Author Archive
Mad Men
It’s hit British TV already so I’m a little bit late but I’m delighted and enthralled by this “Desperate Housewives” about the Madison Avenue ad business in the early 60s. I think that the hiatus and hysteria that I participated in thirty years later in London was the fantasy fulfilment of those earlier years.
Mad Men is the story of Donald Draper, a handsome creative director (in the days when they wore suits!) who has everything: a beautiful, adoring wife; a beautiful, adoring secretary; a beautiful mistress who kicks him out even before he gets his breath back and a host of adoring colleagues and staff. He seems to have just one skelton in the cupboard: a long, lost half brother who he doesn’t want to know any more. The story is still unfolding but, thank heavens for the internet, I have the whole of seasons one and two waiting to be watched.
You have to be an ad man to get all the in jokes. If you don’t understand the significance of the DDB VW ads then you’ll miss out on much of the point of episode three. The indolence and last minute, off the top of the head ideas are the truth about the ad business as are the enormous quantities of alcohol and the pampering and pimping for clients. The almost constant cigarette smoking by every member of the cast is the truth about the 60s too.
So who put these ideas down on paper and sold them to the production company? It’s Matthew Weiner, writer of The Sopranos and, as far as I can tell, no background as an ad man so all credit to his talent as a researcher. It’s a great show and demonstrates the sort of quality TV that we just don’t do in the UK.
Women Are Violent Too
The latest strictly politically correct announcement totally overlooks, again, the violence perpetrated by deceitful, wicked women against men. I should know. I spent five years locked in an abusive relationship with an apparently charming and sophisticated “lady” who would frequently beat me with her fists and anything else she could lay her hands on.
I vividly remember the day I retreated to a mutual friend around the corner who received me hesitatingly, sceptically and then with horror as I revealed a fresh, massive bruise covering half my arm. “But she’s so sweet and gentle!”, she said. “I can’t believe it!” but there was the evidence in front of her.
On one occasion she beat me with a baseball bat until the blood drenched my hair and ran down my face. On another she chased me from room to room with a pick axe handle and an X-ray later revealed a fracture of one of my vertabrae.
So it makes me very angry when the media and the police talk about domestic violence as if it’s always men attacking women. Being a “battered husband” is much more common than I believed until I started talking about it. Women get away with it much more easily. They lie and weep and if you put your hands up to defend yourself then you’re the one who’s being aggressive.
Any violence is unacceptable but it would be good to see a more even hand smartly applied to what actually goes on in relationships.
World’s Worst Banker
http://www.worldsworstbanker.com/
I urge you to go to this site and sign the two petitions listed there.
The first is about the reduction of his pension. Personally, I think he should lose it all. I would have no objection to the introduction of the Fred Goodwin Pension Confiscation Act 2009. As the Prime Minister endlessly repeats: “These are extraordinary times…”
The second is on the Number 10 website and calls for the removal of his knighthood “for services to banking”… cough, cough, choke, gag, choke, cough…
Pundits talk about whether the future of democracy is in online participation. There’s no doubt that it is worth making the effort and signing these two petitions.
Cannabis
God's Herb
I have smoked cannabis since I was 14. There have been a few breaks, some of a few months, some of a year or two but those apart, I have smoked cannabis every day of my life for nearly 40 years.
I have come to regard weed or hash, in all seriousness, as the Rastafarians do, as “God’s herb”. It is a sacrament, a truly positive, honourable and precious thing in my life. Something that I thank God, I did not miss.
I grew up with smokin’ dope. It was a fundamental part of my adolescent culture with the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, with a heady summer living the love and peace dream in Amsterdam. LSD blew my mind in those days but a joint was always a sustaining experience. Something I held onto.
As I grew up and got interested in business, I relished the delicious and maverick escape that I enjoyed. I took it seriously and wrote a 40 page report for the Home Affairs Committee entitled “An Unaffordable Prejudice”.
The prejudice, misinformation and sheer nonsense has continued throughout my life. The idiocy of downgrading cannabis to a Class C drug and then, just two years later, back up to Class B is only outdone by the crass stupidity of failing to decriminalise it completely. Prohibition has proved time after time to be an ineffective solution. Worse than that, the law makes a complete ass of itself by sustaining the criminal supply and distribution of a product that is never going to go away.
Regulation is the only viable solution and would provide the framework to care for those very few who may suffer from cannabis use.
What are the dangers? Clearly any intoxicant offers more potential for harm when used by the young, when the brain is still developing. Despite my own experience, cannabis use should be for adults only. In adults it has been proved to be one of the least harmful substances known to man time and time again – despite the fact that most have actually set out to prove the opposite.
Recently the popular argument has been against skunk, a strain of cannabis that can be up to 20 times stronger than that previously known.
To claim this is a recent development is simply wrong. For at least 20 years it has been difficult to buy anything but skunk and other F1/F2 hybrids of the plant. There are many others: Northern Lights, Haze, Blueberry, etc. In my teens it was difficult to buy anything but Lebanese or Moroccan hashish. In Holland where the market is partly regulated there has always been a wide choice of grass or hash from all parts of the world grown and/or processed in many different ways.
The latest suggestion is that skunk is causing psychoses in adolescents – yet the incidence of psychoses in adolescents has remained constant since records began. This is just the lastest scaremongering. 60 years ago it was said that cannabis caused young women to be promiscuous with black men. The standard of the argument has not improved.
It really is time that this hopeless policy against a benign, natural herbal product was stopped. Hemp is one of the most ecologically friendly, sustainable crops in the world. As regulated cannabis it would pull the rug from underneath a great swathe of criminality and produce billions in additional tax income. As biofuel, building materials, fabrics and cattle feed it could help to revitalise agriculture and many other businesses.
Criminal Deception
In a cold hearted, clinical and utterly callous way, we must bring “Sir” Fred Goodwin to heel, to the gutter, to grovel and to ignominy as he richly and deeply deserves.
There are many ways that the government can do this. I suggest that the most effective is simply not to pay him and let him sue. This is a 
pragmatic and commercial approach but, irrespective of its outcome, simultaneously we must prosecute this fundamentally evil individual with all the vigour that honourable and decent society can muster.
If we force him to sue for the rewards of failure then he will have to make his case and I do not believe he wil be able to under the overriding doctrine of “reasonableness”.
However, in the interests of justice, denying him money is insufficient. Nothing less than criminal punishment will suffice. Surely, if our tradition of common law has any relevance, it must be able to sanction his behaviour.
Lawyers must consider whether there is a case for criminal negligence, for conspiracy, for perjury or for any derivative of theft. Our Judges must package his offences in a way that can produce serious and effective penalties.
Without doubt though this “man”, this “Sir” has deceived. He lied to the Select Committee saying that he had received no compensation for loss of office. He has cheated us all. Whether he retains his obscene pension or not he must be jailed. Only then will justice be done.
A Conspiracy Of Shabby, Venal Thieves
It is truly pathetic isn’t it to see these pathetic, small men grubbing around in the gutter to try and save themselves?
“Sir” James Crosby runs HBOS into the ground then bails out at the last minute to become vice-chairman of the FSA. You really couldn’t make these things up unless you were writing a Mafia or organised crime novel.
He becomes one of the Prime Minister’s cronies and overpaid advisors but then is caught out by the whistleblower who he sacked.
They are tumbling like nine pins now but who is still getting away with it? Who has been in post for longer than any of these bank robbers? Who was responsible for settiong up the regulatory system that has proved to be corrupt and incompetent? Gordon Brown, the worst, most corrupt, most incompetent, most myopic, most venal of them all.
There is no more time. This tyrant must be overthrown now. All these knighthoods must be withdrawn. Criminal investigations and personal bankruptcies must follow.
Out Of Touch With Reality
When “Sir” Fred Goodwin lost the plot this morning and started wandering off in his hallucinatory world about how he could legitimately re-package sub-prime mortgages as a AAA security, well then we saw the truth.
The man is stark, raving mad. He continues in his delusion that the world he helped to create makes some sense. He should be sectioned immediately.
Tiscali Dumps Homechoice
In this competitive internet world, what happens when your ISP (and your long-established email address) gets taken over or merged into another organisation?
In a market where there are no prizes for customer service at all, what can you expect from a provider who already has a reputation as the blackest of the black sheep?
When Tiscali took over Homechoice about a year ago, the Homechoice website continued up until early this month. Last year there was a downtime of far too many days on the Homechoice POP servers and all sorts of problems with trying to administer email accounts. There was no explanation at all, let alone any apology.
Early this month everything went down again for several days. When the POP server came back up the website had disappeared leaving just a re-direct to the Tiscali homepage.
Then last week everything stopped again. Emails to Homechoice support were returned as undeliverable and those to Tiscali went unanswered. I went to Tiscali’s PR agency and then direct to the Tiscali’s Chief of PR and my own email address started working again.
I discovered today that Tiscali has dumped Homechoice. Apparently “legacy” Homechoice email addresses have been ported over to Tiscali’s own servers but it’s quite clear that there will be noi more support for creating or deleting email accounts or changing passwords.
The Tiscali insider I spoke to said himself “You’d think they could have sent out a letter or an email or something”.
Unfortunately, of course, this is just par for the course for this industry and Tiscali’s reputation is such that it seems to set the standards for abysmal and irresponsible customer service.
No explanation. No communication. No apology.
What Can We Do About The Zionist Nazi Pigs?
Displaying their cynical cowardice and fundamental immorality, the Nazi Israelis withdrew their troops just in time for the inauguration. Behind them they leave a trail of war crimes for which they must be held to account. Any decent person would find it difficult to imagine how any group could behave so badly as to overshadow the evil perpertrated on them in the Holocaust but you bunch of brutal, evil thugs have surprised us all
Israel is now the Nazi power in the world. It is beyond forgiveness or redemption. Gaza is the new Auschwitz. The only difference is that your method of death is not Zyklon B. It may be bullet, shrapnel, falling masonry, illegal phosphorous bomb, starvation or something else.
Israel is running a death camp in Gaza and those responsible must be held to account as the Nazis were.
How Can the BBC Get It So Wrong Again…And Again
You’re going to be sacked now aren’t you Mr DG? What are you – some sort of Zionist Nazi collaborator? Your judgement is so poor, so out of touch, so utterly incompetent. Move on and let someone with some intelligence and wisdom take the helm of this great organisation that deserves so much better.
Peter Reynolds 