Monday 30 November 2020

Lockdown laughter #88 nourishing my beard or straightening my hair

In the 1980's Deadbeat was concerned about the AIDS pandemic and 40 years on we've got another threat to the human race.

I cant help thinking our society has really moved on.

My Mum used to put curlers in her hair, but now it seems every household must have straighteners.

As for nourishing my beard, I feel we really have reached deeply into the grooming pot.

For years the pampering industry has failed to sell to half the population but now the products have moved on from Brute 88.

I never saw the need for shaving foam as I always shave in the shower whenever I shampoo. Unbeknown to me my Dad confirmed this has been his practice for a long time too. Its true he's as miserable as me!

We've not got a poodle pamperer locally but I know this is where Jackie sends me when I'm smelling too much.

So my question is two fold. How serious are we about pampering as an industry and how serious are we about sorting poverty both here and overseas.

Friday 27 November 2020

Sloganism and Just in time theories

I cant remember if it was Deming who was the advocate and often misquoted creator of "Just in Time" philosophies we studied in the 1980's, but its just another example of a theory being misunderstood.

What is really scary is my oft mentioned issue I have with marketing or even more accurately sloganism.

What's sloganism I hear you ask? 

Not another new word that doesn't exist until some idiot blogger with a keyboard adds 'ism' to the end of a quiet wee word. It's quite simply 1984 revisited. Remember doublespeak. Applications like changing the Royal Mail to Consignia followed Diageo even Curriculum for Excellence, which apparently is about education. Sometimes re-branding is good but mostly its just nonsense or abuse.

So Just in time is now an excuse to be wheeled out by governments who will tell you that carrying stock is an inefficient use of capital resources, just after they tell you about PPE or even BPE (cladding for buildings apparently).

Economists stock and trade is to identify the opportunity cost of one course of action against another. They compare what benefits accrue when certain actions are taken and what the negative impacts or costs are. The simple trade off involved in stockpiling bog rolls occurs because money in the bank at 0% interest is better invested in bog rolls.

Us punters looked on aghast as we heard that our hospitals' stock of PPE could be exhausted so quickly or more recently that we pay fortunes to friends of politicians, no mate's rates here. We probably carry a larger stock of poppies, although this is not a new problem. Ask all those in the trenches in WWI as news came through about problems in the supply chain for gas masks. Just not in time for too many of them.

Predicting when you need to stock up is what the retail world specialises in. The pandemic was well forecast, just check the press or the stock markets in January and February. Even if we had no plan surely the medical emergency would have got more than the slogan writers out.

Supplies of PPE require forward planning and that saves money but this government, like its predecessors dont like to invest in intangibles. The trade off, of being ill-prepared is paying higher prices. Had the government increased borrowing in 2010 to ensure Pandemic planning were protected the austerity gods of their party would've have voted it down. Instead, they just waved the axe and binned the plan. If the London Evening Standard makes any noise about PPE they should be rounded on by Londoners as the Sun was in Liverpool. The scandalous Grenfell disaster was a horrible demonstration of the abandoning of planning.

Its simply not vote worthy to say we have stocks of PPE, our supply chains for ventillators....etc etc. 

Sloganism, like leave the EU and put £888bn into our NHS are far more successful, so its not a big step to then make these slogans vague promises or downright lies.

Deadbeat has never said this is the best band in Scotland, but if it had, it wouldn't have mattered, a little hyperbole is good for the sales right?

So my point is quite simply this. Politicians are the last people you want making "Just in Time" decisions and as much as they do or dont want to 'front up' and 'take responsibility', they are ill equipped to help out. 

Their skill set is in the sound bite, the slogan and being elected, shows their success at this key politicians attribute.

Wading through plans that will impact in the eventuality of XY or Z is as far away as you can get from a politicians metier. The vote about leaving the EU was about winning the vote not about leaving. We are still negotiating to stay but on our own terms, ie that we've left but we still get to stay. 

Our society as Deming tried to highlight, has theories for efficiency. Making assembly lines more productive uses specialist suppliers now and guess what? They supply stuff. Unfortunately Government seems to employ people to specialise in messages. I wouldn't ask any politician for professional advice in anything other than slogans.

I cracked a joke the other day when somebody gave me a bag of coffee beans from a well known chain. I laughed and suggested if they'd brought me meat or veggie burgers from another well known chain, I wouldn't have thanked them either! If a retail outlet specialises in sourcing, then supplying a variety of beans or teas I might consider it a treat. 

There's a fine line between people who sell goods and those who source goods, its as narrow as the Champs Elysees!

So to conclude, Politicians sell and others do the work, like Astra Zeneca who are putting union jacks onto vials, a sorry message that needs flogged to death......

I've already said too much...now let's talk about the boundaries between streets.....

Monday 23 November 2020

Great moments from 2014

Vbcamino3.blogspot.com was where I was trying to finish TTC and kick a ball across Spain. The ball got signed loads and made it to Santiago.....the book got another 40,000 words but no closer to completion. It's now over 100,000 words and a complete rambling mess, just like me and it's now 72% complete. It was 75% complete in 2012......& 80% done in 2009 so soon it won't need done at all!

Wednesday 18 November 2020

Great strolls through history

Lockdown lunchtime retreat

A great venue for a lunch time pint, just don't forget your bungees

The penny drops as the mushroom rises

So often a metaphor for the 1980s written early 1981, released 1984. 

music genre - urban wasteland 
lyric genre - grass ain't always greener on the other side

https://youtu.be/NvwOKo21w3g

The song reminds me of Thatcher's Carnage, her Hiroshima. The laying waste to a country, her destruction of the region known as Scotland. If anything re-energised the SNP, the desire the independence, it was quite simply the casual economic experiment she performed in her testing ground. The alluring agricultural allotment as she would have thought after her bad Balmoral experience.

At the end of the eighties myself and my five siblings were all working outside Scotland two through choice and three because their company had relocated, only to return home, after helping with the transition, to a dole queue that had exponentially increased in the 10 years of the 80's.

It's a popular misconception that it was the old industries that were closed down. It's true that steel and coal were flattened like the ship yards but also the new industries like Silicon Glen where many companies also folded, or closed satellite plants and moving their people, back home. Shops that served communities, the cafes and bars, the post office, newsagents, grocers, florists, butchers, bakers, and off licences! Those same shops callously destroyed then are now the beating heart of the economy, the train commuter belt in London as we are reminded today, that served their bespoke passenger communities.  No, this is not new. The venues that miner's went to for a wedding, the local dress fitter, all these industries then, as now, that are the barnacles on our rotting boat. Yes, despair is not new.

A popular Economic misconception is that full employment is good and high unemployment bad. High unemployment is good if you are trying to pay less for your employees. Full employment is good if you're an employee as it means you can easily move job if you find yourself in a badly run one. We're heading for the former and the Government 's backers will be quite happy to see it that way.

The penny drops as the mushroom rises boomed out of the speakers in this house as Thatcher was sacked by her own party, as the digital decade clock ticked over, it was a fitting end to the '80s. She introduced the poll tax in Scotland, was rescued in 83 by an Argentinian Junta, nearly lost the 87 election to the rockstar King Kinnock, and then as we moved into the 90's, BOOM, the mushroom cloud could be seen over Downing street.

She was all alone, oh yes, all alone. "Her plane's away now, miles out of sight...", yes sounds like her ship had sailed and sunk like the Belgrano!

The song, written with deep roots in CND marketing, has  also adjusted well to being a love song in my life.

Teenagers, like me, really had little emotional intelligence. We latched on to things but had no idea. 

Frequently you found out the consequence of your actions and couldn't do a U-turn or felt boxed into the corner, paralysed by who you might offend, so just offend yourself. Freezing in the headlights or stubbornly sticking to your path, who knows, but admitting being wrong certainly wasn't high on the agenda. Going back cap in hand and apologising for being right was never a wise strategy, but cutting your nose off to spite your face was. Then there was no going back. Just ask Vincent Van Gogh which hand he answers the phone with. His penny dropped the day Alexander Bell walked through the door.

This could be splitting up with someone or even going out with someone. It could be jumping on a bus to go to a gig in London and realising that you had no money and not getting off in Edinburgh or Newcastle but carrying on in the hope that Merlin the magician might appear, or a genie and grant you 3 wishes. Clutching at straws you walked around London then got the overnight bus back, aye them were the days. Teenagers committing suicide had a hand in the song too.

It was quite simply, BOOM. A big crash wake up call.

With suicide you usually only get one bite of the cherry. You might not ever get to love someone again but at least you get to love somebody else, when you split up. You may go out or even marry someone but at least you can still divorce.  At least you'll have a dull day to remember the first trip to London when you never cut your losses and got off at the first stop. I can still hear the voices in my head saying I'd paid for a return to London so I'd get value from the experience, perhaps I did. Perhaps I learned to cut my losses.

There's some green shoots but there's none with suicide. I was lucky.

The song's subtext for me explored that against the background of needle exchanges across the table in a Pilton flat, it was a horrible song in it's despair. If you're the last one alive as the rest of the corpses start to rot, it's a bit of a BOOM moment. When Trainspotting came out it was a flashback another BOOM!

https://youtu.be/NvwOKo21w3g

With every verse and chorus you feel there's a chance for redemption and the yet it never happens. Its relentless because it was, like lockdown.

"We are all doomed Captain Mainwaring" 

It's what the 80's were about for many.

Hiroshima & Nagasaki were destroyed and 'lest we forget' the bomb could have been dropped 20 miles outside and the destructive power been there for all to see, but it wasn't. It was dropped to create maximum civilian death, commonly known as a war crime but rarely discussed that way. 

I think the western teaching is that we did the Japanese a favour by finally winning the war and initiating regime change. We kick started their economy as they started from such a low base they employed new technologies, not the quill and ink pot for them. Pump action parker pens please! A philosophy that Empress Thatcher employed in the UK, well the destruction anyway, she just presumed that capitalism would create new industries. She had a few blind spots, and I do laugh wondering what her response would be to someone in cabinet proposing "Furlough". 

The penny drops as the mushroom rises is a magicians cape trick.....or when you open the box after sawing your friend in half, you look again.....it's not the same!

There's been a few economics collapses since and the boom bust nature of our economy demonstrates its structural sensitivity. The blatant bias of by those purporting to set the test reminds me of a famous magicians trick where you end up telling them the answer but you still feel they worked it out all on their own through magic.

I've written before about 2006-2008 and how borrowing stats stopped getting reported in 2007 as they ceased to be relevant by those making the most out of concealing them. Its like businesses talking up turnover as if they were money launderers. Who cares how much cash you've turned over, if you dont have a profit at the end then you're either lying, stealing or really shit at making money so hopefully you're in a charitable business like writing a fanzine. I had a joke about God's banker but making a profit is key to distributing the word, so I'll leave it for now The great thing about writing is that your audience gets to write their own punchlines. Economics can be about markets reaching perfect balance, but never getting there, writing is such a democratic genre, every reader chooses their own ending. A bit like Presidents at election time. So many illegal ballots but do you only count some illegal ballots, and how costly do you make elections. I used my brother's card when I was 17 as he was out of his tree somewhere and there was an hour to go. Yes it was illegal, but who cares, Ancram lost and 1979 seemed brighter, the tories were booted out of Scotland, "oh no they weren't!" said the pantomime villain as she developed her testing ground.

I'll digress a bit about Deadbeat and why, during the inflationary times of the 80's, we never doubled or tripled in price from 10p. I just realised, I wrote earlier about getting on a bus to London, and my emotional intelligence. Deadbeat moved from being a hobby, to a potential career, to a hobby, a charitable thing and then we ran out of time and money!

In the current covid situation I see a lot of the Mushroom Rising but rarely does the Penny Drop. Its quite alarming that we'd all diagnosed it from our living rooms back in April and yet still the mushroom clouds keep rising. Popular Party Politics is about presentation of the facts and the truth is a mind numbing distraction from the message. In the 20th century we developed a blame game, Thatcher saying Labour isn't working is a popluar slogan of the 1979 election when 1m people were unemployed. By 1983 with the number over 3m, the unemployment issue was no longer deemed relevant. Voters don't understand the stats they're producing and so they've always got a new set they prefer to get their message across. Latterly its about counting jobs created, regardless of whether its 1 hour a week on minimum wage or not. It's like watching Economics being destroyed again by rhetoric. The 21st century isn't about the blame game, its about the message. Just talk about your successes whether they're true or not. If you say it often enough some people will believe you and the rest you can disregard as conspiracy theorists, hmm, sounds familiar.

In April we knew that we'd not closed our airports early enough or done the simple thing of resurrecting a plan we binned in 2011. While pubs, shops, hairdressers and physios to name but a few would take your temperature as you entered their space, little did we know we'd still not done anything at airports. For a party built around Brexit and controlling borders it seems astonishing that countries in central Europe closed their airports and yet we freely encouraged passengers from around the world to pretend we were open for business to the world. Too many drugs in Parliament or in the cabinet office? I couldn't possibly comment but I would like to see the police stop and search more ministerial cars. They find more than 10% for sure.

We know that tracking and tracing was inadequately resourced and our health service had a shortfall of resources. It had neither the equipment, drugs, testing or staff to fight it. 

So which do you guess is more lucrative?

Sourcing more staff to handle the increased volume at the hospitals and overspill bed? Dont be silly there's no money in HR.

PPE - face masks, gloves, random specifications and emergency pricing? Now we're talking. 

We can thank all the volunteers doing facemasks for free while trousering £millions. 

The financial mushroom just rises and rises and rises!

https://youtu.be/soh7i7QrOhA

Dont worry about the track and trace we can talk about developing a new app. Use technology buzzwords, GPS location etc. Pokemon covid.

So in April we obviously had teams working on our 2 year road map, on our 1 month plan and our daily emergency situation.

Oh, you mean the short medium and long term plan? 

No I mean the long term plan, the really long term plan and the absurdly unpredictable 1000 years war plan.

Lifting their noses out of the trough, I faintly heard some mangled snort about PPE's very profitable. 

I've asked that the governments across the world take a weekend off to recharge their batteries. Some are in the eye of the storm and dont realise as calm as they feel it is, its not calm. Others are in a completely different place with fingers in the dyke or with the pied piper elsewhere and its mayhem.

All the while, the public are fed a diet of facts that produce a fiction as democratic as any good writer could achieve. Yes, one piece of information can now be interpreted by as many people as read it. This then leads to breaking or adhering to principles as your circumstances allow or dictate. My favourite is using percentages to say how much something has jumped by when the underlying numbers are rising from 3 to 6. Yes 100% increase! When it falls from 6 to 3 its only a 50% decrease so the message moves accordingly.

In my case I have different bubbles of people I'll see, much as I always did, except I used to call them pals but now they are bubbles with venues getting evaluated on the basis of how many of the regulars I know.

My sport is now restricted to digging at the allotment, walking and golfing. I gob too much when I run so jogging is banned. I've got a few pals I go walking with and we do the jakey thing of finding a decent spot to open a few tins and chunter away. Lots of great places I've seen recently, although the Tiger Bar is still my favourite. Jarv and I meet there, its in the woods above the Hermitage of Braid. I'm not giving you the map reference or you might join us and burst our bubble! Ha Ha I knew I'd get that one in.

I like a pub crawl, I've been on one for 40 odd years, so nowadays its in Midlothian or on the John Muir way. You have to carry your own beer, CYOB, but you can bring olives and sandwiches which aren't allowed if you were just going to the pub. Everywhere's a beer garden, I announced as we sat on a log in the woods outside Dalhousie. We looked like builders on the girders, in the famous rockerfeller centre picture.




Tuesday 17 November 2020

Lockdown laughter #71


Imagine if you can, being stuck inside an aircraft for 6 months just because you tested positive for Covid-19.

What's more imagine the laugh when they realise it's a false positive!

Ok its a space station so they've got a sofa and a good view....


Wednesday 11 November 2020

Is it the glue or the stickiness

As you get into your 50s you wonder what the glue was that kept friendships together then as you head into your 60s you wonder why glue has been replaced by stickiness when it comes to websites.

This isn't a jargon busting exercise but it does make me chuckle. 

It's like perceived truth that makes me chuckle too.

Back in the days of Deadbeat many of the interviews followed a very similar pattern as bands largely wanted control, artistic control, over their destiny. Never for a second did they realise that they were dealing with a music industry where their's was a fleeting moment, while the company execs were in another game, a long career game.

Many bands got single out or an album some got distribution deals but most of them enjoyed the journey. Manny still play today in between shifts working in banks bars or care homes. Some are even residents in the care homes. That's rock and roll with 2020 hindsight.

I chat with my dad regularly about the bands of the era and when I tell him their names he's no idea. When we discuss glue He talks about the many friends that he still has at 88 and how the glue that kept them friends was a hobby, a person, a situation, a reunion.....There was always a glue. The bond that kept them together. 

I remember laughing in 2000 when we were discussing stickiness on the website. For all technology moved us forward to see the word glue replace by stickiness always had me doubled up. So we've gone from one some syllable to three syllables and a word that conjures up some mental image best forgotten.

My 37-year-old self would say technology I'm clearly too old for it, while rolling about laughing at some 27 year old techie. I'm sure nowadays it would just be an emoji of a horse in a compromised position, so that you could either think glue or stickiness

Friday 6 November 2020

RIP Alan Mackie

Not many people know that Alan liked to do a doodle or two and when Deadbeat first hit the streets, in 1982, a teenager called Al drew a glass or two and the hiccups heading as well as the first Deadbeat cover title.

He's pictures 2nd from the right next to Roger Downing who's wearing quite a natty one sided mohican for a game at the eden in St Andrews back in 2011.

Today at 12 he left us via a Lisbon cremotorio (which incidentally is still on fire!) 

We light a candle at Deadbeat and remember all the fun through the years

Wednesday 4 November 2020

Look down laughter #33

I love irony and when the people shouting about lockdown are people who spent their life breaking the law try not paying the proper taxis I do sense some irony.

I want to shout at them just ignore the f****** law it's not as if you were a law abiding citizen.

Why are you morning about people not being allowed to come into your house you used to have people coming into your house and telling them to pay cash. You used to go to people's houses Do jobs and then tell them they'd get a discount if they paid you in cash.

All the time out of NHS was underfunded did any of these people feel the need to pay a bit more than tax.

What makes me laugh so hard my sides hot is that they suddenly want to obey the law.

We are supposed to drive at a maximum of 20 miles per hour or 30 miles per hour or even 70 miles per hour yet how many people take it upon themselves to break the law.

So when the law tells you not to have someone in your house don't do it everyday and don't have 20 which is like doing 110 on the motorway or 40 mph outside of school.

Why is up people The law is there to guide our society Don't pick and choose the ones you obey!

Right I better find a tree so I can pee behind it as there's no toilet nearby!

Monday 2 November 2020