Key Quotes

"Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."
(Kenneth Boulding)




"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. "

(Raymond Chandler)





"Live simply so that others can simply live." (unknown)





"I cannot live without books" (Thomas Jefferson)





"Sport is war without the shooting" (George Orwell)





"New York is a great city to live in if you can afford to get out of it" (William Rossa Cole)





The secret of a happy ending is knowing when to roll the credits (Patterson Hood)































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Tuesday 27 March 2012

Guardianistas

It's been a few weeks dominated by pieces of work, interpersed with some interesting football and basketball. The sun has started to shine which meant that on March 22nd we went to Chelmsford to watch Essex v Surrey in a pre season cricket friendly. The idea of sitting outside during March to watch cricket is frankly abnormal. The early start to the season will be blamed on the summer olympics in London, but frankly the warmer springs are far more likely the result of climate change, reinforvced by the fact that next week we have a horsepipe ban starting in our region.

Anyway Sunday saw me travelling to London for day two of the Guardian Open Weekend. I'm not sure I knew what to expect either when I signed up or when I got off the Underground at Kings Cross. I'd signed up for my three sessions , two environment and one sport. I got my attendees wristband and explored.

It was a hour before my first session and so I took the opportunity to explore King's Place. To be honest I didn't even know this place existed prior to this event. To my great surprise and pleasure I walked into the last day of an art exhibition of British artist, Norman Cornish. I learned that Cornish,now 91, had spent much of his life as a miner in the Durham coalfield and much of his art reveals life around the pit and the town of Spennymoor.

I sat for minutes looking at a painting entitled "Miners on Pit Road". It seemed reminiscent of 1st World War art. The soldiers were replaced by miners. Men huddled over, trudging towards the pit, identical rucksacks on the backs and boots on their feet. The posture identical to those going to war in the trenches. Such an amazing piece of art.

On investigation I discovered that many of these paintings were for sale, although there appears to be a permanent exhibition at the University of Northumbria.Frankly this art exhibition was worth the admission alone.

I moved on to the lunch time session on "Can environmentalism survive the austerity drive ?" The numbers were meagre compared with the session on understanding the banking crisis in the hall opposite. Two women I spoke to had come out of listening to Ed Balls who spoke about Labour's plan for the economy, they mentioned that he never once managed the environment, which set the tone for me. In recent months my thoughts have turned regularly to the issue of restoring prosperity without diving headfirst into unsustainable growth. In the discussion led by Damian Carrington, The Guardian's environment editor, I tried to steer the discussion towards tackling consumption. Of course this is off the radar to all mainstream parties. Talk of "green technology" filled the air, but there's simply no point looking at the supply side of the equation without considering demand and its distribution.

And so to lunch. I ordered a italian style pitta filled with hummous,sweet potato,red onion and rocket. As I ate it waiting for the next session I realised that twenty years ago, maybe even ten, I would never have had any of these ingredients in a sandwich. Have the taste buds of society changed so much ? I doubt it as I walked past the usual run of take overs and coffee shops on the way to the centre. As I took the last bite, I was left to wonder whether my taste in food reflects something wider about me, or whether it was just the company I was keeping on Sunday.


My next session was "How do we keep the lights on " the main discussion was between Ed Davey and Caroline Lucas, with a Cambridge economist presenting a market economics analysis of energy policy.

Caroline Lucas starting by reframing the question. She argued do we need to keep them all on. Immediately her style and her use of Lakoff's approach of not accepting their framing struck me. She spoke of the need to invest in insulation and asked whether shops,offices etc need so many lights at night. She addressed demand as well as supply.

Ed Davey was refreshingly honest, saying he didn't know exactly how the lights could be kept on as he couldn't predict what lay ahead. Significantly he failed to rule out nuclear power and reiterated the Lib Dem policy of no public subsidy. He and Caroline Lucas disagreed as to whether the current funding was weighted to the nuclear industry.

The key point that came home to me is that tackling energy policy in the future is fundamentally linked to the debate on behaviour change, and the sooner there's a honest discussion starting with "we can't go on as we are" the better.

Finally I headed to the Guardian headquarters, I walked the corridors and found myself in a room of cricket enthusiasts for the recording of a podcast featuring the Guardian sports editor and Mark Butcher. The hour flew by as Mark Butcher talked of England's problems facing spin in the sub-continent, the forthcoming tours of both the West Indies and S.Africa and the county championship. It was an enlightening discussion.

I was ready to make my way back to the Underground, after a thoroughly interesting and rewarding day at the Guardian.

Thursday 1 March 2012

Celebrity Status



The life of celebrities is something that normally doesn't take up too much of my time; however a news story, and an incident brought it to my attention while we were in New York City.





The news story was the tragic but perhaps not unexpected death of Whitney Houston. Houston who came originally from Newark,New Jersey, seemed to be on a downward spiral of self destruction from many years. Nevertheless my mind naturally returned to the 1980s when she dominated the charts in both the USA and UK and when we saw her perform "in the round" at Wembley Arena.






Even in death, Whitney was front page news, filling hours of TV and pages of newsprint. How strange that when the family decided that they wanted a private funeral, some of the public felt cheated.It is as if the public felt that they owned a piece.





The rain fell on New York City one lunch time. Leaving Grand Central terminal we hurried across the street taking refuge in Modells Sports Store where I was looking for a Knicks sweatshirt. After some minutes my wife said that man over there looks like Paul McCartney.

It soon became apparent that it was, and that he was buying a baseball cap for a teenage boy.



Now for people of my generation, and I imagine for women in particular, Paul McCartney is a genuine "star". As I stood in line behind him, what pleased me was that he felt able to shop in person in a high street store, and significantly no one interrupted him. After he'd left the store, I asked the assistant if he realised who he had just served. To a young American no older than twenty, it meant little. He responded that some weeks earlier Derek Jeter had been in the store and that was really special.





This illustrated to me wonderfully that celebrity status and fame is often time framed and geographically centred. While Derek Jeter is a superstar in NYC, I'm sure he could walk into most shops in London and be just another American tourist.