Portions

In the long slow battle against the public sector that the Tory party is currently engaged in, itemising the tax bill is a masterstroke. Like all great pieces of strategy, it will easily be obscured by something seemingly more important (in this case arguments about the top rate of tax) whilst it quietly changes the landscape entirely.
Everyone will have a little bit of interest in seeing how much they pay for the NHS or unemployment benefit. Then they will start asking why they should pay for the NHS, when they have private medical insurance, or why they should pay for schools when they have no children. Once you see your tax as a set of payments for specific services, you will want to start managing them and opting out of the ones you don't want. Once services become optional rather than universal, what is the point in the government providing them? You may as well buy them off a private company. Philosophically, the objection to any form of privatisation is removed.
When talking to people in the USA, I noticed that they really resented the state because every year they had to fill in a tax return and pay money directly to the state. In this country, because the bureaucratic infrastructure has been in place for hundreds of years, most of us are taxed before we are paid, meaning that we have little sense of having to give money to the state. This creates an entirely different relationship with the concept of tax that explains much of the difference in the approach to the state's role on either side of the pond. Obviously, the Tories would love us all to have an American-style tax system that made us resent every penny we pay to the state, but abolishing PAYE would lose them the election. Much 'better' to change our attitude to the tax system by other means.
The itemised tax bill changes nothing immediately, it just allows us to argue about whether we are paying enough for this or that service. It is once we start to ask if we are paying too much that the whole landscape begins to change.

Perennial

I recently excused myself from what was bound to be another Twittercation (a lighthearted altercation that drags on far too long due to the 140 character limit on Twitter) by stating that I have nothing against summer. This was technically a lie. Summer is my least favourite season, and I apologise in advance to friends who've heard this before.
I find it difficult to sleep in summer, as there is not enough darkness and it is usually too hot. In fact being too hot is generally my problem with summer. I break into a sweat at the drop of a hat, so I spend most of summer personally and socially uncomfortable. Dressing in season-appropriate clothing obviously mitigates this somewhat, but this is another problem I have: I'm English, I have no idea how to dress for summer. Certainly I will never overcome that nagging sense of self-consciousness an Englishman gets from exposing too much of his pasty flesh to the elements. Weirdly, this appears to be location specific: I had no problem wearing shorts for large portions of the time whilst I was in the USA. Mind you, I had no real issues with the dry heat of the American Midwest. So perhaps it is just the English summer that I have an issue with, the English summer in all its clammy discomfort. There is no comfort to be found in summer: you can't put on comfy clothing, or curl up in a comfy chair by a fire; all comfort food is winter food.
All this said, I don't spend all summer being miserable. I love cricket and salads and pub gardens and picnics. I like many things about summer, but mostly I like it for the same reason I like every other season: it comes to an end. People constantly mourn the passing of summer as part of a general mourning of the passing of time. This is an inherently pessimistic viewpoint as it allows only the possibility that you will be endlessly disappointed by life. Life is nothing if not the experience of time passing, so we may as well enjoy it and all the things that mark it, such as the end of things we enjoy or endure, or remain staunchly ambivalent towards.
Woohoo, that's another few minutes done right there.

Purpose

I'm trying to do my bit. I really am, that's supposed to be what this blog's all about*: despite my desire consume as much as possible, despite that desire being fed and encouraged by virtually every aspect of the world in which I live, I want to do the right thing; I want to be a good citizen of the world. Yeah, sure, you know all this, and I'm always agonising over the best way to do this, going on and on like a stuck record. But hey at least I'm consistent in striving for my goal. Except recently I've been thinking a bit more about what that goal should be.
Obviously on a personal level it should be to have as little negative impact on the world as possible, but how we measure negative impact is not always clear. Of course I should be guided in this by ideologues and policymakers, but both appear a little thin on the ground. There are no end of idiots like me all too keen to point out what's wrong, and no end of politicians willing to arrive at policies via the path of least resistance. However, there is virtually no one who says "this is the world we should strive for and here's how". I understand the second part of that statement is the sticking point, but we shouldn't shy away from it because it's difficult. Maybe if we understand why it's difficult, we might be able think more about how we address it.
Firstly, and most simply, the world is an incredibly complex place and therefore even attempting to tackle its issues is a daunting task for any one person. There are theories that the level of complexity of many of the systems that govern our lives is now such that it is not possible for the human mind to comprehend in its entirety. This is a fundamental problem, as it means we are reliant upon simplified models for our understanding of the problems we face.
An appendage of this issue is the sheer volume of data available to us. We're overwhelmed by data, including many contradictory 'facts' generated by one stripe of vested interest or another. It would take a lifetime to sift though even one subject: requiring us to rely further on the summaries of experts.
All of these are mitigating factors, excuses for the budding policymaker should their policies turn out to have been based on unsound logic. Unfortunately, we can't fall back on excuses anymore, as we don't have massive room for error when it comes to many of the problems the world currently faces.
So our policymakers and ideologues face an uphill struggle even in gaining all of the information that they require to take a position on anything, and there will always have to be a degree of faith behind whatever position they take. However, having gathered all the relevant information or beliefs, they must then decide on a future vision, a reason, a goal for their particular ideology. This sounds ridiculous: of course they'll know what the goal of their ideology is, it's their ideology, it's what they believe is right. Except for all the reasons detailed above, it's not that simple. Many of the traditional ideologies from which we might want to form our own are self-conflicting.
If we take Socialism for example. A traditional socialist viewpoint would be that in order to ease the burden on workers and small businesses, fuel prices should be subsidised. However, this policy would have the supplemental effect of maintaining fuel consumption, leading to increased global warming and ultimately an increased cost in many goods and services, with the associated detrimental effect that will have on quality of life for the people the policy was originally supposed to help. It is perhaps not the best example, but it illustrates the problem with traditional ideologies, or at least traditional short-termist applications of such ideologies. The problem is that democracy works on a short-term basis, with absolutely no incentive for genuine investment in the future. In such a climate, vested interests take over and push policy in any number of directions. The traditional points of the political spectrum are merely measures of which set of vested interests one associates with.
I was discussing some of these thoughts with a friend recently, when he said that the current health and education reforms could not be anything other than ideological. But I would argue that even these are simply the representation of a vested interest: pure capital, a market obsessed that everything should have the potential to turn profit. This is not an ideology, it is simply a manifestation of short-termist greed.
Reading back over what I've written, I see that what I'm saying could be construed as an assertion that being accountable to a constituency is a bad idea, indeed so is the rest of democracy, but this is not my point. Democracy should be an exchange between a politician and their constituency. People can only form an opinion based on the information they are presented, and if that information is merely the reflection of self-interest, then people get no real options, they get nothing to aspire to ideologically, they get no inspiration; they can only reflect self-interest back. In contemporary society, democracy can easily tend towards this lowest common denominator. It should be the job of our politicians and ideologues to make sure that it doesn't. Of course the rest of us could help by being a bit less short-termist in our outlook, or greedy in our expectations.

* that and photos of bad footwear.

Piercing

It's been a while since I mentioned any ridiculous looking shoes, partly because I haven't seen a pair of doosies like these! Look at them. You could shuck oysters with those babies! They're even looked after; someone is proud of these. They'll be able to keep them clean too, I mean you couldn't play football in them could you.

Protest

We appear to be going through a period considerable social unrest, with the turmoil in Syria, protests in Russia and the seemingly endless rioting in Greece. And that's just last week. It is perhaps inaccurate to treat all these phenomena as the same, as they are each dealing with very different issues.
For example, the Syrians are protesting against a government they didn't elect, whereas the Russians are protesting against a government they did elect, just not so many of them as was reported. And of course, the Greeks are protesting against a government they, erm, didn't elect.
But the Syrians are protesting against a wealthy elite who enjoy the protection of the government whilst the majority suffer, and the Russians are protesting against a wealthy elite who are the government and enjoy plundering state resources at the expense of the majority. Whereas the Greeks are protesting about a state that allowed a wealthy elite avoid taxes at the expense of the majority. Which is completely different obviously.
There is a tendency in the west to view protests as more legitimate if they occur outside Europe or the USA. This is because traditionally the people in western countries have been able to turn to the ballot box to register their dissent, and therefore don't need to take direct action. Now that democracy has effectively been suspended in certain European countries, should their popular protests be viewed as the only legitimate voice of their people?

Pleasure

The recent re-introduction of telly into my life has led me to become reacquainted with adverts, and subsequently with with a sensation that (perhaps subtler) internet advertising doesn't induce: the wonder at who it appeals to. The latest occurrence of this sensation was brought about by an M&S Valentine's advert. Usually M&S do a half decent job of making their food seem appealing, but this meal just seemed tacky, plastic and artificial. Perhaps this was deliberate, perhaps people actually want to eat shiny pink food on Valentine's day because it makes them feel romantic. I looked at the whole package and got acid indigestion in anticipation. As I say, this was not what I expect from M&S, I'd expect something a bit more upmarket, which makes me think the whole package had been dreamed up by a focus group. Someone had done some research and decided that when it comes to romance, the great British public love it good and tacky. I just don't buy that, I just don't think that's what people want. They may have been convinced it's what they want, but I don't believe it is actually what they want.
I recently had a conversation with a friend which they took to be about taste as a learned behaviour. Of course, we both agreed that what we like to eat, wear or put on the walls of our flats is in some part influenced by the things we have been presented with at various stages in our lives. However, he argued that there is a limit to the environmental influence; that people are naturally predisposed to like or dislike the things that exist at the extremes of their taste spectrum. On reflection, I am more inclined to believe we have inherent absolutes, although I think our inheritance of them is as much behavioural as it is biological. However, the point I was really getting at was that it appears to me that it is not just the fact that we learn to like the things we like, but that 99 percent of the time it is solely the fact that we have chosen to like them that makes us like them. To put it another way, we decide to like things despite the fact that we don't actually like them. This is why advertising is so effective: because our willingness to participate in an activity that we see as desirable overrides our perception of whether or not we actually enjoy it. How else could one explain so many people claiming to like football?
I'm a pleasure seeker of sorts, at least I want to enjoy my spare time, so I want to make sure I fill it with activities I genuinely enjoy. To that end I'll try anything once. It's the only way I'll stumble across something I genuinely like.

Property

Along with the hedge fund managers, the other people to have benefited from the financial crisis are landlords. At least in London. As cheap credit has dried up and banks have become more cautious about who they lend to, the number of people moving into their first bought home has plummeted. As a result, the rentals market has suffered a capacity crisis. In such a seller's market, prices will inevitably increase, reducing the amount people can save for deposits, increasing the number of people looking to rent and pushing up the price of rent. This viscous circle will probably not increase indefinitely, as higher rents will eventually lure more landlords into the market, but it is a taste of things to come. We are never going to build enough houses in this country for everyone to become a home owner, so the government wants more people to get used to renting for life, or at very least much later into life. I have no issue with this in principle. As a nation, we are obsessed with home ownership to the point where thousands of people a year (more so in recent years) have bankrupted themselves chasing the ideal of homeownership: their desperation to own the roof over their heads has left them with no roof at all. So renting must form part of the new more sober economic reality. However, if we are to change our societal habits, shouldn't we also review the rules that govern them?
I am a long term renter. I have no desperate desire to own my own house. However, I am an adult, so I do desire to decorate my house in a manner that I see fit, which at my time of life is a bit more involved than putting up a few posters. Equally, I understand that when I relinquish my tenancy, my landlord should not be burdened with the task of letting a flat decorated to my idiosyncratic tastes. Rented accommodation should start and end a blank canvas, what happens in the interim should be up to the tenants. To be fair to my landlord, that is basically what they told us, although I'm not sure how they'd feel if we repainted the place a non-white colour. Still, any major adjustments would need to be reversed before the end of our tenancy, which would tend to discourage anything like, say, putting up shelves.
I suppose the problem from a landlord's point of view is that by allowing your tenants to make your property into their home absolutely, you run the considerable risk that they will be absolute slobs, whose idea of a home is a pigsty. Maybe longer term rental agreements would give people the security to want to invest properly in a rented flat, but then, really such agreements already exist, and buying a leasehold property is almost as expensive as buying a property outright. The other problem with such arrangements is that they don't suit the purposes of most landlords, who want to be free to do what they like with the property, and any long term letting arrangement precludes that. Perhaps some sort of happy medium could be reached, perhaps landlords with more than a certain number of properties should be obliged to let a portion of them out on a medium-term basis, in much the same way as inner-city developers have to provide an amount of key worker housing.
Along with the obligations, better incentives could exist for landlords who take a less short-term view. For example, there is currently no incentive for landlords to make their properties energy efficient, as they do not have to pay the related energy costs. The result is that they install lowest common denominator boilers, white goods and insulation. The costs to both the tenants and the environment are not insignificant and should be considered if we are to move to a society of long term lettings. Perhaps some form of tax incentive broadly equivalent to to the energy savings could be applied to rental income.
Of course there are some landlords for whom no incentives are required. They will fit a flat to the standards they would expect in their own home, and work with their tenants to make it a home that is well maintained and well decorated. These people are unfortunately the exception and are hard to find; they tend to be private landlords with only the one property. For bigger landlords, the market leaves them with little incentive to make any effort, and the law discourages them from even letting properties unfurnished. It is an arrangement that suits them very well, and it's perhaps time it was modified.
I have just started thinking about this and I've managed to come up with some ideas already. As buying a house becomes less of an investment and more of a risk, more people are likely to think about it. If the culture of renting is to become engrained in our society, the culture of letting needs to change. Whilst property law is notoriously tricky, that shouldn't discourage those who need to think about how to change it.