about them sexed up ten pound notes

hi there


so recently i, look you see, got some of them fancy new £10 notes. if you are a bit lost about that, here in England (and Wales, but Scotland and Northern Ireland do their own bank notes) they are gradually replacing the shape, style and nature of bank notes what represent coins of money. it is a security measure change, mostly, but one which has upset vegans. my basic understanding, however, is that normally it does not take too much to upset this important element of our society.

one of the more interesting aspects of these new notes, to be sure, is how they have upset an entirely different group of people. whilst some of that group presently offended might well be vegan it is not exclusively so. let us look at this, together in a way, and see if the upset is misdirected.

the provenance of my brand new banknotes? one of those automated teller machines, or if you will atm things, or even the "hole in the wall" if you are old school, of my preferred bank. which bank is that? well, as per a recent and quite widely read post, it is not a Spanish one. but, well, we move on.

my first action with one of these new notes was, and forgive the predictability of it, to purchase some items off of Poundland. this led to me being somewhat crestfallen and deflated. i, as usual, engaged in some friendly chitchat of a conversational nature with the lady who served me (and others) as a teller. when it came time to pay the lady i, in a jolly way, mentioned how this was the first time i was using one of the £10 notes. rather than be polite, the lady said how they were now old news to her, and that they had handled hundreds of them in the last week or so. oh.

 yes, it would have been nice if she had continued to be polite and courteous in a response, but one cannot fault her brutal honesty. moving on once more, then, and the great controversy surrounding these somewhat shiny new £10 notes. well, the controversy other than whatever it is about them which has touched a nerve for vegans, again.

indeed, to be sure, the new bank notes feature celebrated author Jane Austen on them. this came about after, you would think, some significant deliberation. with the proviso that whoever featured must be both British and dead i have every confidence that a number of candidates were considered. just as well these changes happened when they did, then, for there was a dangerous, in retrospect, window in which Jimmy Savile may have been on the consideration list.

the controversy is not, happily, about the selection of Jane Austen as such. it is, after all, something of a universal truth to say that she is regarded as one of the finest writers the world has had the pleasure of reading the works of. no, what is causing the upset is the allegation, suggestion or perhaps proven point (i really cannot be bothered to check) that they have "doctored" the image of Jane Austen on the banknote. which is to say that they have, in some way, "sexed up" her appearance.

should it be glaringly obvious why the person on cash issued by the Bank of England should be British or English then it might be of interest to know why they must be dead. quite simple. it is supposed to be only our reigning Monarch who features as an alive and well person on such. this used to be the rule for stamps too, but i note over the years Royal Mail seems to have brought about a change to this.

right, anyway, this "sexed up" business. and it is a business, for it would be disrespectful to those with a genuine displeasure with it to call it nonsense. whilst alterations to a so-called "classical" portrait of Ms Austen have been made, there's nothing to say that they have not been done so as a security measure. subtle changes to a widely distributed image would, you would think, make it all the more difficult for counterfeiters and other such scoundrels. although they could just make copies off of the new notes, i suppose.

more importantly, though, i suspect those berating the "sexed up" image of Ms Austen on the bank notes may have missed a few things in her works. most, of not all, of her works were purely sexual. they celebrate sexualists, praising them for their skill, prowess and indeed letter writing abilities. sexing up that which is already highly sexually charged seems to me if not impossible then quite a natural progression.

you would also have to wonder if them people what do banknote designs have any realistic grasp on what "sexed up" would involve. most bankers and bank people, and i have known many, have some pretty peculiar, although i hasten to add rarely upsetting, ideas on what is and what is not sexy. this is at the least when measured against the commonly accepted definition. to the average senior figure in the financial or banking world who has been there for most of their life, yes, it is true that they probably considered the old £10 image of Charles Darwin to be the epitome of male manliness and sexual attraction. the frown is, most probably, the key to this interpretation. for them, not me.

in terms of just how sexed up Ms Austen in her works was, is there a modern day comparison? well, so far as my imagination goes, i would like to say she was the David Lee Roth of her day, but such is the way of cultural appropriation that you get negative responses when you credit a lady for being similar to a man for comparison on a sexual level. that said, if back in her day someone - her manager, wielding whatever they had prior to cricket bats, for instance - had said "Jane, baby (or 18th Century parlance equivalent), this Pride & Prejudice is a bonzer smash (see previous brackets). instead of a book, though, why don't we turn it into a rock opera? you could tour music halls, performing it as you dangled above the stage swinging about on ropes, wearing leather trousers with the backside removed?", she would have considered it, at the very least.

so who will be on the back of the £20 note? no idea. as they have shown, with Winston Churchill (the actual Winston and not how Spiros refers to his gentleman parts) on the £5 note, that they are prepared to consider iconic and important figures from 20th Century England then maybe they will go more contemporary. perhaps David Bowie, or Lemmy, or even Guru Josh would be excellent choices, but they might get criticised for being "populist". maybe Laurence Olivier or David Niven, then, which would make for a most dapper looking banknote.

well, sitting here writing this is not going to get these notes spent, so that shall do for now.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a billion balconies facing the sun

hello again


a little while ago i, look you see, wrote one of those rambling things that i do. in this instance it was about the quite difficult to fathom trend of blaming librarians for the books people read, or if you like blaming "the internet" for the actions of people. i note with as much dismay as i do interest that this trend would seem to be going to go on for a little while just yet, then.

but first, clarification. no i do not believe in some sort of "internet free for all" whereby all that is illegal remains freely available. further, i absolutely do not condone nor support these cowards that use any sort of resource to harm others. it is with reason i sign off (most of) my blog posts the way i do, you know. can't we all just get along?

carrying on then and i noted, over the course of the last week, that this "blame the internet" thing is spreading as an idea for all that is wrong in society. there has been a movement or expansion, though, as it would seem Amazon is getting blamed just as much as Google.

do bear with me, in a little while we shall get to what that headline on The Sun, stacked here for convenience with newspapers, s a "follow up" to in terms of their ace investigation.

every news and media source is presently "seeking angles" on this horrid incident where some thankfully incompetent, even more cowardly than usual as they didn't have the guts to be a suicide bomber social misfit tried to set off a home made bomb on a train in Parsons Green. the most popular angles would seem to all have a significant degree of blame for "internet". to them internet must stop it, whatever it is that it does, and then no one would want to cause harm, or at least not be able to do so. oh, for a life of such simplicity.

for a few days now the coverage has been "how easy" it is to find the instructions to cause harm via using Google, the world's most popular search engine. now the attention is on "how easy" it is to purchase instruments of darkness, which is to say everyday things that you can use or otherwise combine to make weapons. Amazon, being the leading global grocer, is but of course the target for the "journalistic investigations" into just "how easy" Amazon lets you buy, for example, a bomb.

goodness knows that i am not an overt fan of Amazon. they were smart, but after they'd smashed all their competition they did that thing where service levels dropped and prices rose. alarmingly so, in both instances. but to blame them for selling things - the entire purpose of their business - is a trifle silly. this is all the more true when the items purchased, either by sad cases looking to do harm or "journalists" doing "investigation", have an entirely legitimate, non-harmful and perfectly legal intention.

hopefully, as an aside, one or two of you have noted the interesting alphabetical approach to paragraphs thus far. good if you have, for this means that i can stop any time i like as somehow i doubt that i can carry on with it.

i would have thought, to be sure, that these part time extremists purchasing their devices of harm off of the internet, in particular Amazon rather than this so-called "dark web", was a very good thing indeed. why? not for the sake of Amazon's profits, as jealous as the newspapers might be of such. no, the reason for me saying that this is surely a good thing is that it means those who purchased it can be all the more easily traced, and they so kindly give a paper trail of evidence in respect of their guilt.

just think about this. the journalists didn't and presumably won't think that their readers would either. if you purchase off of Amazon, or any such legitimate online store, you need banking details. that's a debit or credit card, or even one of these fancy new things like a PayPal account. there's all your personal details, chap. further, you have to give them a delivery address. so even if you elect not to have whatever you've ordered delivered to home you still have to get it sent somewhere. and so the authorities - the constabulary and beyond - are gifted a lovely starting point for tracing your steps and finding you.

kindly indulge me some, then. should i wish to buy things that i might be doing less than legal stuff with it is highly likely that i would not make it quite so easy to trace it back to me. whatever equipment i needed would be stuff that i drove around, even if it was dozens or maybe a hundred or so, miles to purchase from different places. also, i would pay in cash. beyond being tax free, cash is relatively difficult to trace as such. questions are seldom asked when cash is presented as a payment method.

likely, as in very. no doubt some "journalist" might stumble on this blog post and declare that the last bit above is guilty of inspiring would-be types to purchase things in a more difficult to trace way. erm, yeah, ok. that's after they have encouraged them to do the same off of Amazon, though, isn't it?

my feelings are a mixture of animosity, jealousy, bitterness and disappointment that someone ordering stuff off of Amazon is now considered to be not just investigative journalism but front page journalism, if you please. how very sad, and what a slap in the face to the legendary journalist investigators of the past. 

no, yes, go on then. if you cannot beat them, join them. what counts for "journalists" these days, and not these ghastly individuals who wish to cause harm. i have, with some five minutes on my hand, gone off and investigated other means of harm what you can buy off of the internet and have delivered to you. let me see if i get any messages asking if my research can be on the front page of a national newspaper, or failing that The Sun.

obviously the first place i started off was the device one needs to engage in such darkness, according at least to newspapers and Theresa May (she never come to harm). yes, a fancy calculator, or if you like a computer sort of device.

particularly scary, this. look at that. i can get a device which lets me on an "internet" for south of £100, in some instances even south of £61 (ex p&p). for that money i can be up and running, getting information on how to do harm, ordering things to do harm with, reading newspaper websites that would seem to influence and how i think. also, i could get up to all sorts of mischief with it, doing things like, i don't know, hack people's private email accounts and phone messages.

quite co-incidentally, look at what other harmful things i could be getting off of Amazon in particular and the "internet" in general. yes, one of the most harmful inventions ever - books.

sure, it is a happy co-incidence that i by random chance found a whole load of books about Rupert Murdoch to illustrate the dangers of using the internet. but, that's the hand in play. if we stick with this example, we find it is a good one. if you got these books and read them you might be able to follow in his footsteps, doing things like [text removed on legal advice] in order to secure power, influence and wealth.

to say that it is just Amazon who is guilty of selling possibly dangerous stuff is wrong. it is wrong of the newspapers, wrong of printed matter such as The Sun and thus wrong of me. let me make amends in some small way, then, by looking at the means of harm that one could purchase from other website.

under this idea, i found myself quite by chance on the website of The Sun. needless to say i was horrified by what i could find to buy. not that i would buy of course as these prices are clearly highly inflated. but still. how brazen of them to sell vessels such as mugs. what is there to stop me buying one of these, filling it with boiling liquid and throwing it over someone? also, i could fill it up with some sort of corrosive acid and use this as a weapon.

verily, surely, is how The Sun will react to the above. i am sure they had absolutely no idea at all that they were as guilty as Amazon, in their assessment, of selling things which people could misuse to cause harm with. no doubt the editor, or whoever, with contact the constabulary or other such internet police at once and request that they come to investigate them.

writing. that is another thing what the internet, and Amazon, "let" people do. through an internet or if you like Google search and a browse of Amazon, you can find the means to get things what let you write things down.

xanthic is indeed how i would also describe the yellow colour on Amazon stars, i am glad you agree. so anyway, can there be any worse crime that Google, "internet" and Amazon allow than to let people write things? if you go around letting people write, you encourage them to compose their thoughts and ideas on paper, leading to the possibility that they might share such thoughts and ideas with others. no newspaper would encourage this. we know as fact that Theresa May (she never come to harm) is very much against this sort of thing.

yes, then, that would be that. bravo to the journalist who somehow got paid - and a front page exclusive - for discovering that you can buy things off of Amazon. you have surely made the world a better place. perhaps i am being amiss - maybe The Sun elected to have an entire team of crack investigative journalists carry out this work to reach the finding.

zigzagging through what i have written here it feels like it's laboured, disjointed and spends too long trying to make the same point. sorry about that, but thank you for reading anyway.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fourth fair

heya


and so that time has been once more, look you see. no doubt it shall come again, but for now let us reflect on that which has happened. what i speak of is the annual event called Stokesley Fair, reeling around as it does in celebration of the, well, celebrated Stokesley Show.

this is all, as usual, really just for friends and family around the world to see what we are up to, and indeed how the boys are getting on. but, then again, if you're now in a different corner of the world and have found this whilst doing a reminiscing search for the fair, welcome!

here we are, then, at the start of the fair. in every sense i guess. from this point down the main road through Stokesley is closed for the duration of the fair. we were also there for opening night. traditionally, or if you like usually, this first night sees the rides be the cheapest, and there's a sort of tacit, unspoken agreement that this evening is when families come along, leaving the other nights to all others.

i would suspect that the title tells you as much, but all the same this was then the fourth instance of the boys attending Stokesley Fair since we moved home. for my (considerably) better half it was the fifth, and for me, well, i have been more times that i think i would care to count!
 

a decided and declared favourite of the boys at Stokesley Fair - and any other such fair styled concern we may visit - would be the "fun house" or "house of fun" style attractions. except not in the way what Madness sang of, thank you. 

how much does a ride, or if you like go on an attraction, cost at Stokesley Fair these days? famously the pricing tends to increase as the week progresses, with the Friday and Saturday being the most expensive. which will be interesting. here on the Wednesday prices were around £2.50 or £3 flat a go. the bumper cars (see below) were a quite reasonable £3 for 2 in 1 car, as it happens.

i didn't think the pricing of the rides was overtly extortionate, but my Dad did as i messaged him from the fair. he spoke of rides being a very small number of shillings when he was a lad that went there. gone are the days, i would speculate. although, you never know - post Brexit there really isn't going to be any need for us to retain the ways of decimal money, i guess.

yes, my (considerably) better half and i, taking one of them selfie things as we awaited the boys to complete their adventures on one fun house thing or another. i know you would prefer to have no pictures of me on here, so just concentrate on the other person in the above.

whilst the price of rides and attractions was not entirely unreasonable the dining facilities on offer were perhaps not so much this. although i accept that all of us need to make a living, £2.50 for a gesture of a handful of frozen chips quickly fried did strike me as potentially somewhat exorbitant. but, you know, in the spirit of the carnival atmosphere i did not complain or cry too much. ok, maybe slightly too much, but still.

Diddycoys is what my Dad says that Gramps used to call the touring operators and proprietors of the fair. he also apparently said, and i can hear his voice in this, that they "could strip out a field of potatoes without disturbing the green tops".  whereas i didn't see any such dishonest behaviour myself, perhaps it happens in isolated incidents. i think that when people think of carnival workers they think of the stealing, conning and sexual assaulting ways of Ringo Starr and David Essex in the film That'll Be The Day. sometimes reputations stick to things.

but, back to pleasanter things, really. above sees the boys in an image of their second most favourite thing at any sort of fair or carnival event - the big massive "bouncy slide". this is awesome. somewhere a genius decided to add together the magic of a slide with the wonder of a bouncy castle.

hopefully you are looking at this on a platform or device what allows for video to be played, for surely some video clips are now to come. to start off with here's James on the bouncy slide.

and of course, for good measure, here is one of the times William came belting down it.

some of the boys' friends were at the fair too. quite a few, actually, accompanied by one or more parents and other such family members. a number of parents looked in wonder at the ways in which James and William elected to come down the slide, but also instructed their children not to do the same. which is fair enough.

with the old favourites seen to it was time for the boys to try something new. this next one is one that they didn't look twice at, but i suggested that they give it a go. as far as i am aware this is then one of those happy incidents where the boys were quite glad of the advice of their Dad. 

yes, some sort of rounder bumper cars. actually they look like "hover bumper" cars but i am quite sure that they have wheels underneath. in essence i believe they are variations of bumper cars intended for the younger members at attendance at the fair. younger than James, perhaps, for as you might see he could not quite fit into it.

and yet the boys both declared this one to be quite spectacular fun. this you can see, should technology allow, in the below video of them in action on this particular attraction. 

it was after a hugely satisfactory and very successful go on those rounder, well protected bumper cars that the boys declared it was time to try the "real deal", so to speak. yes, full on proper bumper cars, or "dodgems" as i gather they are called from time to time.

no, i have no idea how i managed to get that photo either, but it is quite good, isn't it? i have often wondered how them photographers manage to get an image of someone in focus with everything else blurred. my experience is, then, that the answer to such wonder is luck.

you can quite clearly see me not in one of the bumper cars. William and my (considerably) better half took the controls of one, whilst James was in the other. i suspected that my size was of a nature too large to be comfortable in one. and anyway, riding in one and getting smacked about would probably have done my spine no favours at all.

of course there is some video of them on the bumper cars. it's also the last video on this blog post, so i do hope you can watch and further hope you enjoy!

going on the bumper cars is one of the more ambitious things the boys have done at any fair we have been too. they have always looked wary, or simply not interested, in the more thrillseeking and potentially dangerous sort of ones. these things change over time.

i suspect it shall all change for James sooner rather than later. he's getting older, to be sure. perhaps as soon as next year it won't be us as a family go to the fair as much as it will be we drop him off with his mates and keep a distance so as to not "cramp his style".

to this end, he very nearly expressed an interest on going on this particular ride. 

yeah, that's one of them relatively safe things where you are raised to a great height and then dropped with rapid speed, ostensibly with it being unlikely that harm befalls you. but it feels like it shall. how strange that they have called it Vertigo. if i was going to name a fairground or carnival ride in honour of U2 then i am not certain that i would select that particular song.

no, James did not go on this ride. at least not this time, despite me offering to pay. as mentioned above, i have little doubt that next year him and his gang of mates will be piling on to this one and similar.

with it being likely that next year James wanting to be at the fair but not with his family like some sort of totes dorky nerd i thought that this year i'd best get a family selfie, then.

whilst i know you appreciate the 75% of that picture which doesn't feature me thank you for being tolerante. i feature in just the one more image, towards the end, so you have been warned.

summer would be pretty much over, then. that's normally what the coming of Stokesley Fair signifies. as you can see in the above, and the pictures to follow, the sky was getting quite dark. and this was all at around 7pm, where we had been enjoying sunlight until 10pm and beyond. just now, around the end of October and in particular when the clocks change, our world shall be in darkness for most of the time.

 

what reason is the above picture featured? no particular reason, i suppose. if for some reason you wanted to see what my (considerably) better half looked like stood in front of a vehicle normally used by the constabulary, there you go.

outside of the rides the boys took to some games of chance. invariably these offered one the chance to win an item that would cost £1 off of Poundland for a fee of up to 300% of that price. the "hook a duck" stalls in particular were, if this is the correct word, guilty of this, as they charged £3 a go. some of them, however, were fun to play.

like this one above. on this one you had to climb the rope ladder and ring the bell to win £10, with the trick being that you could not fall off of it on your way. as you got 3 attempts for an entry fee of just £1, that was not bad at all. but no the boys did not win.

oh, look, a branch of them lovely people at Santander is behind this particular funfair attraction. since it has come up, i would like to thank all of you for the support and kind words of encouragement relating to this blog post that i did. the more i have learned of their ways of treating clients and the contempt they have for staff then the more i am aware of how lucky i am they let me walk out of their doors, no matter how much i could have brought. off life goes.

and of course life went on, in a circular way, to end the evening more or less as we started. to the extent, at least, that the boys had a go on another of them fun house type of attractions. this one cost £2.50, with this allowing the boys to go around it twice or, in the words of the proprietor of the ride, "three times if i am not looking", with those words delivered with a wink and a smile. nice one fella, cheers.

to the end, then, and i for some reason really, really wanted a selfie with my (considerably) better half that featured the lights of the fair in the background. why? no idea. perhaps to capture the buzz, the atmosphere, the vibrancy and all that good stuff. well, anyway, here it is.

so there we have it, or if you like there you have it. another wonderful evening out at a most fantastic and treasured annual event. we can get through the darkness and the cold of the winter ahead knowing that the sun shall come back, and that when it does we can do all this sort of thing again.

many thanks as ever for reading!




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a new approach to pension fund fraud

hello again


on the occasions, or if you like instances, when i watch television i am presented with a number of advertisements. these commercial interludes are, look you see, the driving fiscal power which enables me to watch free to air programming in a gratis capacity.

there would seem, to be sure, to be a quite narrow range of products and services that are presented to me in this manner. for the most part these advertisements encourage me to buy a funeral policy, consider a different brand of tampon, gamble, obtain a loan to repair a boiler or car, apply a cream to address vaginal issues i may have or take on a policy to cover any costs which may arise upon my death. in respect of the latter, yes i know many of you long for such news but here i am.

beyond those the only other form of advertisement i can recall relates to pension funds. in recent times a rather famous, or perhaps best said as infamous, pension fund has increased their advertising. i speak, or if you will write, of the 'Euro Millions' pension scheme.

like many others i - and it does feel comforting to know from time to time that i am not alone in this world - shunned this particular form of pension investment when they increased the standard premium from £2.00 to £2.50. this 25% increase seemed really rather brazen, considering that the pension scheme seldom, if ever, actually pays out to investors.

my head was turned, then, by the fact that the advertising gave every indication that investors in the so-called 'Euro Millions' would receive a pension payout north of £100,000,000. yes, one hundred million, which is a lot. this stuck me as being not at all unreasonable and just about worth a ground level, or if you will roots up, investment of £2.50.

and so i returned to investing in this branded pensions scheme. yes, i did so knowing that it had been little more than a sham and a fraud in the past, so i can blame no one but myself for the fact that, yet again, i am left deflated, let down and decidedly without pension. that said, if there is anyone i can blame - the 'Euro Millions' board, the advertisement creator, or the broadcaster, perhaps - and there's a lawyer out there who wants to represent me on a "no win no fee" basis then i shall of course sing like the veritable canary and blame whoever will land me the most compensation.

yes, that there above shows that, surprise surprise, the Euro Millions organizers once again found a channel or means to say "actually, no, we are not paying you a pension north of £100,000,000". and of course they follow this up with "please invest another £2.50 or multiples thereof to totes get access to this or a similar amount again".

it beggars belief that this pension scheme is allowed to operate in such a brazen, unashamed way when it is clearly fraudulent. more than that, really - it seems to be actively encouraged. this is presumably because it only really crushes the dreams and aspirations of the proletariat, for the landed gentry do not seem to be victims.

should he be the main beneficiary of the solicited funding which is never paid out as pensions then i suppose one cannot really be confused by the behaviour of the Frenchie sounding Luxembourgish Jean-Claude Junker. if people all across a continent kept blindly throwing money at me then i suppose i too would be tempted to act like some sort of tin pot dictator, or whatever the term is.

let me sulk off, then, and see if i can in some way learn a lesson from all of this about pension fund investments. but perhaps once more i shall end up swayed and influenced by advertising.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spiros on the soft

heya


so another one of them posts that, look you see, i probably should not do. whilst some questions might be asked, and indeed debate rise, from some of the facts and figures waved around to say that smoking is bad for you it surely must be undeniable that it is bad for you. and to an extent others around, which is why you should do it removed from society.

if for some reason you are considering embracing the life of a smoker i would say do not. were it so that you currently are a smoker then the best advice is to seek all the help, support and means that you can to quit.

right, then, with what i believe to be fair and reasonable qualification in place, on we go - should you continue to read - with the very latest exploits i have for you in respect of fags from the world.

my good chum Sprios has once again been called to other corners of the world. as the many fans of his ways will know he is considered to be the greatest legal mind of his generation. this means he is requested to be present in parts of the planet so he may give, for a considerable fee, others the benefit of his wisdom, his knowledge, his insights and his abilities.

as and when he does so he, as a great act of kindness, purchases me some fags. he is quite aware of the fact that i am something of a hopeless, pathetic addict and that the price of cigarettes in the UK is brutal and harsh. further kindness comes in that he likes to get me Marlboro, knowing that they are the "Rolls Royce", or if you like (and even better) the "David Lee Roth" of fags. whilst i appreciate this i have made it clear that basically any such fags would do, and the cheapest on offer are very welcome indeed.

which i how i have come to know of an African brand of cigarette called Sportsman.

no, i had not heard of this Sportsman brand of cigarettes at all before. just goes to show, then, that no one really knows everything.  my (considerably) better half, who is very wise, had also not heard of them, but did observe that the packaging would appear to be echoing that which exists, or existed, for the rather more well known Camel brand of fags.

the provenance of these cigarettes is, from what i recall on the packaging, Kenya. not that Spiros was there, at least not in any official way that you can prove. out of politeness Spiros usually refrains from telling me the price paid for such gifts, but in this instance he said that the carton of ten packets, or if you like 200 fags, worked out at "about" £8. it is hard to say definitively as currency valuations fluctuate so. and i would decline to comment on the question of whether or not any of the stuff what Spiros does in any way has bearing on such fluctuations.

considering that the very cheapest (legal) packet of fags you can buy (one pack of 20) in the UK is exactly £7.35 at time of writing, that just shows how smokers are punished with tax here. think about that. if they somehow did succeed in getting all people in the country to stop, that is one huge massive hole in the tax revenue.

what, or rather who, is that? i am not sure as Spiros did not tell me. i just had to conceal his identity before adding this here, and indeed do my best to disguise the frankly obscene tattoo he had on his arm.

from what i can gather off Spiros this chap, a London black cab driver, is not one of the gentlemen with which he would care to form a short term yet mutually beneficial friendship with. my understanding is that this taxi driver had a strongly worded disagreement with Spiros about the recent "ban" on Uber operating in London. when Spiros mentioned to him that he was rather disappointed that Uber had lost its licence the cabbie disagreed quite strongly, using some frankly coarse, crass and uncouth words to describe both Uber and people like Spiros what use (or used) the service.

now let us let them get on with the debate, although good luck to the cabbie if he persuades Spiros to give him a kung fu martial arts display. instead, let us get back to the fags.

as you can see the people what make fags to sell in Africa are, thus far, free of them packaging restrictions we now have here in England, brought in at the suggestion of the Australians. quite a nice bit of branding too, really. i particularly like the faded red ink stamp of the horse emblem on the cigarette itself. a nice touch and certainly promotes brand awareness.

what's the magazine underneath the cigarettes? one what Spiros "borrowed" out of a hotel room, undoubtedly a suite of luxury, he was in. the logic would be that if i have it then they cannot ask him for it back as he no longer has it to give. in his words he believed that the magazine was "by men for men who like men", and so made an assumption that it would be the sort of thing that i would enjoy reading, or looking at the pictures in.

for me the greatest part - other than them being a gift and thus free - of these fags are that they are soft pack. i really, really like soft pack packets of cigarettes. quite American, i know and i suppose, but i am convinced that ones this way taste better. under no circumstances can you (legally) get soft pack ones here in the UK, so this is a massive plus.

just how are Sportsman cigarettes as a smoking experience? well, it might be fair to suggest they are a little coarse, but rather splendid on the whole. i don't think legally you can say cigarettes are enjoyable any more as this would be to advocate the habit, but if you indeed can then they actually are.

and, well, there we have it. many thanks again to my good chum Spiros for this exceptional act of kindness and generosity. you are, to me, like you are to so many others, a hero. should for some reason you be interested in looking at the fags of the world, well then i hope if nothing else the pictures with this post have been of interest.

EDIT - many thanks indeed for the alert to the You Tube video for an advert for these fags!

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

here have some book reviews

greetings


my reading has slowed down some, then. this is not due to a lack of books, look you see. far from it, as i have a formidable number here all sat ready to read. it's just that of late, to be sure, time has not permitted me to indulge.

the reasons for this are of course the most recent extended school holidays, in which i needed (with pleasure) to look after the boys. also, numerous road trips as documented here. but, it's not where this is from rather where it is at, and so let's have a gander at what i have eventually read of late.

indeed i have once again used this new "app" that i have on my phone, yaycam or similar, to take the above picture. apparently this is vintage 50s style or something. it's not a bad app, but i suspect yes i will get around to removing it.

oh, brief, spoiler-free run down of the relative merits of what i read? sure. i had greatly been looking forward to the latest John Grisham to appear in paperback and The Whistler is not bad at all. there is a tendency for me to swear off reading any further Ben Hope adventures but i seem to return to them and the most recent, The Babylon Idol, is not bad at all. with respect to the latter, a little painting by numbers.

right, on to some more details of both, then. do be warned, however, that from here onwards - try as i might to limit such - there is an inevitable *** GLORIOUS SPOILER WARNING *** in place. also, any links to the global grocer are for mere convenience. they are not to be taken as an endorsement, recommendation or affiliation with moi. 

to start off where i started off with these two, then, and hence the order they appear above, let's commence with John Grisham's The Whistler.

one of the most interesting aspects, i know, for you when it comes to me and these books is the provenance of them. in this instance, it could be said in some corners that the provenance is controversial.

for quite some time it was true that "cigarette counter at Morrisons" was the preferred point of purchase. alas, these days Morrisons tend to have very few books on display and for sale at this section of their store. interestingly, they did have this particular text, or if you like volume, for sale at such. they had it on offer for £4, which is a fair and reasonable price. Tesco, however, counter offered, and were prepared to sell me the novel for a mere £3. in this instance, then, Tesco won my business on pricing. this was despite the fact that the book was not on display at their cigarette counter, but rather within their demarcated book section.

enough, the book. what's interesting about this one is that it is a "legal thriller" (as you would expect from Grisham), but only broadly. yes, true, characters are lawyers, but they're not really doing "lawyer things" like billable hours and court appearances. instead, then, Grisham casts light on what seems to be an underfunded and underappreciated band of lawyers who investigate complaints against judges.

the plot follows this team investigating a very high profile, never before questioned judge on the basis of a somewhat shady and reclusive approach by an ex-lawyer. he, the ex-lawyer, is feeding information from a whistle blower as such, hence the title. and i would really care not to spoil any of the novel.

as it turned out, The Whistler was a punchy, well paced crime thriller more than it was a legal one. this is no bad thing. after some 30 years one would suspect Grisham has grown tired of the more standard legal stuff he does. i believe the next one from him departs even further than this away from his otherwise safe territory.

in truth i possibly enjoyed the one before this, Rogue Lawyer, more. only slightly, for both were really good. and indeed both were better than Gray Mountain, which was a well intentioned but ultimately very confusing slog. with confidence, then, i say give it a try.

and so on to another novelist i tend to read all by, then. this time it's Scott Mariani, with another 'Ben Hope' adventure in the form of The Babylon Idol. 

provenance of my copy? since you are interested, yes indeed this was another of the most kind and generous gifts i got for Father's Day this year. nice one.

plot? this, the 15th novel to feature Ben Hope (and possibly the 12th i have read), starts off with the protagonist returning from his adventures, of sorts, in Africa (the double bill of Star Of Africa and Devil's Kingdom, reviewed somewhere on this blog). back at his smart training academy in France, no sooner has Ben had the chance to put his feet up than, wouldn't you know, someone lands a seemingly fatal blow on a good friend of his. in the aftermath of this Ben discovers a letter from someone he never expected to hear from again, warning him that a person he had crossed paths with in the past may be out for revenge. which is odd, as it was reported that the path crossing person was, as of recent times in the novel, dead......

this wasn't half bad. i mean, whereas i don't expect a whole lot of creative ingenious stuff in novels like this, at times it did feel a little bit like autopilot, do the same kind of story in a colour by numbers way. and yet it kept me thoroughly entertained. yes, some of the contrived plot development is borderline ludicrous, but not so much that i ever felt like saying "no, no more". as i have done with these novels in the past.

as the end of the novel approached, and i shall try to avoid spoilers, i had a horrible sense of "here we go again". i was concerned that i was going to find "to be continued" written on the last page, as a lot of story seemed to be needed to get wrapped up in some 40 or so pages. no, it is indeed all self contained, if somewhat rushed at the end. but then again, now that i think, one really does suppose that action films get all their business concluded in ten or so minutes at the end.

well then, there you go. two books that i most decidedly did not regret reading. although they were enjoyable as they went, however, neither struck me as being the best that either of the writers has produced. yet both sit in the "better half" of the list of things they have done.

as ever i can but hope, trust and wish that all of this has been of some use or interest to someone out there somewhere!



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

tradesmen and their tools

heya


there are sayings which, look you see, are well known. proverb like sayings, used freely to describe a particular situation. here, in something that i trust is not really much of a rant, i will be having a look at the one which goes "a bad tradesman blames his tools". there are variations of this, to be sure, with the tradesman standing accused of being poor or weak instead. indeed, from time to time it is they quarrel with their tools, but blames works.

once again, then, that beautiful city of London has been subjected to what can only be described as a terrorist attack. let me not get into the who is responsible and all of that, instead i would rather say how much of a relief it is that the would be bomber was highly incompetent and caused disruption rather than death. quite the even more cowardly would-be terrorist this time too, since they lacked the required courage in their convictions to be a "suicide bomber"; instead electing to do some sort of timer device thing.

my issue with this incident is the appropriation of blame, or what some corners say would be the very best way possible to stop such attacks. as usual, as standard and sadly as predictable, something of a lack of knowledge and understanding has come right to the fore in finding the easiest, laziest suggestion about what to do.

yes, but of course, "internet" is to blame for all of this. we the people can, to be sure, find information on it. as some of what we find is not good or can be caused to do no good, then of course someone must do something.

even by the usual standards of the Daily Mail this is really extreme stuff. as extreme, some may speculate, as those socially inept types that carry out these terror attacks. directly stating that successful web companies have "blood on their hands" due to the actions of either an individual or a small group is outlandish.

why? because it is blaming the medium which delivered a message. Google, the thing most blamed when someone is of a mind to "blame the internet" for actions or events, do not create any of the information used by this individual. they don't host it, advocate it or promote it. what they do is index just about every web page to exist, ranking and presenting it in terms of what an automated system reckons is the most relevant information someone searching for stuff is after. as and when a request - and it doesn't even have to be a legal one, anyone can contact them - they go so far as to remove areas of the web which society would perhaps be better off not seeing.

no, i do not believe that the internet, as such, should be some unpoliced free for all. but running a front page story demanding that a company that so happens to make its money off of the internet "do something" to make it all stop is, to me, silly. Google, Amazon, etc may all make large piles of cash from the internet. they did not, however, build it, take ownership of it or control it.

if we are going to accuse other who use, or better still have had success, from the medium, then logic surely dictates we can hold Sir Richard Branson responsible for a lack of quality music these days. come on, Sir Richard - admit it is your fault. you have made huge money off of Virgin Records. yes, your records have given us a great deal of pleasure and benefit over the years, but alas not so much any more. is it your fault that no one records and releases music worth anything?

much of the current trend - by the Daily Mail and others - to "blame internet" for anything stems, but of course, from the horrid Theresa May. when this lady, the current or if you will incumbent Prime Minister, is not showing an absolute hatred for the British people (she tried to stop me, a born and raised British citizen, living in my own country) she tends to display a magnificent level of ignorance about absolutely everything she can think to speak of. some of her single most outstanding, indeed magnificent, achievements in respect of this have all been in relation "the internet", and how people might use it, or what they might use it for.

let us not forget that it is Theresa May that wants every single thing every single person does in the UK on the internet recorded, logged, filed and examined. she likes to watch. for some reason she believes it is fair an important, and in the "national interests", to know what each and every one of us might do online. the mind boggles at the voyeuristic nature of this. for 99.99% of the population i would suggest that Theresa May wanting to look at what we look at is far more disturbing than any saucy or mucky images we may glance at on the web.

it's not odd that it is now "internet" that the government of the day wishes to limit and control. over the years we have seen all too often the medium and the message conveyed through it blamed for the actions of an individual. we in Britain were denied any legal means of seeing Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange due to some clever lawyers (and social workers) blaming the film on various sickening acts of thuggery and criminality. that was the 70s. in the 80s that other questionable newspaper, The Sun, managed to get a corner shop owner to say that Michael Ryan, who went on a gun rampage in Hungerford, "used to rent a lot of violent videos like Rambo". the fact that Ryan did not own a VCR didn't prevent Thatcher ordering an immediate clampdown on film and video censorship.

the newspapers would, of course, absolutely love it if the internet could be if not quite banned then seriously controlled and limited. newspapers, or if you like the fourth estate, are still smarting from the fact that their position of power and influence was eroded.

once upon a time, then, the newspapers were the only source of news, information and what have you. as such they were a powerful tool to influence and sway public opinion. many a British politician has found themselves in the pocket of a newspaper proprietor, for they know that their career could be well and truly over, normally in disgrace, if they acted in a way against the editorial line.

by contrast, Theresa May is apparently trying to desperately get in to the pocket of a newspaper proprietor. surely if she could reign in, control or even better stop how the internet allows opinions, ideas, facts and information to be shared pretty much by anyone with pretty much everyone, then the newspapers will think kindly of her, since she has restored their power of influence. i kind of hope so, because as bad, evil and despicable as she is, surely no one as completely stupid to think that the internet and companies doing business on it work the way she thinks could be allowed in any position of power, let alone Prime Minister.

say Theresa May and the likes of the Daily Mail got their way. somehow Google managed to ban, suppress or remove absolutely all information, references and details to how to make bombs and other such things. would that stop the problem? doubtful, i suggest. somehow long before "an internet" came to be the likes of the IRA, ETA, the ANC and many other terrorists / freedom fighters / revolutionaries worked out how to make bombs and so forth.

the fact that information about how may one do harm is easier to find on the internet than by any other means "doesn't help", to be sure. but blaming the internet for the actions of those who use it strikes me, as i dare say you have worked out, as baffling.

newspapers may wish to reconsider calling for restraints, blame and control being placed on mediums that give information to people. they may well find that they feature surprisingly high on the list of such mediums that require this attention.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

how about some orange

hello


yet again just one of them distraction posts, look you see.

recently i was holding my phone what has a camera welded on it at what, to be sure, turned out to be a most peculiar angle. the peculiar way of this came to my attention when i sensed, or saw, from the corner of my eye a bright light. this, i concluded, was the flash.

evidently i had pressed or if you like depressed the button on the back of the phone which allows one to take forward facing images. selfies, if you like. but this was not a selfie as such.

above is the image what was taken, then. it just struck me as being somewhat interesting shades of orange reflected in it. an almost immediate thought was, then, to share it here so that the people who are interested in such may see.

what exactly is it a picture of? not sure. there is every chance that this is a close up of one of my fingers, or perhaps even the palm of my hand that was holding the phone. also, considering where i was when this all happened, it might be a lightbulb direct, or light in closeness via the lampshade.

should this orange shading be of any particular interest or practical use to someone, well then that's a happy accident. perhaps it shows that all things in this world, in this life, happen for a reason.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the Santander experience

hello


there are, look you see, those who would say "ooh, you wanna be careful, don't go writing things like that" about this. my name and reputation may be marked or otherwise sullied if i did, to be sure. an understandable logic is behind this expression, for in this day and age we are told to be fearful of what we say, unless of course we do it anonymously on the net. well, whatever i am doing now clearly isn't write, so how much more wrong could i go? famous last words comes to mind.....

so anyway, i've been told by Santander that they do not want me. as an employee, that is. and this is the third such instance of me being told this. you can, then, if you so wish, suggest that what follows is what we term "sour grapes", or just bitter resentment. all i can do is try to give a fair comment on why i am a trifle miffed.

regular readers all too familiar with my current avant garde tramp look would, no doubt, suspect that i would be refused a job on the spot by anyone. let's start off with a picture of me, then, after the "interview" what failed, so you can see that i do clean up from time to time.

look you see, i can scrub up and look all presentable as and when required. neatly shaved, hair cut and a most dapper suit on, since i was instructed to wear "business attire". the shirt is a gift off of Spiros no less. a very or if you like tres expensive one, worn by the top financial people in London, innit.

this will all probably work better with sub-headings and the like, so let me write it that way.

The Three Santander "Assessment" Experiences

so as i said earlier, this most recent rejection was the third of three. thus far - oh just you wait, people, this has a most curious ending to it.

i wholeheartedly accepted the first one. that was some 3 or so years ago, was my first "interview" in close to 15 years and took me by surprise as it wasn't an interview as such, it was a group of 8 of us doing "exercises". basically you had to introduce yourself, watch a video about how ace Santander is, participate in a group exercise and then do some rudimentary maths and reading tests, along with a go at data capturing. i flummoxed most of them, i confess, for i simply was not expecting nor prepared for it.

the second was some 12 or 18, maybe even 24, months later. i was far better prepared for this. alas, others in the same session were all the more so. they, and i say this to their credit, had worked out (presumably from other such sessions) that the only way to succeed in these things was to be as voiceful, loud and opinionated as possible. thus, i was kept silent for most of the session. sure, i can be loud - louder than war if need be - but for some reason i thought a bank might not wish to employ someone what simply shouts their own opinion over everyone's conversation.

besides, as i remember, the team from Santander spent the first half of this "assessment" session checking out an assortment of websites unrelated to banking. i have no idea how they spent the second half, as they simply got up and left. perhaps they went for a coffee, or off to look at something they had seen on the internet.

third time lucky? well, no. hence me writing this.

yeah, sorry about the further picture of me. at least one to follow. i don't really have any other images to use that are relevant to all of this. but, back to the narrative.

Third Refusal

what made this third approach interesting was some changes. one did the tests at home before going, presumably to see that you were up to the task. in respect of this, i scored 90% in their basic maths test, a perfect 6 out of 6 for "best answer" to give to hypothetical situations, and a not so bad 99% on their data capture test. when the lady called me back to discuss my results she was happy, excited and optimistic, saying that these were by some distance the best results they'd had. well, as i shall reminisce later, i do know my verk stuff.

off to the "assessment" session, then, with 7 strangers. it was at their premises here in what's been styled "Tees Valley", whereas the other two were on offsite locations. perhaps they had grown tired of people running the sessions abandoning them, who knows.

an early warning sign was that i, along with everyone else, was told to "park in the staff parking area". when i and a few others arrived to do this, we were met with a gruff voice, informing us that "we don't even have enough parking for our own staff", and it was our problem to go find parking somewhere else. nothing quite like getting potential employees all flustered and out of a routine just before the "interview". presumably this approach is what has seen Santander win all those "a great place to work" awards.

ok, maybe two more pictures of me, then. but you all get bored and complained when there are no pictures just text. who knows, maybe someone out there actually likes the way i look. if so, bravo you on keeping it secret from me.

That Third Assessment Session At Santander

i kind of suspected that not all would go ever so well with this with the parking debacle. also, the co-ordinator sacrificed the needs of the many for the ambivalence of the one. someone booked for a later session decided to just pitch up for this earlier one. so everyone got delayed whilst she elected to sort that all out for him. not that it would have seem to have done much good.

an exceptional amount of time at this session was spent with all 8 of us being informed how brilliant it is to work for Santander. how they really, really value people, encouraging awards and recognition and all that. also, how they know and understand that the key to success is valuing staff and making sure of long term employment.

let us pause to consider this. if you have to keep saying the same thing over and over again then it is usually because people do not believe it to be true. the most recent and well known example of this is that Mr Kim Kardashian fellow who has to keep telling everyone he is in fact a "genius", although no one else calls him this.

other factors question what we were told on repeat. at a similar session for another place of employment (perhaps another bank, perhaps BT) we had one lady who spent the entire time saying how awful Santander was. how no matter how much you wanted to help people calling if you didn't get rid of them and on to the next call within 2 minutes you were in serious trouble. also, if they attract and retain staff, why so much recruitment? no bank is growing so fast that they need to "interview" 160 people a week - and do so for more than one week.

so anyway, the session. yes, i introduced myself nicely. i spoke the most clearly at the assessment exercise. i acknowledged someone working there that i vaguely know from school days. i listened to what others said. i conversed with them. i asked questions. in truth, i walked out thinking i had done pretty well.

but today, when i called to find out what the word was, i was told that Santander said "no one" from my group was "selected" as "no one really stood out or made an impact". that wonderful thing when you are told there is no need for you in this world.

yes, promise, that's the last picture of me for this post. and again, if you are one of the people out there that for some reason like how i look, stop being shy and retiring and quiet - please say so, maybe i can feel of value to the world if nothing else.

What Was Missed

i am still struggling, if not wrestling, with this approach by Santander. on the one side they go to great lengths to claim, indeed celebrate, what a great employer they are, how they look after their employees, give them special badges, rewards, etc. and yet they cannot be bothered to spend so little as just five minutes speaking to potential new employees on a one to one basis? perhaps the truth of how Santander treat staff is closer to what that lady i met said. i certainly saw scant interest in people.

down memory lane, then. in my time at verk in the banking world, these highlights come to mind. with a very dear friend i re-engineered a password issuing process, getting access to clients within 24 hours rather than 48. an elderly retired lady once called me in error. not only did i, outside of my normal job, help her with her query but assisted until the day i left verk and made sure my successor would do the same. this one time a business owner was under threat of physical violence by his staff as the payroll failed. i made sure i contacted the right and relevant people to sort the credit details out and got the staff paid. i was sent to meetings with Government officials to answer queries and explain exactly how their interest worked as they were struggling with their own reconciliation calculations. trust was placed in me to make sure all interest rates were applied correctly. in respect of the latter, one of the accounts i handled for this was the charity established by Mr Nelson Mandela - an account that, you would think, they don't let just anyone handle. and, well, lots of other things. also, a lot of good times, fun, and friendships.

would i be sat here thinking the above makes me something special? not particularly, i simply did all that was asked to the best of my abilities. the thing is, though, i'd like to think it shows that i am capable of doing the job asked. this is something Santander could have found out in, say, a brief, five minute one on one interview, asking me what i could bring to their (so they say, often) great organization.

that might have been more helpful to them than what happened, which was to sit me in a room with seven strangers and encourage us to shout, debate, speak and talk all at the same time.

right, it's time for what was promised.

That Rather Interesting And Entertaining Ending

for me the best part of being told that i did not stand out, that i was not wanted and that i could not bring anything to Santander was this email i got. it came within minutes of the phone call what said that as far as Spain's leading bank was concerned i was of no use to the world.

perhaps clicking on that would make it large enough for you to read clearly. if not, or you simply cannot be bothered to, that email there is inviting me to apply for the very same job at Santander which they have concluded i cannot do. fascinating how my CV says to them "yes" but their bizarre approach to herding potential staff says no.

directly approaching people like this suggests that they really, really need staff. again, perhaps that lady who worked there once spoke truth, although that must be tempered with the fact that she was looking to work somewhere else. at best, then, they are wasting the time of - and raising false hope - hundreds of people in seeking one or two that meet an undefined level of expectation. 

a lot of the problem at Santander, and other organizations, is the curse of "Empire Building". this happens when someone is so entrenched in a role at an organization that they believe they have absolute power. when not repeating how ace an employer Santander is the three representatives could barely wait to remind us all of how many years they had been in the role. that's wonderful, but it does lead to clouded judgement and mistaking your own personality for what is best for a company. no one dare question them, of course, for they have been there so long they simply must know what they are doing.

in all likelihood, then, publishing this and not hiding behind a fake name probably means there is no chance at all of Santander "considering" me again. this doesn't really matter, does it? with their herd like cattle auction mentality approach to finding staff i am clearly not going to make the grade.

or, maybe, it's just me. perhaps i am worthless, a waste of space, overweight and out of date. by Spanish standards that would be yes, no and maybe in relatively equal measure to all of those.

SENSATIONAL UPDATE - as preposterous and ridiculous as this might seem, i have just taken a call once again asking me to apply for this position!

let me press on, then.




¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡sean excelentes los unos con los otros!!!!!!!!