tennis later, followed by watching Man City vs. Spurs. I refer you to the abridged CV above, with which this agenda seems to fit extraordinarily well.
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