Portions

Day to day I find it quite hard to be positive about the future of the human race and the planet. I work in an office that has comprehensive recycling facilities and yet people still throw recyclables in the rubbish bin. It is a small thing, but this very fact is what makes me despair: if people cannot be bothered to do the small things that require absolutely no modification to their life beyond a little thought, what chance is there that they will even consider any kind of modification to their actual lifestyle?
Do people not let others off the train first before boarding because they have been asked to do so, or because they are so selfish that their pursuit of their own agenda must be to the detriment of everyone, including, quite often, themselves? Is humanity's greatest disadvantage shortsighted selfishness?
Selfishness itself has purpose. In crisis situations, selfishness is basically the survival instinct and is all we have to fall back on. In the fight for survival, selfishness is essential. However, daily life in the developed world is not a fight for survival, and if you think it is then you are probably the sort of macho twat who believes that they're actually living in a jungle. This is possibly not your fault, you might just be the sort of simpleton who mistakes what they see on television for guidance as to how they should live their lives. Or perhaps you think that the aggrandizement of selfish, thoughtless, macho behaviour by people who have failed to find a place in a developed society - let's call them Clarksons - is in some way clever. In other words, perhaps you are ten years old.
I am selfish, I like to get what I want, but I also like to think about how that can best be achieved. Quite often this will mean that the shortest route is not necessarily the quickest, or even that the quickest route is necessarily the best. Ultimately, the best option may be more complicated and involve more input from me, but if it's the best option, why shouldn't I take it. If I want to go to the local shops, the quickest option may appear to be to drive there, but if there's nowhere to park, then it could be more hassle than it's worth. Walking would not only potentially get me there faster, but would be better for me and the world in general. This may sound obvious as all hell, but it doesn't stop millions of such journeys a year being taken by car 'for convenience'. People's perception of what is most convenient is clouded by notions of luxury. Driving to the shops is luxurious because all driving is luxurious, this is what popular culture tells us; driving is an expression of our individuality, of freedom, of our wealth. Unfortunately, our measures of luxury have remained largely unchanged since the 18th century, when it was considered desirable to be morbidly obese. Furthermore, nothing in the fundamental structure of capitalist society is designed to work against this perception of what is desirable, indeed conspicuous, wasteful consumption and it's aggrandizement are fundamental to the 'growth' that is defined as a prerequisite for a successful capitalist society. Whilst it remains 'cool' to gain wealth and flaunt it, it will essentially remain 'cool' to be selfish.
As I've already said, I don't think there is anything wrong with being selfish per se, but if your selfishness is to the extreme detriment of others (i.e.you gain directly as a result of their loss), then I would say it's pretty bad. Of course people at the top of capitalist systems don't think of their accumulation of wealth as coming at the loss of others, they see it as gained fairly and squarely as a result of their genius. This is probably because they see wealth as an infinite resource that is only unavailable to others due to their lack of genius. This is to fundamentally misinterpret the nature of wealth, which, like any other resource is finite, and like any other resource, fiercely guarded by those with access to it. Not only do the rich tend to gravitate towards each other for protection and reassurance (a natural enough survival tactic), but they also spend money on the most effective propaganda machine invented for any system ever: advertising. Fundamentally, it doesn't matter what product an advert is in respect of, the ultimate message is the same: you will be an unfulfilled person unless and until you buy more stuff, and in order to buy more stuff you need to accumulate more wealth. In order to accumulate more wealth, you either have to work for the people who already have it or borrow it from the people who already have it. The rich don't need to force you to be beholden to them, they tempt you into it, and you submit willingly, convinced that it is your choice, part of your journey to commercial fulfillment. Thus we increasingly measure our happiness in possessions; we feel we deserve them because we've worked hard for them (which, in most cases we have) and therefore that those who don't have our possessions don't deserve them. Thus the concept of the undeserving poor comes into being: an other that we are entirely disengaged from because they are not like us, they are lazy and stupid. Usefully, this is a concept that can be applied wherever you are in the socioeconomic spectrum, as there is always someone poorer than yourself, they just may not live in the same country as you. The undeserving poor are even easier to be set apart if they are elsewhere; another country is preferable, but a ghetto will suffice. So if we can do away with things like the social housing requirement on inner city developments, then 'we' can keep 'them' at arm's length and therefore avoid any chance of meeting them and humanizing them. This is a point about perception and it works equally both ways: if those who are not rich gain their impressions of the wealthy solely from TV programs such as Made In Chelsea, it is easy to label them all as the idle rich. Thus by not knowing each other, we may label each other, demonize each other and blame each other for the state of the planet, when in fact we are all culpable. If we think about what we would do in different circumstances, would we be any different from whichever other we have demonized? Should we not try and consider the needs of others whoever they are before we make our choices? Even if that choice is just to let people off the train first.

Posterity

A few weeks ago I played cricket for the second time this summer. Much like the first time, it served to simply remind me why I avoided playing sport at school and pretty much ever since. I put this down to a combination of things: I am a bad loser, I am impatient, I have dreadful coordination and I don't like being cold/wet/too hot. This meant that as a youth I would give up on pretty much every sport instantly and with bad grace.
Not surprisingly, this defined much of my childhood/adolescence. I did not make friends with the sporty types, I hung out with the geeks and freaks: the interesting people. I actively looked for ways to emphasise my distance from sporty conformist types in all the ways that such teenagers usually do: by growing my hair and embracing counter-culture. The long hair changed with my changing tastes, but the sense that I was apart from the norm never did; what I call my 'indie sensibilities'. When Britpop went mainstream, I immersed myself in techno: that's the level of bloody-minded indie I'm talking about. However much I have integrated into society since I've grown up, I can never shake that sense of separation, nor do I want to. All people like to think they're different don't they, even when they're not. That is until we get to a certain level of identity. Most people are happy to share a common national identity, even if that is a less consistent identity group than most others. Many people are happy to share an amount of their identity with other supporters of a sports team, frequently donning matching clothes to further merge their collective identities. Oddly, many people consider this to be the behavior that defines them as individuals.
Needless to say, I find any collective identity larger than a few people and smaller than national something to be avoided. Also not surprisingly, such group identities usually only manifest around sport. Given all of this, I was clearly a prime candidate for the kind of skepticism that was in evidence amongst many of the population in the period we may now refer to as BO (Before Olympics) or perhaps more accurately BOC (Before Opening Ceremony). Like every other skeptic I've encountered, the opening ceremony was a kind damascene moment in which my natural cynicism was melted away by a warmth of feeling that seemed to wash over our (deserted) capital. I enjoyed every moment of the games in the weeks to come, although I didn't actually watch any sport, I just reveled in the good feeling (and functional public transport). In this (not actually watching the sport) I realise that I was in the minority; when I was at my second cricket match of the summer, most people who hadn't seen each other since talked about the Olympics.
Cricketer1: Did you watch the Olympics?
Cricketer2: Yeah, it was really good.
Cricketer1: What did you watch?
Cricketer2: Oh, I watched the cycling and the swimming and the athletics and some gymnastics, yeah it was really good.
Cricketer1: Yeah, it was awesome.
Cricketer2: Yeah, except beach volleyball, that's not a sport.
Cricketer1: No, that's rubbish. But everything else was great.
Cricketer2: Yeah, it was amazing. Imagine if it was always on, that would be great.
And so on. I relate this (perhaps not entirely authentic) conversation to illustrate just how much the Olympics changed our society for the better: many many men didn't talk about football for a number of days. Obviously the games achieved much more than this: undoubtedly they will inspire some children to become athletes, maybe some will be inspired by the opening ceremony to go and work in the NHS, maybe some will be inspired by the Paralympic opening ceremony to read books and be more like Stephen Hawking. The motto of the games was 'inspire a generation'. Hopefully that wasn't just 'inspire them to try running faster than everyone else', because that's a limited aspiration that is guaranteed to create more losers than winners.
I understand the need to get young people more active but as a youngster, team sports put me right off exercise for years. It took me a long time to find forms of exercise that didn't require me to associate with people obsessed with being better than me. I did eventually find such activities and I enjoy them very much, indeed it is the enjoyment of physical activity and exercise that led me to believe that I might actually enjoy playing a sport that I have loved to watch for many years. I was wrong. Or perhaps that was enjoying it, perhaps that is as much enjoyment as anyone gets out of playing team sports - I can only assume not.
I'll probably persevere with playing cricket once or twice a summer with friends, as I enjoy the peripheral activities and the company of friends, but I don't think there is anything that could have been done differently in my youth that would have made me passionate about playing. I had other interests, I developed other skills, I joined the the outsiders, and I'm glad I did, but no one was ever going to give me a medal for that.
The Olympics have been a great show and I think it's right that we acknowledge the monumental efforts of the athletes and the fact that the games bring the world together in a way that is genuinely hopeful. However, the Olympics are now over and it's time for us to get on with life, which, if you're not an elite athlete, is a very different thing from sport. 

Policing

I still need to check when applications close, but I'm thinking of running for the post of London's police commissioner. Why vote for me? Well I would spend my first month in office interviewing all police officers with more than 15 years experience and reviewing their records. After I had found the suitable candidate, I would make them my proxy and give them the rest of my salary. That way London's policing would be run by a professional, rather than some attention-seeking politician.
If my proxy preferred, I could stay on as the public face of the commissioner's office, to make the public apologies every time a tabloid newspaper decides to tell the police how they should have done their job. I know naff-all about policing, which I'm pretty sure qualifies me perfectly for discussing it with tabloid journalists.
So, would you vote for me? I promise that if you elect me, the person who does my job will be a suitable person for the job, with many years policing experience. How many other candidates can say that?

Pharisees

So I might be drifting up the leg of late, but that's only because it appears to have become such fertile territory. I mean I am well aware that all jeans have tended towards skinny for some time now: I believe that the term is that the 'silhouette has changed'. However, as gentlemen (sorry women/wimmin, I couldn't even begin to comment) we have choices within the silhouette. My casual trousers are undoubtedly thinner than they used to be, but they are nowhere near this thin. The reason being that, whilst I am relatively fit, I am a fairly bulky specimen, and wearing skin tight jeans would look as bad on me as it does on this chap. Also I am over 30 and therefore would look terrible dressing like a teenager.
The whole jeans/socks/shoes combo would tend to suggest that not only is this a 'look', but that it is a 'look' into which the owner has invested much care and attention. Unfortunately the socks merely serve to highlight the age/mass incongruity of the clothing choices. Oh, and the shoes. These were a purchase of love: that is evident in all the detail and the fact that they clearly get a polish every now and then. Unfortunately, no matter how much their owner loves them, nothing can stop this being an utterly fugly pair of soft-toed pointy shoes with some fairly dull stitching.
Next.

Post-sartorial

"Oh what's his problem this time," I hear you say, "this is just a classic skinny leg jeans/pointy shoe combination."
Well, my problem is twofold:
1. The shoes are (as ever) scuffed to buggery, which wouldn't be quite so bad with jeans, but
2. They are suit trousers.
Seriously, that was the lower half of a two piece suit! I only hope he wasn't going to an interview; I certainly wouldn't give anyone a job when their feet looked like stale croissants. But then I am pretty biased, I guess you've worked that out by now.

Positioning

Consistent with most of my internet usage, I'm a fairly lazy user of Twitter. I don't spend loads of time looking for new and interesting people to follow, I just tend to stick with what I know. Subsequently, one of the more heavily represented areas in my feed is the world of cricket. Interestingly, this is also the area from which I am most likely to unfollow someone. This is not entirely coincidental, cricket is the only sport I have much interest in, so the only sportsmen to appear in my Twitter feed are cricketers. Given the propensity of sportsmen to poorly articulate their really bad ideas, it is no real surprise that they are prime candidates for unfollowing. Kevin Pietersen was textbook: I followed him because I thought that the self-righteous claptrap he was bound to spout would be mildly entertaining and I wasn't disappointed for a while. Eventually however, the fact that his feed just painted a portrait of a total dick got the better of me and I unfollowed, more in disgust at myself for ever having got involved in the first place.
More recently the world of cricket presented me with a more complicated problem. One morning I happened to check my Twitter feed and noticed a tweet from genial cricket commentator and professional posh bloke Henry Blofeld. As a rule, he generally uses Twitter to promote his stage show or boast about where he had lunch. So far, so trivially entertaining. However, on that morning he felt the need to ask why people got so wound up about climate change when there were so many more important things to worry about. I challenged him on this, asking for an example of something more important. Not surprisingly, I got no direct response, but on checking my feed later that day it was apparent that I was not the only person to have reacted in this fashion. Blowers in his usual genial manner called us all losers and told us we needed to get a life and then spent the rest of the day retweeting messages from other selfish people or climate-change denying nutjobs saying things like "yeah, they're always trying to ruin our fun" or "yeah Blowers, that'll show the climate change Nazis". I am paraphrasing, but only just; the word 'fascist' was definitely used.
Eventually I got so bored of the braying of these dreadful people clogging up my feed I unfollowed their latest hero. I could happily spend a whole post venting at the selfishness and stupidity of people who, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, see the ramblings of a superannuated cricket commentator as justification for them to carry right on ignoring their moral responsibilities, but why bother. If you have read this far, you're either as enraged as me by the willful ignorance of a worrying number of people, or you're thinking "here we go again: more deranged ramblings from a climate change nut. Why can't they leave me alone to pollute the earth in whatever way entertains me most." If you're thinking the latter, I'm surprised and slightly impressed as you have exhibited behaviour that I failed to: you are willing to persevere with an opinion counter to your own. I always think I should be doing this sort of thing: reading the websites of the right wing press and engaging the people thereon in reasoned debate. I could have replied to all the people Blowers had forced onto my feed explaining to them (in 140 characters) why they were (in my opinion) in error. Of course such an action would have the opposite of its intended consequences, in that it would only serve to reinforce the opinion of the people I contacted that people concerned with climate change are obsessive fanatics. I am not a fanatic; I worry about our effect on the climate and I think a spot of individual responsibility wouldn't hurt in that regard. I think if you don't think about your impact on the lives of others then you are either a child or a bad person. Yes I am making a moral judgement. I guess I'd take a lot of persuading to pull back from that opinion and I think the argument would need to consist of more than the opinions of a handful of ill-informed celebrities.
Research into such things tells us that regardless of the substance of the arguments used in a debate, they will only serve to reinforce the opinions people had at the start of the debate. This depressing fact tends to make me think that if I can't change the minds of these people, then why on earth should I suffer having to listen to their idiotic opinions? At the press of a button, the unpleasant fact of their myopic views are removed from my life. I can retreat into my little liberal bubble and carry on with the charade that everyone is doing their bit, that everyone else cares about their fellows and worries about the consequences of their actions. But this is just as much a denial of the realities as anything else, just because some people are wrong, should we be happy to ignore them and allow them to remain so? How does a society progress without debate between these two sides? There appear to be two answers to this question: 'very well, thank you' and 'not at all'. The first can perhaps be seen as the traditional model, where groups with radically differing worldviews understand that in order for society to function, they must find common ground. Compromise is sought and reached because the parties involved accept that the functioning of society is a higher priority than the achievement of personal goals. Increasingly however, it seems that this is less likely to be the case, as across the established democracies, politicians of all stripes seem less inclined to negotiate with those on the other side of the argument. In the USA the Tea Party are barely willing to talk to others in the Republican Party, let alone Democrats. In the UK, the new cohort of Tory MPs have already rebelled against the party whip more than any other in history, keen to prove to the country that they will have their way even if they don't have a democratic mandate. Actually I imagine the Tory rebellions are more to do with MPs acting based on the only mandate they feel they have, i.e. as the party has no mandate, they act on the individual mandates that their constituents have handed them. However, the mandate they feel they've been given puts them an ideological pole apart from even the moderate wing of their party.
As I said before, extreme views are not a new occurrence in politics, but an inability to understand the fundaments of representative democracy appears to be. Regardless of the mandate you feel the people have handed you, unless 100% of them voted for you, you don't have a mandate to impose your will on the world in its entirety. Indeed you have an obligation to acknowledge the fact that you represent people with differing views and ensure that you seek at least a dialogue with those views.
We appear to have moved into a new era of belief politics, where politicians are driven not by ideology and pragmatism, but a belief in the absolute truth of their argument so fierce that it renders them intransigent. There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which is that people's beliefs seem to require more, well, belief these days. Whilst there is proof that the increase in the earth's temperature has accelerated rapidly since the industrial revolution, there is no way of proving the exact cause. Theories backed up by considerable experiment may illustrate the near certainty that certain manmade gasses are the cause of global warming, but there can be no absolute proof. We have to believe that 99% of the climate scientists on the planet are not wrong. Unfortunately, for many people it is just as easy to believe otherwise, because there is no absolute 'proof'. Equally, as there is no proof of the existence of a god, it is just as easy for people to believe that a book written by a bunch of Romans is to be interpreted literally as the word of God, that the world is 4000 years old, that we should stone each other to death for working on the Sabbath, etc. Perhaps because of the surge in the need for belief, religion has taken an increasingly direct role in politics, going from something that defines a person's moral compass to being the literal basis for a society people believe they should impose on their fellows. Such extremism begets extreme opposition, further polarising the world. The result is that people increasingly think that their beliefs are so right that they should overrule the democratic principal. I must confess that when I discover the thoughts of the climate change deniers, I am tempted to entertain the notion of some form of dictatorship of environmental responsibility. Like everyone else, I must resist such temptation; democracy must always have primacy, because once you let it go you have to fight hard to win it back.
Besides, I'd actually become the environmental fascist that the friends of Henry Blofeld dream up as their oppressors. And I'd hate to lose an argument in such a crap way.
Of course I don't follow Blofeld any more, so it's an argument I'm not going to have. Maybe it's time to get back into the fray...

Point of View

So after about 5 minutes watching from my window I got bored of the Shard opening ceremonies. I guess there are only so many exciting things you can do with a building: make it change colour and fire lasers into the sky whilst searchlights and helicopters circle it. I imagine it was pretty exciting if you were an invited guest, what with the LSO playing and all. However I wasn't invited and neither were most Londoners, which seems to be the thrust of the one of the arguments of the anti-Shard lobby. It is elitist they say, a giant monument to money and greed. No argument from me there, but why single out the Shard for this criticism, why not the Heron Tower for example which is a much less graceful building and nearly as tall.
Of course the Heron Tower is built within the main city cluster, which exempts it from the major gripe of the anti-Shard lobby: that the Shard, by virtue of of its location dramatically changes the London skyline. Yes it does, so what? The London skyline is not some kind of perfectly realised, perfectly organised picture; it is a muddle, like the city itself, a conversation between thousands of different ideas. When London was burnt to the ground in 1666, Sir Christopher Wren wanted to build an entirely new city on a beautiful radial design, in much the same way as the French subsequently did in Paris. Unfortunately, he instantly ran into disputes with landowners, whose properties were bounded by the pre-fire roads. Ultimately, the only part of that design that survived was St Paul's Cathedral, and whilst the immediate area around that building retains some the order that Wren wished for, the London that sprang up beyond it had none of the discipline of a well designed cityscape. This set a precedent that survives today: when it comes to planning in London, the ultimate result stems from an argument between the architects, the developers, the authorities and the neighbors. The London skyline is not a homogeneous vista, it is a messy assortment of architecture both good and bad, and opinions on each of these buildings will vary wildly. As they should do in one of the world's oldest democracies.
In his piece on the Shard, Simon Jenkins complained that it didn't belong in this country, but in a desert state (such as the one from which much of its funding came). Apart from the apparent racism inherent in this statement, it fundamentally fails to understand the nature of London's architectural heritage. St Paul's itself was controversial, as Wren had decided to build it in what was then an Italian style. Would all the skyline preservationists been so concerned if it was just another classical English style cathedral? St Paul's is so evocative of England because like all Englishmen, it is an immigrant. To accuse a new building in London of being alien is to fundamentally misunderstand the city. Also, associating the Shard aesthetically with its major funders is a bit lame when they only committed funding after building had commenced.
Simon Jenkins is right to get exercised about big developers and famous architects steamrolling planning law, but surely he should have done that about the Gherkin rather than the Shard. The site of the Gherkin contained the grade I listed Baltic Exchange, and before Sir Norman Foster got involved, all development plans involved the retention of the badly bomb damaged building. As soon as Sir Norman broke out the plans for the most phallic building in London, all and sundry got weak at the knees and quickly forgot about listings. The Shard is different though: it is built on the site of some pretty ugly modernist rejects that no one will ever miss ever, but because you can see it poking up behind St Paul's if you're rich enough to live on Primrose Hill, but not connected enough to get invited to the opening party then it is an abomination. Brilliantly, people like Simon Jenkins say that this will open the floodgates to legions of super skyscrapers lining the Thames and ruining the skyline, and brilliantly by saying such things they prove themselves wrong. Yes, unfortunately there are a small number of other less well imagined supertowers springing up in the wake of John Prescott's hubris, but they will become a natural antedote to themselves. They will become new Euston Stations. The destruction of the original Victorian Euston Station in the 60s lead to the introduction of grading and protection of historic buildings that is both a wonderful thing for posterity and a massive headache for anyone associated with listed buildings. Planning in a city like London will always be complicated because everyone wants to be involved, it will ebb and flow, the developers and the conservationists will each have their day. Neither will ever win and neither should they.
I have issues with aspects of the Shard's construction; the fact that they ditched the energy saving aspects of the building's original design should have resulted in fines, re-submission of the planning application or a commitment to offset the additional energy usage. I'm sure there are many other complaints that can be levelled at it, but to complain that it ruins a skyline as jumbled as London's is surely to miss the point entirely. If you're worried about rich people doing what they like with your heritage, you should look to parliament. Now there is a blot on the skyline.