I needed to get out more

It's been a very fallow spell here on the QO blog. My life is so very ordinary that I've never thought of the blog as an online diary: why disturb all those electrons for something so deeply, deeply tedious from the point of view of the rest of the online world? And often pretty tedious from my point of view, too.

And yet, maybe we can add value in some small way by the recounting of a weekend well spent. If it doesn't add value, well, I don't really mind, and you can always register your protest in the comments. So here we go: the sort of weekend the QO really enjoys.

Friday: finish working mid-afternoon and head into town to RV with Mrs QO at the Canalhouse. Move on with some reluctance to the Trip to Jerusalem to meet other friends. Drink at least one pint too many before returning home for pizza with way too much Tabasco on.

Saturday: spring nimbly out of bed... OK, crawl reluctantly out of bed... and prepare to go out with Father of QO into the urban fringe countryside. Walk some six miles in glorious sunshine, spotting a hare and hearing the first skylark of the year. Arrive with enormous thirst at a real gem of a pub. Connoisseurs of Nottinghamshire pubs may be able to ID the place from this pic. Hint: to the west of the city, and sadly no longer the brewery tap.



Consume excellent beer and steak & ale pie with chips. Return home for a little restorative period of inactivity, then head out onto the local nature reserve for an evening stroll, enjoying some fine dusk music from the song thrushes and blackbirds.

Sunday: up at 05.30, out on another local nature reserve by 06.15 to hear the dawn chorus at full chat. Magnificent. Spend some time stalking a lovely fluid singer and eventually put the binoculars on a blackcap. Home to thaw out with freshly brewed coffee. Brunch of scrambled eggs and crisp bacon. In the afternoon, two hours of volunteer work on the reserve, pulling Himalayan Balsam seedlings out before they can get started, the little buggers. Enjoy not-too-stressful work in the sunshine, then repair to local for well-earned beers.

So, some physical exercise, some nature conservation, enjoyment of the local wildlife, plenty of beer and time with friends and relations. And sunshine. Sod politics, I'm intellectually downsizing, me.

Simple or simplistic?

I'm often droning on to Mrs QO (the only person who has to stay in the house and listen) and anyone else within earshot that one of the biggest problems facing our society is that too few people keep on top of current events and think about them. Vast numbers of our citizens (here we go, sit back and share the rant) sit in hideous sloth every night in front of some braindead nonsense on TV, read only one newspaper, if they can read at all, with no regard to why its content will be slanted and exercising no critical analysis or independent judgement... they will turn out to vote (if they can get off their lardy arses) and painstakingly pencil in a cross against the party they've always voted for, having read neither that party's manifesto nor any other... given a choice between long-term planning and cheap goodies now, they'll always take and consume with no thought for the next generation...

Why do so many people not think? Why do they not read something that might challenge their prejudices? Why don't they ever ponder whether their old tribal allegiance might be out-dated and harmful? Why cannot they get over 'gut instinct' and use their heads, just for a change?

I think I know why. And I may be feeling a little ashamed of myself for the holier-than-thou diatribe. (Not very ashamed, you understand, just a healthy amount.)

The world is a big place, and lots goes on in it. (Yes, the QO brings you the big insights. You heard it here first.) Only a generation ago, it was a real effort to find out any significant amount about what was going on and what other people thought about it. Nowadays, if you're the sort of person that tries to keep abreast of events and informed thinking about them, there's so much input that you can't possibly process it.

Take, as an obvious example, what's going on in Libya. Part of me is right behind the rebels and therefore applauds the multinational action in supporting them. But equally there's a despondent feeling of 'here we go again... post-imperialism... it's all about the oil... nobody has thought about what happens next'.

Another example: the big march in London on Saturday. I'm torn all sorts of ways here. If I went, which group would I join? I believe the State has got way too big, intervenes far too much in the citizen's private life, has eroded our civil liberties to a truly dangerous extent over the last 20 years and has bought votes with borrowed money that our great-great-grandchildren will be struggling to pay off. Offered and forced dependence on the State has brought about a weakness of character in our people, an inability to stand on our own two feet, an inability to admit that sometimes life isn't fair, but nobody owes you a living, you just plain get on with it. So I'd be happy on one level to be with the Census Rebellion in Trafalgar Square.

Against that, I'm desperately sorry for those thousands upon thousands of public-sector workers who are being thrown out of employment with little prospect of alternative work, I think the economic sins of the past are being addressed too quickly and with too little thought for the consequences, and - to be blunt - the collection of pigs now in power don't seem much different from the bunch of pigs that were snouts-down in the troughs of Whitehall before last May.

Om.

Om.

Beer.

It's difficult, isn't it? Too many for me, as Huck Finn would say. What is far easier to process is the warmer, brighter weather, the birdsong, the changing of the year. Those things our evolution has prepared us for and we react instinctively. This is where we can trust gut-instinct, and don't have to worry about being rational. Of course these things are good.

Perhaps our society has got so complex that we can't make any useful choices any more and will always lurch from one crisis to another, driven by the tiny few who are sure they know better than we do how we should all live. I give up.

What I think I do know is that I love the sight of spring blossom. That's going to have to do for the time being.

Perspective

One of my recent resolutions was to spend less time on the computer and more time reading. You know, good old-fashioned books, preferably from the public library, so as to help establish the demand for keeping them open. And I have indeed been reading. Some of it has been the literary equivalent of a Pot Noodle (trashy but momentarily satisfying) but I have also read some very thought-provoking stuff about American and UK politics, English culture (or lack of), the assault of the Blair administration on civil liberties and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, an old friend I've shamefully neglected for many years.

The net result of all that was so many threads for blog posts that I haven't known where to start, even assuming I wasn't reading books rather than at the computer. I suppose a very brief summary would be that, frankly, we can't trust any of our politicians; the country is on a downward spiral of unemployment, social division, and reduced public services; George Bush and Tony Blair should be done for war crimes; our children will inherit a lack of opportunity, a lack of belief in the future, ecological and economic collapse and drastically reduced standards of living; and people sure spoke funny in Mississippi way back in the day.

All this could make even the sunniest Observer feel that things weren't entirely great.

And so it was good to have a quiet evening out in town after work with Mrs QO, doing nothing more extravagant than having a couple of pints then supper at Wagamamas, where we had the added bonus of sitting in the window and watching the peregrine falcons up on the Newton Building. And then walking through the Square on the way for some liquid afters before a bus home. The Town House clock, the big wheel and the moon were all helping illuminate our city centre, and all seemed pretty much OK for the time being.

Getting a grip

The last month has been a very busy time, though not so busy that I couldn't have posted once or twice, I must admit. There's been a surplus of material and a lack of impetus... Mrs QO has had a significant birthday and the arrangements for the celebrations (and the clear-up operations) have been quite time-consuming. Work has also been available, and one has to do it when it is. My contributions to the 'Big Society' - which have been going on for 10 years or more before the bloody stupid label was dreamt up - have required some attention. Over and above all that, I've been getting interested and/or worked up about so many things going on that I've spent the spare time available at the end of the working day reading round various issues without making any comment here. I have managed one or two grumpy posts on some of my fellow bloggers' pages, laying down the law like a bad-tempered old git, but have neglected those few benighted souls who check in here regularly.

Sorry, guys.

By way of recompense, while I gather my thoughts, here are some gratuitous images. If you don't find any of these attractive, you don't belong in the human race.

Just saying.

Busy times

Various ongoing projects have left little time for blogging recently, and on the odd occasions I've started a post, writer's block has struck. As we all know, this is the Universe's way of telling you to shut up...

Until I get some thoughts lined up for something worthwhile, here's a very interesting read that I spotted on Captain Ranty's blog. Our current government likes to talk about 'what works', so it might be worth their while examining what New Zealand did to tackle its financial crisis and budget deficit.

Muddled thinking

Unison wanted to hold a march to protest against County Council cuts on 24 February. The police require them to have a gathering point that doesn't cause too much disruption, so the union applied to Rushcliffe Borough Council for permission to use the field by Bridgford Road, near to West Bridgford library.

Rushcliffe BC refused permission, and are reported by the BBC as saying: "... we do not want to be drawn into a political dispute - and as this would be a political demonstration, it is not considered appropriate to allow the park to be used for that purpose."

Somebody - and the Post attributes the comment above to Colin Bullett, deputy chief exec at RBC - might usefully have thought this through a bit.

Firstly, the protest against the cuts might be viewed as political, but only in the sense that any view about how the country works and is run is a political view. Feelings about the scale and speed of the cuts do not fit neatly into tribal party political thinking.

Secondly, on what basis is it appropriate for a publicly-funded body to forbid the use of publicly-owned space for members of the public to gather before a demonstration? No argument has been made by RBC that the gathering would have been dangerous, or would have caused significant disruption. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the refusal to grant permission is itself a political one, not a practical one.

Thirdly, if RBC was serious about not wanting to be drawn into a political dispute... well, that didn't go too well, did it? If permission had quietly been granted to use the field and the demonstration had gone ahead, just how much press coverage would have pointed out that RBC owned a piece of open ground that the demonstrators met on before moving off? Even the most desperate journo or blogger, casting about for half a story, wouldn't have been able to make anything of it, for heaven's sake.

But now even this desperate blogger has something to go at. Excellent. One has to wonder whether someone at the Big House with the green roof across the road had a quiet word with the good people at RBC...

Catching up

Well, hasn't January been busy. The combination of a three-week Christmas holiday and a perilously delayed tax return left me with no option but to burn midnight oil at a rate that must have had the good people of OPEC feeling well chuffed. But things are returning to what passes for normality in the Observatory, so I thought I'd give my regular human reader and dear old Googlebot a quick update on various items in the 'pending' tray.

Superintendent Helen Chamberlain of Nottinghamshire Police was, you may recall, caught giving it some serious miles per hour on the Epperstone bypass. I'd missed the story, but at her trial date in December she changed her plea to guilty and was duly sentenced: six points on her licence and over £1,500 in fine and costs. The district judge made some rather pointed remarks about the original decision by the police officer who stopped her but sent her on her way instead of reporting her for prosecution. I feel rather sorry for him, to be honest, even if it was a poor decision. I feel no sympathy whatsoever for the Superintendent; if she'd pleaded guilty from the outset (and I maintain she must have known she was well out of order) instead of trying to run a defence based on her own Force's radar guns being inaccurate, she'd have paid a third less on her fine and would have avoided the full trial preparation costs. And a deal of embarrassment. Two careers blighted, probably, and avoidably so if she'd had the cojones to wind her window down and say: "yes, I was well over the limit, and I believe it's your duty to issue a fixed penalty or a report for prosecution".

Moving on. The Salutation - oh, for heaven's sake, I don't need to hotlink this, it's right below this one - appears to have a chance of survival. Fingers crossed the plan can be made to work, though as I feared the future of The Royal Children seems very uncertain.

My schtick on Lord Mandelmort and Ed Balls (two down) was proved inaccurate very quickly. The word on Whitehall is that it was one of Ed Balls's 'special advisors' who fitted up Mrs Johnson and her close protection officer (f'nar) to the media. There are also rumours about Mr Johnson, but they are so scurrilous I couldn't possibly comment. At any event, it seems Ed Balls doesn't need Lord Mandelmort's help... cue Star Wars music and a thin voice rasping "you have learned well, my young apprentice..."

And now a few words about tax returns. Her Maj's Revenue & Customs (a fine body of computers and a couple of rather fetching terriers, if what I hear about staff cutbacks is right) are so obliging as to allow some ten months for one's tax return to be submitted. I naturally, therefore, left it until the very last week of that window to begin work on my sales figures and expenses for the tax year.

The word 'procrastination' derives from Latin, thusly:

'Pro' = for, until
'cras' = tomorrow
'tination' = oh, FFS, get on with it, you lazy sod

I may say, though, that I put great effort into keeping my tax affairs squeaky clean. I believe we should pay our due taxes if we believe in the provision of public services and public support for those who are out of luck and need help. On a pragmatic level, I can't be doing with being found out trying to fiddle a few quid and living the rest of my life on the HMRC shitlist. OK, the computers find it inconvenient to make house calls, and the terriers can only do much (particularly with the number of lampposts around the city), but they are rightly tenacious with known offenders. Such a pity, then, that at the highest level HMRC appear to be not so much terriers as poodles when it comes to Big Bizness.

If the ConDems are serious about getting the public to accept the private sector getting even more involved with the provision of services that we used to expect from the state, they'd better grip this one. I'm all for a liberal and straightforward tax regime that allows the economy to flourish, but one law for the ordinary citizen and another for Big Bizness is no way to run a country.

Well, that's me up to date.