On the first day of Christmas... it was October

During the couple of decades that I have existed, I have noticed a strange occurrence, which I’m sure many of you will have noticed as well. It’s like time is shifting. Suddenly, it’s Halloween in September, Valentines in January, ‘back to school’ as soon as the schools have broken up and, most heart wrenchingly annoying of all, Christmas in October. It seems to me that the day that advertisers and retailers decide that it’s ‘Christmas time’ has been sliding slowly forwards year by year. Give it another ten years, or thereabouts, and maybe Slade will get their wish – it really will be Christmas every day. 

Even though I’m generally quite a cynical person, I can’t deny it, Christmas is special. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in the religious connotations of the holiday, or not. The fact is that it’s a time to revel in our good fortune, however vast or disparaging it may be, with good food, good drink, good company and good spirit. It’s like it’s everybody’s birthday - everyone has something to celebrate. And, just like birthdays, one of the reasons why Christmas is special is preciously because it only comes once a year. It’s a matter of perception: if Slade got their wish, we wouldn’t even enjoy Christmas, because Christmas would be normality. 

So what am I complaining about in this month’s blog? I’m complaining about the fact that consumerism is ruining my Christmas, and it’s doing so in more ways than one. Firstly, the build up to this beloved holiday is now so horrendously drawn out that, when the joyous event actually arrives, I'm akin to feeling less merry and more morbidly nauseous. Every time a child on some TV ad luridly shouts "IT'S CHRISTMAS!" it urges me closer and closer to projectile vomit my dozenth mince pie of the day, (which I started buying in August), directly at the Christmas tree, (which I thought I might as well leave up all year), producing an obscene metaphor for what this mongrel festival has become. A combination of desperate retailers, and an even more desperate chancery, has reduced modern day Christmas to nothing more than a prolonged marketing exercise and a much sought after boost to the economy. This is why Christmas now starts in October, and why we are encouraged for months on end to spend as much as we possibly can afford to.

This leads on to my second point – the obscene importance placed today on gift giving at Christmas. Let me say from the offset, anyone who looks forward to the festive season purely for the presents is, in my opinion, either a child, or an idiot. Sure, it’s great to receive a gift, especially if it’s something that you couldn’t usually afford, or wouldn’t usually buy for yourself. However, I assert that emphasising this aspect of the holiday as much as we do today is destroying it. This has a lot to do with the sad reality that most people in this country, and others, seem to have more in common with a sponge than an actual human being; wandering through life, their sole purpose seemingly being to soak up the slippery jizzum of retail and advertising, before wringing themselves out into their own, or their loved ones' moronically gaping mouths. Ultimately, this leads to people wanting more than these hard economic times can afford them.

Just imagine potentially how many families across the country could have their Christmases ruined by disappointment when they realise that the piece of jewellery, games console or mobile phone they so greatly desired isn’t waiting for them under the tree, simply because no one could afford to get it for them? Now imagine how desperate you would be to make sure this didn’t happen to your family… what would you do to prevent this? Get a loan perhaps? Yes, I suspect that at the very least you would feel pressured to. The problem is that, as we all know, excessive debt and credit is the reason why we’re in such an economic mess in the first place. This festive phenomenon is a microcosm of the consumer situation throughout the whole country, across the entire year, and in all sectors of commerce. As such, it serves as an example of just how little we’re actually doing to diffuse the ticking time bomb of private debt.

Meanwhile, austerity measures across Europe and the world are continuing to cause an uprising of civil disturbances, the latest (and most promising) incarnation being the Occupy Wall Street and other global Occupy movements. As dissatisfaction with the current system increases and becomes more highly disseminated to the public through both independent and mainstream media coverage of these occurrences, one can only hope that eventually people will no longer be interested in the phoney fixes and lugubrious legislation currently being spat out by our current government, and demand some changes that will actually make a difference. At this point, I expect that ‘the powers that be’ will have to listen, or else risk an exponential increase in both the violence and frequency of these anti-capitalist demonstrations, until they’re only really left with two choices - fight the power, or fight the people.

And so I am left shaking my fist at the Christmas lights that have already been put up in the West End of London, and living in tepid dread of the first Christmas hit that I will have the misfortune of hearing a month too early, hoping that I’ll be able to survive another year before denouncing my beloved festival altogether. I have no doubt that some people will read this and purely think me a Grinch who, for one reason or another, just doesn’t ‘get’ the Christmas spirit. To all you people I say, in a final flourish of easily dismissed but, nonetheless, accurate cliché – that’s what they want you to think. 

Oh well, if you take anything at all away from this post, just remember this one thing…

CHRISTMAS STARTS IN DECEMBER

The Recruitment Paradox (and other unfortunate aspects of modern life)

Unless anyone hasn’t noticed, there’s a slight issue with money at the moment; some kind of recession, or something. What with so many of the countries around us in Europe either getting bailed out, or threatening that at some point soon they may require to be bailed out, I’m finding it hard to understand how Britain is staying afloat. After all, it’s widely known that thanks to Thatcher our manufacturing industry is about as active as an overweight Californian stoner with an addiction to donuts who has just noticed that there’s a TV programme about donuts on TV and that he has a number of donuts and a joint saved up to enjoy as an accompaniment to the donut show. Furthermore, anyone who’s had to call any sort of customer helpline is well familiar with being put through to “Roy” who sounds suspiciously more like a “Raj” and who, when posed with a question that requires a tighter grasp on the English language than is ordained to him by the autocue hat he is sitting in front of in Mumbai, starts repeating the same stock phrase over and over again like a robot built by Apple that someone has just commanded to run a Flash video.

What the above needlessly long-winded metaphor was subtly trying to highlight is that Britain seems to be losing jobs, and fast. Indeed, the unemployment rate in the UK is currently 7.8% of the labour force; and this, coupled with the £960 billion (and counting) of debt makes you wonder whether the boy wonder George Osbourne’s posh Casio scientific calculator is really up to the job of working out a solution for our country’s spiralling economic turmoil. We don’t grow anything, we don’t make anything and, increasingly, we’re not providing many services either. I’m sure everyone reading this has noticed how customer helplines are increasingly being outsourced and how cashiers, bank tellers, post office workers etc are slowly but surely being replaced by machines. So what jobs are actually available in this country at the moment?

I am currently living a distressingly cliché existence. Having completed a degree in a horribly over-subscribed job field, I panicked and clung desperately onto another year in the city where I went to university, and now I’m living at home with my parents and looking for a job. Job seeking at the moment can be best compared to preparing to defend yourself against a murder charge in court: there’s a lot of sitting on your arse on your own, thinking about what you’re going to say, making stuff up and occasionally banging your head against a wall wishing you’d done things a little differently. I have at least come across one phenomenon that, indeed, is the inspiration for writing this blog. Ladies and gentleman, I think that I have discovered how the British economy is keeping afloat: recruitment.

Any graduate job seeker at the moment cannot have failed to notice how pretty much every 3 out of 5 jobs going at the moment are in recruitment, or one of the other fancy euphemisms that mean recruitment such as “head hunter” or “research executive” or “You dun find the job persons job”. Now, I understand that recruiters are necessary in specialist fields, as they need to be trained to identify certain skills and have a decent knowledge of the specific field; however, when the said specialist field is, in fact, recruitment... things start to get a little bit silly. What you have – and I know this is happening because it’s already happened to me twice in the month that I have been looking for a job – is recruiters recruiting recruiters to recruit recruiters who, in turn, recruit recruiters to recruit recruiters. It is nothing short of a baffling ouroboros of recruitment that is so ripe for parody I have absolutely no idea how anyone in the business of recruitment can take themselves even remotely seriously. The thing is, these recruiter recruiters can earn an absolute mint from the get go if they’re good enough at luring people into their retarded web. Could it be that this industry is actually supporting our beloved Britain?

If you think about it, it’s not too difficult to rationalise, considering that our whole society is based on trading meaningless numbers with each other anyway. The problem is that, even if this paradoxical farce of an industry is providing a boost to our economy, there’s no way that it can hope to prop the nation up against the increasing prevalence of the beast that has been plaguing modern economies since their foundation: a phenomenon known as technological unemployment. Put simply, this is where human labour can be replaced by mechanical labour to an economic advantage. It happened to our primary industry way back at the dawn of the 20^th century with the growing use of farm machinery; it happened to our secondary industry with the advent of the production line and now it’s happening to our tertiary industry with the ever-growing power of computers. Don’t think the quaternary (knowledge based) industry is invulnerable to this threat either: we’re already seeing a plethora of teaching aids appearing online and the idea of artificial intelligence is not so much science fiction any longer than science fact. Indeed, it is hypothesised that around 70% of jobs today could be carried out better and cheaper by machines. For example, there are already restaurants and bars that are fully automated, right down from the cooking and drinks prep to the service (http://tinyurl.com/ynqd4j). Just think how many thousands of people in this country are employed in the catering business and could so readily be replaced.

The only reason why this hasn’t been done yet is because employers know that the market just wouldn’t be able to handle the unemployment rates; hence why in supermarkets, for example, you have the current hybrid system of self-service checkouts and the old fashioned human setup. Nevertheless, I’m sure you’ve all noticed how those self-service machines seem to be slowly taking over, especially in smaller stores, leading me to believe that the amount of mechanisation is just going to be pushed further and further. For some reason though, this concept is not on the agenda for the Tories, nor the Democrats, nor any mainstream political party, it seems. I suppose the ‘powers that be’ are treating this, as they did pre 2008 with the problems evident in our financial system, as an issue that us mucky plebs are just not clever enough to understand. We shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about it.... until that redundancy meeting gets called and you’re booted into line with the rest of the job seeking masses. (Hey, at least you could always go into recruitment!). The simple fact is that machines are cheaper and easier to run than a human workforce and, moreover, are undoubtedly more efficient at completing objective tasks than we are – precision and objectivity, after all, are what machines are designed for.  Whereas it takes almost a decade for someone to qualify as a surgeon it would take probably maybe only a year or so perhaps *massive guesstimate alert* to design a machine that can perform surgery better and cheaper than any human could. Joking aside, if you’re thinking about dismissing that statement as pure fantasy then here’s some perspective: machines have been automatically building cars for years; however sacred or intricate you think the human body is, think again, at the end of the day we’re just a sack full of parts. Modern surgery is already being complemented by machines.

It is unfortunate that it is inbuilt into our culture is to be scared of machines, specifically AI. The reality is that our technology is the only thing that we have to secure our survival and proliferation on this planet. We should be accepting these changes, not shunning them. I have touched on aspects like this before in this blog and, unfortunately, the current situation, as explained above, is just another example of how our current economic model - that being the monetary and market system - is a total hindrance on our progress as a species. The things that we can achieve with technology are staggering and go beyond most peoples’ imaginations. It is testament to the uselessness and antiquity of our current system that technological advances are actually suppressed rather than embraced. See this website for further details: http://www.thevenusproject.com

Riot wing solutions

When something unexpected or unusual happens; something unexpected and unusual happens: people who previously did not seem to have any particular opinion on the matter at hand, whatever that may be, decide that it’s time they voiced their opinions. The last time it happened was during the shock rise in popularity of the Lib Dems during the campaign for the 2010 elections: suddenly, tens of my previously thought to be apathetic friends at once became my Tory, Liberal or Labour friends, at once prompting a series of heated Facebook debates. Back then I was surprised and, on occasion, fairly shocked by the views that some of my friends expressed; that being said, the altogether theoretical and idealist nature of the discussions we had meant that I never took any of what they said too seriously. This time it’s a different matter altogether.

For quite some time now I’ve had the feeling that things were about to, as they say, “kick off” in the UK. After all, the reaction to austerity measures across the world has generally been to take to the streets; why should Britain be any different? As much as the ruling class would like to believe, the infamous British anecdote of “keep calm and carry on” doesn’t seem to particularly apply any longer, and it turns out that this country’s middle and lower classes aren’t content with sitting back with a cup of tea, putting the cricket on and patiently waiting for things to blow over, as I suspect the coalition hoped, the former engaging in mass protests and the latter in the recent country-wide riots.

The result: once again the politically-minded Facebook statuses are erupting all over my news feed. From well thought-out statements and reasoning, to general cries of distress, and onwards further to the careless slurrings of those who I suppose have been appalled into cyber vomiting the first thought that comes into their heads; in times like these, most people have something to say.

What has worried me is that the issues being discussed this time are pertinent and real and extremely important, yet the following kinds of comments seem to be most prevalent:

“No more f***ing about now england and putting the civil liberties of mindless hooligans first but grow some balls and send the armed forces in to sort this any way possible.”

“Someone explain to me: why are police not allowed to carry guns in the UK?! At least paintball the arseholes in the face- that'll stop them!”

I understand that the scenes unfolding before us this week are distressing and appalling but, even so, for so many people to be spurred to say so many truly stupid things demonstrates a complete lack of understanding for the issues at hand. The phenomenon goes beyond just status updates. As of right now (13/08/11 at 1317) an e-petition stating that “Convicted London rioters should loose all benefits” has reached 182,332 signatories; that’s almost double the amount needed to obtain a hearing in parliament. I’d like to point out that the above spelling mistake, which you might have noticed, is actually genuine and on the petition. I personally think that people who can’t spell should loose their benefits.

Although I can sympathise that people aren’t particularly happy with their taxes going towards supporting people who take to the streets looting and burning public property, there is no stretch of the imagination that could possibly foresee a measure like this being able to benefit the situation in any way. At the end of the day, the rioters that have been arrested and found guilty will be charged for their crimes and suffer the consequences that any citizen of this country would suffer if found similarly culpable. Depending on the severity of their offence they will either be put on a community sentence or, if more severe, be sent to prison - at which point, I’d like to point out, they would lose their benefits anyway. So why single out the rioters for extra punishment?

In all the footage that I have watched of rioters explaining their actions there is one theme that runs throughout; indeed, this theme is systemic in almost all criminal activity, as evidenced by a number of studies. Thanks to the economic crisis and general attitude of our social culture, people at the bottom of the pile have been left feeling disrespected and ignored, as if they are no longer part of society. This, I expect, is why they feel they can operate outside of society’s constraints by engaging in criminal activity; whether that be petty theft, murder, rioting or whatever. The mere existence of this e-petition and sheer amount of signees is evidence of the destructive attitude we have of this country’s poor and disadvantaged. Meanwhile, the poor are forced to live in a consumerist culture, where advertising and pop fashion tells us we must own and do certain things to make life worthwhile, whilst being incapable to participate in said culture, due to their lack of skills and education. Perhaps this would explain why one of the main targets of looting were designer shoe shops?

So, by removing rioters’ benefits, what are we achieving? Is it a form of ‘tough love’ which will force them to “get off their arses” and find a job? No: there simply aren’t enough jobs out there for people from their background, anyway. Is it a means of discouraging them to commit similar acts again? No: if anything, removing what little money they receive as it is would force them to commit more and worse crimes. Is it an ultra-conservative, unthinking, knee-jerk reaction by a section of society who are wholly dispassionate for just how difficult it is to live in poverty in this country, which would only serve to further isolate an already insular section of society and ultimately exacerbate the current situation? Yes: and although the topic will be discussed in parliament, I have at least a modicum of faith left in the commons that I doubt any legislation will come from it.

But if this is not the solution, then what is? This is an extremely difficult question that I shall not even attempt to answer in this post. Suffice it to say that more thought should be paid to rehabilitating this section of society than further punishing it. Although rioting is disgusting, unacceptable and - as many are saying - a social disease and, as stated previously in this blog, we should be focussing more on treating the cause of this illness, rather than just treating the symptoms; and poorly at that. Axing these benefits would be the sociological equivalent of blood-letting. How about we try a more 21^st century treatment?

Vanity Fayre! Just £5 for a ride on the Wheel of Self-esteem.

A wise man once said: "What makes vanity so insufferable to us, is that it hurts our own." Well, I tell you what, my vanity has been violently murdered with a brick in an alleyway. Recently I spent two whole days trying to flog electric razors to people in the well-known high street cosmetics shop, Boots.The experience was so excruciatingly dull that at one point I caught myself shaving the hair off the back of my hand with one of the razors I was demonstrating. Thankfully, nobody saw. Either that or someone had seen me and promptly ran a mile in fear that I might be on the verge of some sort of spontaneous violent breakdown where I would rampage through the store throwing hair gel at people and trying to scoop out their eye sockets with an electric tooth brush. Anyway, whilst not enduring sporadic bouts of insanity, for the rest of the time I was working in the shop I had the opportunity to contemplate the nature of human vanity and specifically how shops like Boots exploit it. The particular shop I was working in was, I pondered, somewhat of a temple to this idea. What with the bright white fluorescent lighting, stone washed marble floors, and staff that resembled hideous hybrids between vestal virgins and Stormtroopers wearing so much mascara that it was hard to tell whether they actually had eyes... to say the environment was somewhat oppressive is about as much of an understatement as saying that World War II was slightly upsetting. 

First things first, let me just say that I have no doubt that vanity is an entirely natural phenomenon. Darwinian theory would explain it as a mechanism that ensures that we maintain a high chance of finding a mate with whom to reproduce. However, one can’t help but think that things might have gone a bit too far. A good example is the current phenomenon of tanning. Whether it’s £100s spent on a holiday to Spain with the only goal being to partially bake oneself over the course of two weeks interspersed with painful showers and a growing risk of cancer, or the favoured Essex-style oompla loopma-inspired fake tans, I have met very few white women in this country who don’t spend at least some time and money attempting to accomplish a darker hue. 

The question is why? From the male perspective, especially with regards to fake tanning, I would 1000 times much rather be with a girl who is fair skinned and proud than one that is orange and smells like a mixture of death and rotting apricots. I’m pretty sure that most men think like this too – I’d like to see a survey done, actually – because surely if a dark complexion was inherently more attractive to men then the whole world would be Asian or African by now?

So girls, ask yourselves, who are you doing this for? Why are you spending so much time and money on making yourself something that you’re not? I suppose the answer to that question is mostly going to be “because it makes us feel good about ourselves”. Again, why? Because you actually prefer the way you look with a tan, or because some model on a TV commercial has told you that you will prefer the way you look with a tan and you’ve believed her? And to highlight just how utterly pointless this way of thinking really is, one only has to look at the current trend with middle class Indians who, opposed to our obsession with tanning, spend their hard earned Rupees on BLEACHING themselves to look whiter. Damn it, why don’t we all just dye ourselves puce and be done with it? At least then people will all feel more equal.

Why am I angry about this? It’s not because I don’t want people to feel good about themselves, of course not, it’s because I hate the idea that some fat cat in London, Paris or New York is getting rich off exploiting our emotions. People may or may not know this, but millions – I suspect billions – of pounds goes in to researching ways to manipulate our basic human instincts with the sole aim of influencing us to spend money on stuff we don’t need.  All modern advertising is an evolution of principles first utilised to sell stuff to us by the founder of modern PR and advertising - a man called Edward Bernays - who’s uncle was none other than the master of unravelling humanities deepest desires, Dr. Sigmund Freud. Mr Bernays idolised his uncle from a young age and, using marketing techniques inspired by Freud’s theories, managed to reverse the social zeitgeist in 1920s New York that it was uncouth for women to smoke, securing a hefty fortune in the process. Basically, he made smoking seem sexy, so... women started smoking, because they thought that if they didn’t then men would not find them as attractive. Of course, today we all know very well that smoking isn’t sexy at all. In fact, I think that most of us would agree that, unless you get turned on by your partner tasting and smelling like a charred carcass, it’s really quite the opposite. Does this sound familiar?

Almost a century on since Bernays’ pioneering outlook on consumer habits and advertisers are now so clever and subtle in their manipulative strategies that most people fall for their ploys hook line and sinker without even a second thought. One of my favourite techniques used currently is the blurring of the lines between beauty products and food. Having a look at the ladies’ hair and skincare section at the weekend I genuinely mistook some of the soaps and shampoos for elegantly crafted cakes and truffles. The scents were all very interesting too: mint candy, lemon cheesecake, coconut cream, gingerbread. It’s a double whammy in terms of exploiting women, appealing both to their supposed fondness for sweets AND their desire to smell nice. The question is... what next? Wotsit flavoured toothpaste? Lemon posit knob wash? Chicken tikka embalming fluid? I swear we’ll buy anything they put in front of us these days that’s in a pretty box and has an interesting name.

So girls: the next time you’re tempted to sully your natural beauty with a little pot of over-priced face paint or a tub full of carcinogenic chemicals, and gents: the next time some twat who works in Boots tries to up sell you an electric razor with a staple gun attachment or ANY form of anti-ageing treatment - for christ’s sake men look better as they get older! Any woman will tell you that! – please, please THINK to yourself, unless you really can’t see foresee being content without that product, don’t waste the money and resources on buying it! Who knows, you might find out that you’re happier without it.

Jamaica they have a bobsleigh team – and they don't want you to forget it!

Hello again England! I have recently come back from an extremely enjoyable and eye-opening trip to the famous island of Jamaica in the Caribbean Sea – home to Reggae, Jerk Chicken, Bob Marley, Cool Runnings and a particular fondness for a certain noxious green plant. And you know what - they wouldn't let you forget that for one second.

As many places are in that part of the world, Jamaica is an extraordinarily lush and beautiful island, with soaring coconut trees, white sandy beaches and deep blue waters. The scenery is nothing short of breathtaking at almost every turn and what with the perceived “chilled out” nature of Jamaicans and their lax stance on certain recreational activities that are usually deemed as inappropriate in western culture, it's no wonder that thousands of tourists come flocking there from all over the world for a week or two of partying like you probably couldn't get anywhere else on earth. Here is possibly one example as to why Jamaica is so popular.

I was lucky enough to stay in a very nice 5 star resort in Montego Bay: an exquisite, all-inclusive vacation bubble where you would see no reason to leave the resort for much and, in most places in the world, certainly wouldn't expect to find any “dodgy dealings”, or similar goings on. The reality is that I had not been off the plane for 4 hours before I was offered a sample of Jamaica's biggest (illegal) export whilst enjoying my jet-lagged insomnia on the private beach at 2am. There I was, all by myself: when suddenly, out of the blue, a shadow comes skimming across the water towards me. I heard a distant, heavily-accented call of “Reeeespec mon. Won lov. You lookin for a likkle bitta Ghanja, ma frien’?” The figure came closer and revealed himself to be a Rastafarian, dreadlocks thick and black flowing halfway down his back, travelling on a hybrid surf board/kayak along the shallows of the sea by the beach, which he propelled with some sort of makeshift oar that appeared to be made out of a sugar cane and a pizza box. Attached to his vessel was a medium-sized wooden compartment in which, presumably, he stowed his wares.

This was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life.

It might have been down to the sleep deprivation but, having politely declined the gentleman's offer, (along with the several counter-offers he levied in order that he might change my mind after my initial settlement), I left the beach feeling, I'd say, equally bewildered as a Victorian housemaid would be if Jamie Oliver travelled back in time and started attempting to “revolutionise” her dinner menu. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't the first time I'd been offered drugs; but to have the stereotypical Jamaican thrust in my face all so soon to the beginning of my trip really surprised me, as I was expecting to find that Jamaica had its own culture outside of western presumptions. If I was to find any shred of evidence contrary to this notion, it certainly wasn't going to be on the resort, or anywhere in Montego Bay for that matter. From freely available weed and 'Hedonism' - a renowned sex resort for singles - to the Reggae-themed clubs and Jamaica's Bobsleigh Team café bar... oh, and Bob Marley's grinning Cheshire Cat face EVERYWHERE you looked, from t-shirts and mugs to on the toilet paper and tattooed to cats (OK, not that extreme)... life in this part of the country was, if anything, an apparent parody of Jamaica itself. It was not until halfway through the trip, when we got to leave Montego Bay and take a trip to the other side of the Island, before I experienced the real Jamaica.

From what I saw the Island is, in general, extremely poor. There are some incredible mansions with acres of well-kept land here and there, but the locals told me that these mostly belonged to wealthy Americans, or remnants of the old slave dynasty. However, most of the land is dotted with houses – shacks really – that look either half built or half destroyed; it's hard to tell which. Whereas on the coast the locals will make their living from exploiting Jamaica's infamy, inland they get by mainly by trading food stuffs. I saw very little in the way of service industries – perhaps the odd hairdressers and petrol station – but little more. The locals seemed to spend their leisure time... well... just sitting around and doing nothing. No wonder they smoke so much weed there, right?

This is another curious thing about Jamaica – the cannabis culture. Westerners may hark to their romanticised visions of Jamaica and the infamy of Bob Marley and the Rastafarian movement’s fondness for the “holy herb”; of the tropical inlands of the country smattered with vast cannabis fields and friendly dread-locked tour guides, stoned off their faces, smoking up on the job. The reality is that those days of Jamaica are over. In the 70s, yes, this would have been a common sight, but the “war on drugs” that big brother America began in the 80s has totally changed the Jamaican relationship with the herb.  Army helicopters circle the main production areas and are quick to root out any large and obvious harvests so that growers are forced to plant their crops in disguise amongst tall trees. This being said, cannabis is still thought to be Jamaica’s biggest export; I even came across a billboard advertising Appleton Estate Rum as “Jamaica’s biggest (legal) export”. Add to this the fact that the use of the herb is so engrained into the culture and one can see that Jamaica has no escape from its weedy past – even if it wanted one.

So why does Jamaica pander so much to the American will? Why doesn’t the Jamaican government legalise the plant? In this respect, there seems to be a great deal of saying one thing and doing the other. I went to a great club in Montego Bay which surely stated “NO DRUGS” as one of its rules. Yet, one only had to stand out the back of the place for a minute and you would get passively mashed from the amount of smoking going on – right in front of the bar! I asked a local partier whilst at the club about the legal status of weed. He replied that the police turn a blind eye to any local who uses; but that it’s a different story when it comes to tourists, as the police know that a westerner would rather part with his dollars than spend a night in a Jamaican jail. And you can’t blame them. If you were that poor there’s no doubt that you would resort to bribery also. There’s also no doubt that you’d fill your shops with Bob Marley and Bobsleigh team merchandise. Money is money, after all.

But what a sad state of affairs. For the thousands of westerners that travel to Jamaica for their holidays, all they see is a land of whimsical escape, sapphire seas, Red Stripe and spliffs on the beach and, if they’re staying at Hedonism, probably a relaxing genital wart or ten. In the real world though, Jamaica is plagued with violence, poverty and debt and has been forced to prostitute what little is left of its culture to an ever-hungry consumerist machine. Even in the hotel I was staying at there was a very real and obvious hatred emanating from the staff who, as is their complete right, probably have as much a skewed idea of the west as we have of Jamaica. But even though not all of us are obnoxious, drunken, foul-mouthed, lurid, American money puppets, most of us are, so it’s no wonder that we’re all forced into that bracket.

Jamaica is like a 20-something-year old gold digger who has just married an ageing millionaire. It has a beautiful face. But an ugly heart. A truly wasted paradise. What a shame.

Cistern bags won't save us from the system.

I spent Friday the 11^th of March saving the world. Or rather, I didn’t, I stood for 10 hours in a local Sainsbury’s giving away free “energy saving kits”, wearing a cyan tabard that made me look as if I’d just escaped from Broadmoor via a freak printing accident, resulting in me having “I GIVE FREE THINGS” emblazoned across my chest. Most of the day was spent gazing into the horrendous pit of mundanity that consumes most peoples’ working lives in this world, interrupted occasionally with the great pleasure of guiding old people through the gargantuan task of filling in their name on a bit of paper, like some sort of morbid ferryman guiding a cup of poisoned apple juice to the lips of a Dignitasee. Oh, and also explaining to people that, no matter how much my foiled wrapped energy kits looked like microwaveable paninis, that I didn’t work for Sainsbury’s so I couldn’t direct them as to where to indulge their delusionally aspirational gambling habits, nor how to operate the change machine so they could convert their bingo money into notes. One man had over £300 worth of coins! I was very tempted to ask him whether he’d robbed a penny arcade, but he looked quite nervous, so he probably had and I’m guessing he wouldn’t have appreciated it if I’d brought it up.

Anyway, it was such an under-stimulating experience that I felt less like a human by the end of it and more like pond life. The most interesting thing I could come up with to do was a game I called “spot the weirdest shopping”. The winner was a Chinese man who bought 10 whole packs of Sainsbury’s basic tissues and a pot of honey – weird. Anyway, the product I was pedalling was a bag which one can fill with water and put in one’s toilet cistern to save about a litre of water per flush and a plastic adapter that fits between the shower hose and head that restricts water flow, achieving a similar saving. I proudly boasted to the public how utilising both gadgets could save them up to £100 per annum on utility bills. This, of course, was minus the addendum that they also had to follow an “energy saving guide” provided in the free pack if they were to achieve anything like this kind of saving.

The energy guide, although containing some genuinely worthwhile suggestions like “wash at 30^o” and “don’t use a tumble drier”, was mostly filled with such obvious advice that Captain Obvious could not achieve such levels of obviousness, even with his extra special super power, that being: The Blinding Strike Of The Obvious. Such advice included: “don’t leave the TV on 24 hours a day”, “don’t take hour long showers” and “don’t heat your living room to similar levels of warmth as experienced in the desert”. This made me wonder how stupid the government really think the British public is. Then I remembered that this is the age of brainstorms, think tanks and grass roots (whatever the hell those are), and that these sorts of operations have millions of the tax payers’ pounds thrown at them so that “extensive market research” can be conducted in order to “optimise the effectiveness of the campaign”. Well guess what, the fruits of their labour must have concluded that Britons are totally thick. Scarily thick.

Peak oil is something that we really need to be worried about. Our entire species has become addicted to the stuff and we depend on it probably even more than a heroin user depends on getting their next hit. You may be familiar with what happens to a human body when one tries to rehab from heroin addiction: it usually involves a reaction so violently unpleasant that people need to be locked away in their rooms and sometimes even strapped down to their beds. This is basically what is going to happen to the world - and I’m not even being slightly melodramatic or sensationalist. Oil powers almost everything we call “modern life”. It gives us electricity, powers our cars and trains and planes, heats our houses, packages our food and drink, builds our cities and it’s even responsible for The X Factor. And Justin Beiber. 50 years ago it seemed so abundant that we developed a culture of treating it like an infinite resource and, although we were all taught in school how it definitely IS NOT, the human race still treats it as if it is.

You’d think that with all the smart people in White Hall and Washington that someone would have noticed by now and started enacting changes to wean us off our addiction. Well, they’ve encouraged us to recycle and use energy saving light bulbs and they’ve even started handing out free energy saving kits.  The problem is that probably more energy was used to make the plasticy bits of the kit than the contents could ever help to save – totally useless. This goes for all the other half-arsed energy saving initiatives that our government employs. Basically, it’s the equivalent of attempting to treat a malignant stomach cancer with a glass of warm Ribena. There are a number of very complicated reasons as to why nothing serious has been done, but it all boils down to a systematic failure of what 95% of the brainwashed people of this earth believe to be the corner stone of modern humanity: the free market. Extreme right-wing capitalism ensures that those with the most money rule. Who has the most money? Well, it’s obviously the oil companies, seeing as they are the dealers of this drug we are all so fantastically fond of. Money is power and the result of this is that the governments of the world are mere puppets on the strings of their oily masters. And there’s no way they’re going to give up all that power so easily – even if it means the end of the world.

Meanwhile, here in Britain, we continue to drive around in our 4x4s and indulge in exotic fruits that we don’t even need that have used 100 times more energy to get to us from Guava than the energy they will actually provide our bodies and, basically, we don’t give a shit. The problem we’re seeing now is that the dealer is running out of stock and so he’s starting to massively raise his prices. When petrol is suddenly £5 per litre and or utilities bills double and all the shops have to raise their prices to cope with extra energy costs and no one’s wages are getting any higher because all our employers are dealing with the same problems... then we will see the biggest shift in standard of living ever experienced in human history. Maybe when most of us can’t even afford to feed or clothe ourselves; maybe then we’ll start doing something about peak oil.

Watch this film for more information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqy6717el78&feature=player_embedded

iPad 2 - The Best Thing Since Sliced Faeces

People of the world, stop what you’re doing immediately and heed these words, for there has come a new, revolutionary product from the geniuses at Apple Incorporated. Yes. the iPad 2 has been announced and, as predictable as it is that a cat will get pissed off if you apply selotape to its bum crack, morons and drones from across the western world have joined forces to waste their hard earned currency on pre-ordering this tablet-shaped scam. The iPad 2 boasts a “brand new design” – in the same way that one could create their very own “new design” by rubbing a brand new dress in a turd on the side of the street. Basically, by “brand new design”, Apple mean that they’ve made it about 2mm thinner (didn’t see that one coming) and added a basically useless HDMI output capability – and not even a hardware output at that, of course not, you’ll have to spend about £30 extra to buy the adapter. Doesn’t sound very impressive does it? That’s because it really isn’t. Heck, at the unveiling even Steve Jobs himself appeared nervous that this particular hustle was going to go tits up. But no, as rehearsed, his planted audience members started an appreciative, if tentative, round of applause when he announced these incredibly underwhelming additions to an already ineffectual appliance.

A few days ago I posted a blog which, I’ll be honest, was basically a rant about why I don’t like Apple. A lot of people agreed; some, however, definitely did not. Some pointed out that Apple products are not just bought by “starry eyed idiots drooling over anything that gets put in front of them that's in white or brushed chrome”. Others explained Apple’s popularity by saying “People pay more for nicely designed (and well marketed) products.” Both of these statements at least hold some truth; neither, however, could even possibly sway my position on Apple. The news about the iPad 2 provides a useful example as to why.

For a great many years now, big companies have been using a technique called “planned obsolescence” to ensure that they can squeeze as much cash out of their consumer puppets as possible. No company in the world exploit this technique to anywhere near as great an extent as Apple. A quick explanation: when you buy a high quality, highly priced product you would expect that the build quality would be of such great a standard so that you get your money’s worth. Wrong. Nowadays, things are designed to break; after all, why would a company just want to sell you something once that you’ll have for life? There’s no money in that – our economy relies on cyclical consumption. Apple couples this technique by releasing a very slightly altered version of their products approximately once every year. Just think about it. Why couldn’t the original iPad be 2mm thinner and have HDMI output? Do Apple seriously think we’d believe that one year ago there wasn’t the technology available to achieve that? The problem is that hardly anyone nowadays stops to think about this sort of thing because they’ve grown up in a world where it just happens and seems natural. And they fall for it.

So, you’ve had your iPhone for a year, it suddenly breaks, why spend all that money repairing it when you can just get the new one? And so the cycle continues. You may ask yourselves now: “Why is this bad? I’ve got the money. I don’t mind forking a bit extra out now and then to make sure I’ve got the latest gadgets.” Yes, that’s all well and good, but think about what happens to your old phone - it will very rapidly become obsolete and then be discarded. When you think about how many resources go into making phones and how many phones across the world are sold and then thrown away... that’s a lot of wastage, and unless you haven’t noticed, the world does not have an infinite amount of resources. This is all we’ve got.

This is why I hate Apple. It’s not about petty things like minor differences in operating systems or wanting to be the guy who bucks the trend and says “I don’t do Apple, man. Like, that’s so mainstream”. It’s because this consumer culture, of which they are the flagship company, is dangerously exploitative – not just of the public, but of the Earth. We simply cannot afford to support this economy of cyclical consumption otherwise, a few decades down the road, we will be living to regret it.

iTechnolemmings

First, a quick role play. Imagine you're a hard-working farmer who owns a small plot of land in Victorian England. Some bright spark, let's call him Mr. Clark, has recently managed to invent one of the first  labour saving devices that would go on to revolutionise the way in which human-kind exists; that's right, I'm talking about the tractor. It's a few years down the line and a couple of industrial types have cottoned on to his idea and are making their own tractors which mainly perform the same functions as Mr. Clark's original design but with a few differences. Most notably, Mr. Jobs has built one that looks slightly nicer and is apparently more reliable. So, as an up-and-coming upper-working class member of society you have decided to invest in one of these new-fangled contraptions for your own farm.


Mr. Clark's tractor does everything you want: it has big, sturdy wheels which are terrific for traversing tricky terrain and are easily replaceable if they get punctured; it has perfectly easy to use controls and a hook on the back for attaching trailers and it has a good sized fuel tank and takes regular diesel which you can buy from any petrol station (or maybe fuel merchant - to be honest I'm not sure how Victorians sold their fuel - forgive me).


Mr Jobs' tractor looks fairly similar, but it has rounded edges, which makes it look slightly nicer. It also has nice big wheels, but if they break you can't replace them, you just have to buy a whole new tractor. The wheels are designed to break after about a year, which, as it happens, is how long the warranty is. Coincidentally, Mr. Jobs plans to bring out another model of the tractor around about then in a slightly different colour and with slightly better steering.  The controls looks lovely; he's managed to fit them all onto the steering wheel, unfortunately sacrificing the gear stick, meaning the tractor can't reverse. Additionally, there isn't a hook on the back as standard - to get one of those you have to pay an extra 20 shillings - and he's insisted that the tractor will only run on fuel bought from particular petrol stations/fuel merchants, (addressed above), the profits from which he will take a 30% cut, meaning that it costs 30% more to fill up your tank.


Which tractor would you buy? I'm thinking the first one, funnily enough. Unless, of course, you werte in some way mentally challenged or, dare I say it, brainwashed. If you hadn't grasped the analogy just yet, Mr. Jobs' tractor is an Apple tractor and Mr. Clarks' is one made by any other manufacturer. This is exactly what millions and millions of people are falling for, hook, line and sinker, across the globe. Why? Are human beings really so incredibly shallow and fickle that they would sacrifice objective utility and common sense for the sake of something that looks a bit pretty? Or are there more sinister forces at work?


I'm not saying Apple are the only company that do this - I'm just saying that they're the worst at it. In a world where corporatism squeezes every last drop of capital out of the consumer public's succulent money melons Apple have bought and industrial juicer and are feeding millions of us in one by one. I say feeding... most people are just jumping willingly straight in - like iTechnolemmings. Seriously, it's like a cult. I know perfectly normal, intelligent, decent members of society who blindly buy whatever crap Apple release as soon as it's available and immediately pre-order its replacement. They are slaves to Apple. You ask them, "Why do you only buy Apple? You realise that there are other options which are cheaper and better designed? With more functions. And more apps and more games and better cameras and better screens?" And they blindly reply like helpless drones "I don't care. I like Apple. It's pretty."


SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY!? I mean, I bare no naivety to the tricks of the trade that marketing teams across the world have been brewing to influence us to buy their products for decades now, but this is something else. I also understand that humans are social creatures and when something becomes popular it's easy to just jump on the band wagon. What I will not tolerate is when someone asks me "what kind of music do you have on your iPod" - I do not have an iPod, actually, I have an MP3 Player, which is what an iPod is, unless you were for a moment confused that it might be some sort of ubiquitous mechanical deity.


So please. Everyone. I urge you. We've already sold our souls to the banks and the politicians but at least get them to leave you alone in your living rooms! Please at least reserve one scrap of your dignity before the rest of you is consumed by the commercial hordes and you end up buying an iCoffin for the funeral of your self-identity. 


THINK BEFORE YOU BUY.

Kitchen Prep

Hello to one and all and whomever else may be reading this! It seems like blogging is the way forward for any creative types who want to express their views and so I thought it was high time that I started my own. If I'm totally honest, this preliminary blog is more of a tester if not anything else... I mean, how is one supposed to go about starting a blog, anyway? It's not like a newspaper article where you cushion readers into the main themes with a snappy summarial (that should be a word) headline, or like a book where you surely have to start with some sort of exposition or other (unless you're a super-avantgarde writer like Dan Brown). At any rate, it didn't feel right to just jump in with any old topic and start spouting off like Dale Winton at a cocktail party he hasn't been invited to so, here it is, my introductory post. Maybe one day I'll look back on it when this blog has made me famous with a wry nostalgic grin as if to say "I remember you, you old dog. My first furore into the written abyss that is the world wide web. How naive you were in your first tedious steps; hovering over this literary e-chasm without even bothering to attach a bungee cord. You learnt, young me. You learnt." Well... either that or "you sound like a right twat".


Anyway, over the next however long I bother to keep this up I will post my writ and ramblings with regards to whatever topics take my fancy. They may be serious posts, they may be whimsical, they will almost always be satirical. So, if that's what you're in to...


WATCH THIS SPACE
(Well, the space above this one. Otherwise you'll just be reading the same post over and over again. And that would be lunacy).