Where to eat

Subway and Nandos - overrated.

Try Wahaca, Turtle Bay, Comptoir Libanais, or Leon.

Other suggestions?

Tales from the plutocracy

Public subsidies to the rail network, and rising ticket prices, whilst shareholders are paid hundreds of millions of pounds in dividends.

A tower block burns down whilst Conservative MPs vote against tighter regulations of building safety standards.

Private companies are paid to cut benefits being paid to poor people. Their shortfall of money is met by charitable donations and volunteers manning food banks.

Shortfalls in school funding are being met by donations from parents.

The cost of nurse training to be met by the nurses themselves, rather than society as a whole.

Uncapped rises in rent met (or not) by housing and other benefits, which effectively transfer wealth from the taxpayer to the wealthy. Incidentally, my definition of "the wealthy" here is people who have homes that they can afford not to live in. That's a bit of a simplification, but it's not a bad starting point.

Every policy, every policy, designed to transfer money from "normal" people to "the rich", or limit the amount of money "the rich" have to pay to participate in society.

The opposition party argues over how left wing it should be whilst the party in power presses ahead unchallenged.

The media, largely owned by the plutocracy, draws attention to the weakness of the opposition rather than exposing the money grab of the people in power.

The "trickle-up" effect

The Conservatives promote the idea of the "trickle-down" effect - the idea that if people at "the top" get richer, the money trickles down through the economy and spreads to "the bottom" - the poorest. However, in my mind, this system has broken down. It would be better to describe it these days as a "trickle-up" effect - through high rent, housing benefit, dividends to shareholders, high charges for credit, and so on, as much of the spare money of the poor as possible is soaked up and passed up the chain to the wealthy. It doesn't trickle down any more - the net wealth of the richest 1000 people increased by 14% last year. That £83 billion pounds that just 1000 people increased in wealth by could have had a major impact on the economy were it "trickling down". Understand that I am not being anti-rich here. I consider myself one of the lucky ones, in wealth terms. But the whole foundation for how Conservative economics is sold to the population is on this basis. And if in actual fact, the money is simply being tied up in billionaires' assets, then this is not working. Note that even if the same amount was being transferred back to the economy at the same time as their wealth was increasing (though how quickly can a billionaire spend money?!) this would still represent a ridiculously inefficient process of getting money into the economy.

The point about this money is that it has to come from somewhere. And if the money is available to increase the net wealth of individuals, it could be available to reduce the deficit, or pay for hospitals, or .... whatever. The government is enthusiastically chasing something like £1 billion fraudulently obtained benefits - and rightly so. But that billion pounds is spread across far more people than 1000, and they are far more likely to be spending it in the local economy ("trickle-out?") - and the casualties of this are the people who are seeing their benefits cut when they are actually dependent upon them. This is why foodbank use is at record highs.

Similarly, quantitative easement could have passed money into the economy for the benefit of the population - but those billions of pounds were never seen by "normal" people, whilst high earners in the banking sector continued to see huge bonuses.

The world has changed, in this area as well as others (see my post on privatisation below). The Conservatives continue to pretend that things are the same as they were thirty years ago, in regard to these things, which is why people uncritically continue to vote for them, and believe that they represent a better way than the dangerous lefties with their strikes and their unions and their closed shops ("Corbyn will take us back to the 70s"). But these people owe it to the rest of society to understand how the tories are taking them and everybody else for a ride.

Tomorrow's election

Basically, the only thing the conservatives are offering is the "best Brexit deal" - a statement so vague as to have no substantive content whatsoever, and one which seems pretty unachievable given the team that are likely to be involved in the negotiations. There is literally not one other thing they have said in this election campaign that offers anything good for the country ... unless you happen to already be very rich (as, of course, all of the key players in the last government are). There is no let up to the threat to human rights, education, health, transport, international relationships that we have already seen from the tories. The rest of their campaign has been spent, with the collusion of key sections of the media, trying to say that Corbyn and his team would be bad for the country - as a means of distracting people from the appalling impact that their own manifesto will have.

Despite this, Corbyn has presented himself as measured, thoughtful, polite and a much more convincing figure for PM than May. I have several issues with Labour. One is that their manifesto promises are financially unachievable. Another is that whilst I would be happy to see Corbyn in 10 Downing Street, I don't believe the left wing of the party has the necessary competence to attempt to deliver anything close to what they have been talking about. And the third is that I still have not forgotten what Labour did from 1997-2010 - the misguided foreign adventurism and the laxity regarding the City of London which permitted them to wreck the economy. Note that I don't believe that this was fundamentally Labour's fault - this was the financial hard right wing, a sector of the economy that is happy to bypass political process altogether, and actually deserved the Icelandic solution of failure and prosecution, were that not to have had such an appalling impact on millions of innocent people. But it was on Labour's watch.

The fact that the electorate can apparently forget holds out hope in the long term for the party I still prefer, the Libdems. Some are still punishing them for (in effect) not being the biggest party in the coalition from 2010-2015, despite the fact that they managed to hold back the appalling right wing programme that the tories have since embarked upon. "Liberal" (that is, anti-liberal) secularists worked hard to damage Farron and undermine him from the start of the campaign, which is particularly daft as the libdem agenda is much closer to their mindset and more authentic than either of the two main parties. It was similar to what happened to Orson Scott Card with the film Ender's Game - it had a profound and overt anti-war message, but "liberals" could not see beyond Scott Card's attitude to other issues, so chucked the baby out with the bathwater.

With a big drop in Labour's polling position, and the largest party continuing to oppose Brexit, the Libdems might have hoped to have seen an increase in their share of the vote. This has not happened, and this is also despite their manifesto being generally well regarded and thought of as the most honest and realistic. It's not going to make a difference, and I can't imagine that the Libdems are going to advance significantly, if at all, in this election, but do at least check that you're voting for a party where you believe in the policies, not one that the media are telling you is the best one.

Third way

Corbyn is not quite the poisoned brand that he was. Over the last week or two, increasing numbers of people have given him a long hard look, particularly in the light of May's performance, and have come to the conclusion that he might be prime ministerial material. Also, the Labour manifesto was popular - people in general seem to regard it, as intended, as a manifesto of hope. But Corbyn's personal rating is still substantially lower than May's, and there are doubts that the commitments made in the manifesto can be funded. The right-wing press have grilled opposition politicians (Farron over homosexuality, Corbyn over the IRA) in a way that they simply haven't the tories. Hitherto, Corbyn has not suffered too much, but in the aftermath of the Manchester bombing, it's hard to know what impact public perception of attitudes to security issues will have.

Meanwhile, from having all but an absolute majority of the electorate in their hands (having hoovered up the UKIP votes following their pretty much wholescale adoption of their policies and attitudes), the Conservatives have seen their lead in the polls gradually slipping away. Their manifesto seems to have been one of the major causes - but it was symptomatic of a general sense that they conveyed that they could say pretty much whatever they liked, and they would still sweep to victory. Foxhunting, massive personal liability for the cost of social care, grammar schools, ID required to vote - get it all out there. But drip by drip, the united opposition to this platform from schools, the health service, and really anybody who was prepared to think about the implications of the proposed policies seems to have got through to increasing numbers of people, and the lines in the sand of more and more of the electorate were being crossed.

What we are left with, seemingly, is one group of people saying "vote Conservative, they may be bad, but we can't have Corbyn" whilst the other group, to a much greater extent than I have noticed in any previous election, are saying "anything but the tories!" The shame about this is that, after the last two elections (LibDem in 2010, UKIP in 2015) we really don't have the sense of there being a coherent alternative to Labour and Conservative, at least publicly. There has been small-scale co-operation in some constituencies, with tactical voting being encouraged in some marginal seats. It would be nice to think that this would make a substantial difference - and if the polls get closer, maybe it will make enough of one.

But imagine a parliament shaped by proper proportional representation - even with the polls as they are today. Something like 290 Conservative, 250 Labour, 60 Liberal, 25 UKIP, 25 others. There need not be a coalition, though that's one way of dealing with the situation. There could just as easily be a minority government. What would happen is that the party manifestos would be all but irrelevant - the government would have to work with other parties to make things happen. Can they do that? Of course they can! That's what happened with the calling of the early election, and the agreement of parliament to approve the invocation of Article 50. The leading party (which forms the government) makes the case for something, and persuades parliament of the rightness of the proposed actions. They win the argument, rather than assuming that the electoral mandate that they received (for all sorts of reasons) justifies whatever they want to do.

The 2010 government came closest to this, although the effect of the coalition is that this "winning of the argument" took place within the coalition government, rather than by parliament. The consensus is still that those five years represented a period of effective government, and certainly preferable to what we have had since. A significant number of Liberal policies were introduced, and many illiberal Conservative policies - ID cards, for example - were dumped.

The Labour party have muttered about electoral reform in the run up to the publication of their manifesto, and this report suggests three quarters of their voters might support reform. The trouble is that if you have gained power under the current system, you have a strong reason to preserve it. Theresa May in particular seems intent on using this election as a power-grab - her intention in going to the polls was apparently to silence opposition in parliament (incidentally this statement, made at the time she called the election, made my hair stand on end - that is democracy, no?!). Her manifesto is talking about disenfranchising those without passports and driving licences (that's mostly the poor), and if Scotland left the union, the Conservatives would be virtually unassailable in England. Of course, the tories would say that an end to the Union is not what they want ... but if they happened to be left with political control of the rich south, that would make it sweeter. If the pendulum swings back far enough, and Labour return to parliament with a bigger share, it's not hard to imagine that PR would drop off their radar again. They will continue to be an ineffective opposition, as they have been for the last two years, but happy that they ARE still the opposition.

The best outcome would be for the FPTP system to deliver the distribution of votes that would result in this happening in parliament naturally. With Labour weakened, there was some hope for a while that there might be serious opposition to the Conservatives from several parties - that would have been another goodish outcome - imagine 330 Conservative, 200 Labour, 80 Liberal (as people swing away from Labour in indifference to Corbyn and their ability to mount an opposition), 60 other. But as Labour have got stronger, this has looked less likely, unfortunately.

I suspect that local results will have more of an impact on this election than on many recent ones. I hope so. The assumption has to be that the Conservatives have soaked up pretty much all of the UKIP vote, and so everything that can be done to constrain the mixture of right-wing (which shapes the tory government) and complacent apathy (which shapes most of the tory vote) should be done. My fears for this election are that it could prove a one-way street for some very unpleasant changes to British society. My hopes are that people will, to quote Sheenagh Pugh:

elect an honest man, decide they care

enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.

But I'm not holding my breath

The Conservative equivalent of nationalisation

The bogeyman of nationalisation stalks threateningly around the Labour party. Memories of strikes, poor service and inefficiency are deeply imbedded in our national consciousness, and both the (right wing) media and right wing politicians are more than happy to remind us.

It has struck me recently that what is particularly disingenuous about this is that the Conservative party are more than happy to substitute their own analogue of nationalisation - ultimately, no better for the consumer.

The public logic is as follows: a nationalised industry is uncompetitive and inefficient, likely offering poor service. If it is privatised and opened up to competition, this will drive prices down and result in an improved service. That was the historical logic - the Conservatives of the 1980s had many faults, but this was their agenda, and there's little doubt that the big privatisations of that era - BT, British Airways, British Gas, BAA - have ended up doing the job better as private companies than the were doing as effectively parts of the government.

However, the more recent privatisations seem to have been less about the ideology of the most effective way to run a public service and more to do with transfer of wealth to a de facto plutocracy. Privatisation of electricity, water boards and the railway have not apparently resulted in genuinely open and competitive markets. Employees have suffered, and customers have seen little benefit. The biggest beneficiaries have been a comparatively small wealthy class. In the case of the railways, for example, this report points out that whilst the railways still require a public subsidy of billions of pounds (that is, taxpayer money), and ticket prices have consistently increased faster than inflation, they are paying hundreds of millions of pounds to shareholders. It is hard to believe that the taxpayer is gaining value for money from this arrangement - but since it is the government ideology, securing value for money for the taxpayer is secondary to detaching these entities from the government. If it benefits the plutocracy, so much the better.

Can you see how this is similar to nationalisation? The policy is ideological - it has little concern with the customer or the taxpayer - it is what the government is going to do anyway. Unlike with nationalisation, the folk memory of privatisation is generally good, still - "Tell Sid", the spread of share ownership and dividends, improving customer service. But that's not what is going on now. Instead, we see markets with no competition, and money being transferred from taxpayers not to a bloated public service but to shareholders. But the effect is the same.

This is the model the Conservatives wish to pursue if they continue in power. Public money goes to pay for school places in academies, which whilst state schools are struggling and having to cut budgets, still anticipate being able to make a profit. The same for the health service - public money again being used to pay for medical work, but rather than state-owned enterprises collecting the money (at cost), private companies (making a profit for the benefit of shareholders) will collect it instead. And this is what is planned for old-age social care. Companies will be invited to provide financial products and the net effect will be a large proportion of the capital from a significant fraction of the housing stock of the country being transferred for profit to them.

This is blatantly serving the interests of people within the government. I read a report that the prime minister's husband works for the company with one area of expertise being the sort of equity release product that will form the staple of the Conservative proposal about social housing. Extensive connections between private healthcare companies and government ministers have been reported (it should be noted, though, that some of these are donations, and politicians have little control over who gives them money).

What's the alternative? Is it possible to have a middle ground between nationalised entities, with their risk of inefficiency, and private companies, transferring money from the public purse to shareholders and overpaid executives?

This is not about Brexit

My fear ... These elections are not about Brexit. Brexit is a distraction, a means of capturing votes with a big sideshow. After all, what is guaranteed to stir the British public from apathy more than a perceived threat to its sovereignty from the outside? What is more guaranteed to turn them away from a party than the suggestion that it is prepared to appease them?

Whilst the EU negotiator sounds conciliatory, and says there is no punishment, the media report the risks of a cost of 100 billion Euros, and the tories are happy to suggest that was the threat. WHO IS GAINING FROM THIS SUPPOSED INTERFERENCE IN THE ELECTION?

So the conservatives are about to be given a huge electoral mandate, and with that, they are going to dismantle the remaining vestiges of British society, under the guise of the need for austerity. The NHS, state education, social welfare, none will exist in a form that we would recognise by 2022. The apparatus is already in place. The conservatives engineered the majority they needed in the marginal constituencies in 2015 by cheating the finances. The potential sting to them has been drawn by the fact that they are about to secure their majority. Money is already being diverted away from state schools, the NHS and welfare towards privately owned schools and grammar schools, healthcare companies and other companies. With a majority of over 100 in the next parliament, there will be nothing that can stand in the way of them legitimately completing the job.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39786477 - the poor lose out as a result of the 11+

http://www.independent.co.uk/…/dwp-fit-to-work-assessments-… - companies gain more than the government saves

http://www.mirror.co.uk/…/selling-nhs-profit-full-list-4646… - (old report) people in government who benefit from private health companies

Rock, paper, scissors....

I had some recollection of "bigger" versions of the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors". What I was really looking for was a way of making it more than two player. Unfortunately, a cursory search fails to uncover any means of doing this. I did find some other interesting stuff, though.

For example, it was used in the USA as a means of dispute resolution (I have never sounded more QI). A copy of the relevant court order, quoted in Wikipedia, can be found here ...

Upon consideration of the Motion – the latest in a series of Gordian knots that the parties have been unable to untangle without enlisting the assistance of the federal courts – it is ORDERED that said Motion is DENIED. Instead, the Court will fashion a new form of alternative dispute resolution, to wit: at 4:00 P.M. on Friday, June 30, 2006, counsel shall convene at a neutral site agreeable to both parties. If counsel cannot agree on a neutral site, they shall meet on the front steps of the Sam M. Gibbons U.S. Courthouse, 801 North Florida Ave., Tampa, Florida 33602. Each lawyer shall be entitled to be accompanied by one paralegal who shall act as an attendant and witness. At that time and location, counsel shall engage in one (1) game of "rock, paper, scissors." The winner of this engagement shall be entitled to select the location for the 30(b)(6) deposition to be held somewhere in Hillsborough County during the period July 11–12, 2006.

A five gesture variant is mentioned in The Big Bang Theory, apparently - "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock". The existing relationships exist between the first three items, but then defines relationships between Lizard and Spock gestures and each of the other three. Details here. For the game to be balanced, each gesture has to win against half the other gestures and lose against the other half (which means that there should be an odd number of gestures).

But this has been taken even further by someone who went on to create 7, 9, 11, 15, 25 and eventually 101 (!!!!) gesture variants. Yes, you and your opponent can pick any one of 101 gestures, and the winner and loser is defined in each case. You can buy a poster - you'll probably need at least that.

Now, given no multiplayer version exists, is it possible to make one, I wonder?

Buckingham Palace refurbishment

Various people accepted the indignant line being presented in some quarters about the renovations to Buckingham Palace. The Metro slants the story here, for example. This article gives a perspective that they may not have been aware of.

My feeling, for what it's worth ... I prefer the monarchy to most of the rest of the political establishment, as I think they have a long view, even if their powers are limited (I wish the whole UK government had a long view and limited powers....!). I think that Buckingham Palace represents a national asset, which a "lucky" family gets to live in, in return for surrendering pretty much their whole life to the country. There aren't many 90 and 95 year olds who aren't really given the option of just retiring. Buckingham Palace is part of the heritage of the country which brings in a lot of foreign money. The lack of renovation for 60 years (! Do you have a 60 year old boiler in your house? 60 year old wiring?) is poor form, and I think that to see the palace go up in flames for lack of proper maintenance would ... well, be oddly fitting in a country which is burning most of the rest of its things of value, but would nonetheless be a disgrace.

Furthermore, I think that even were it the government funding this, there is no way that the money would be directed instead in directions that we think it ought to go - that's not the alternative.

A relevant comparison - the refurbishment of the Houses of Parliament is estimated to cost around ten times this amount (estimates of cost vary between £2 billion and £7 billion pounds), and this will be funded by the taxpayer. And government departments don't have a good track record of securing value for UK taxpayers' money.

The angle on "doubling the funding for the Royal Family" is an interesting one. The crown currently pays tax of 85% on its income, which leaves a balance of about £40 million from which the Royal Family and their estates are funded. So if the Royal Family weren't there, the UK would have £230 million less income. For the next ten years, the amount of money taken from the crown's income will be decreased to 75%, to fund this refurbishment. It is true that the UK will have £370 million pounds less money over 10 years. But the sotto voce implication is that without the crown, we could use that money ourselves. In fact, over the course of that ten years, even with this refurbishment being paid for, the UK will expect to receive an income of £2 billion pounds from the crown. 

Millennials and whining

I'm tired of it. Not the whining of the Millennials - people in their late teens and early 20s. But the whining about them, by older people. "They are so entitled, they think the world owes them a living." I think those people who are saying this ought to take a good look at what they had in comparison to the people they are grumbling about.

Oh, sure, a small number of the "older generation" can remember the impact of the Second World War, the effects of rationing and so on. But the ones who are whining are the people who grew up in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Before you grumble about how entitled the younger generation are, please consider the following ...

6 Harsh Realities Of Millenial Life Non-Millenials Need To Understand

1. The final salary pension you took for granted will probably not be theirs. All the private ones are pretty much closed down. The state ones are much less generous (read "more realistic in their funding expectations") than they were when you started your career. A money purchase pension is as far removed from a final salary pension as a STEM degree is from an arts degree.
2. They can't afford a mortgage. As in, they can't afford one. They don't have the necessary £50000 in equity (a year's income) and a joint income of £150,000. The problem here is partly that the rising property prices which secured your future as you climbed the property ladder made it harder and harder to get on the ladder - because ...
3. "As a rule of thumb, you should not pay more than 30% of your salary in rent" but "Tenants in England spend half their pay on rent." Yep, the rent you are charging on your buy-to-let investment to boost your pension is preventing the entitled Millennials from getting on the property ladder at all.
4. Some of you took early retirement on full pension (see 1) in your 50s - so your employer could employ cheaper people. In return, Millennials can expect to work into our 70s. I am not a Millennial. I was asked by someone who had retired by 50 when I might expect to retire. He was shocked when I told him that my retirement age was 65. I'm luckier than my children.
5. When your generation graduated, you had the milk round and graduate salaries. When Millennials graduate, employers have found all sorts of dodges to avoid paying them anything at all. Millennials are expected to live at home and have unpaid internships. Forget the minimum wage: some Millennial graduates are paying to get the "experience" they need to be employable. It goes without saying that the company would have to pay someone to do the work that their interns are doing for free.
6. You got your degree for free. Millennials will have deductions from their salaries for up to 30 years to pay for theirs.

And yet, despite the fact that society is stacked against them, the fact that they are the first generation poorer than their parents were at the same age, it's not the Millennials who voted for Brexit. Which means that it is not the Millennials who are soaking up the whining headlines of the tabloid newspapers, expressing resentment at the supposed tide of immigrants, the imposition of laws from Brussels, and the loss of national sovereignty.

What does it mean 'to be grogged'?

From the BBC. Nothing to do with me.

Still, a bit weird when a word you have associated with yourself for years suddenly appears in another context.

Horses driving carts

Obviously commercial organisations are aiming to monetize their internet presence. However, it seems to be increasingly the case that they are more concerned with ad revenue than the experience of their users. Some of the stupidities ...

• Mattel have a Scrabble game that connects to Facebook, and have aggressively chased off other companies that have produced games that are too similar. It is one of the most irritating Facebook apps. They have attached an advertising engine to it. For a long time, every time you played three moves, it would produce a black screen inviting you to buy their ad removal packages to avoid a seven second wait - in other words, it was advertising its own ad removal package.
  
  This pales into insignificance compared to the apps behaviour on a tablet. Here, particularly when playing against the computer, the same 30 second advert is generated pretty much between every turn, you can't exit from it, and when the advert ends, it shuts down the app.
  
• AVG anti-virus have a well-established free antivirus, which aside from the fact that it kills performance of computers, does provide what seems like a pretty good level of protection. In Windows 10 it produces pop-ups, and today, it has started producing the same pop-up advert every few minutes.
  
• The "click-bait" slideshows that you get to from social media, which sometimes suggest they have interesting content, now typically spread the text for one slide over three clicks - presumably to serve more ad views.
  
• I remember reading a grumbly Guardian article a while ago about ads on the internet - whilst downloading animated adverts on the same page was grinding my browser to a halt.
  
• One of the main suppliers of automated ads has this obsession with things that you have looked at or searched for. So you look for, say, Converse shoes on Amazon. Ta-dah! Every web page you look at for the next week has an advert for them. Now, think for a minute, Mr Ad Builder. The likelihood is that either 1) I bought the shoes or 2) I decided I didn't need to. That was a search I did two days ago - am I likely to want to do it again today?

These strategies are self-defeating. The reason Adblock gained traction was because of the increasing intrusiveness of internet advertising. If people find advertising intrusive and can't get round it, they will either block it or use different products - advertising on the internet drives people away more effectively than it promotes things.

Churchill and the EU

During the referendum campaign, I'm pretty sure I heard Churchill's name invoked on several occasions. I've just finished reading his Nobel Prize-winning history of the Second World War. There were a large number of interesting snippets in there, and it's well worth a read. I thought his thoughts towards the end of the last volume about his idea for a world order following the war were worth repeating.

I have always held the view that the foundation of a World Instrument [that is, a basis for organising international politics] should be sought on a regional basis. Most of the principal regions suggest themselves - the United States, United Europe, the British Commonwealth and Empire, the Soviet Union, South America. Others are more difficult at present to define - like the Asian group or groups, or the African group - but could be developed with study. But the object would be to have many issues of fierce local controversy thrashed out in the Regional Council, which would then send three or four representatives to the Supreme Body, choosing men of the greatest eminence. This would make a Supreme Group of thirty or forty world statesmen, each responsible not only for representing their own region, but for dealing with world causes, and primarily the prevention of war. What we have now [1953] is not effective for that outstanding purpose. The summoning of all nations, great and small, powerful or powerless, on even terms to the central body may be compared to the organisation of an army without any division between the High Command and the divisional and brigade commanders. All are invited to the headquarters. Babel, tempered by skilful lobbying, is all that has resulted up to the present. But we must persevere. (From Triumph and Tragedy, Chapter XXXVI)  

Lots of bits and pieces in there. But with regard to Europe, we can see that Churchill had in mind a "United Europe" - but one which did not include the UK. We can also see that the principal function of international politics, as far as he was concerned, was the prevention of war, rather than economic. This was obviously as the Cold War got under way, and on the back of forty pretty disastrous years for Europe.

Modern ticket touting

I heard a news article, probably on Radio 4, about the problem of ticket buying and reselling. Businesses use deceptive means (credit cards in false names, multiple addresses) to buy large numbers of tickets for shows when the sale opens, and then resell them at significant markups. The big ticket companies, like Ticketmaster, have a ticket resale wing, and this is used - much more anonymous than eBay with its rating system. Now, there will always be a reason why people need to resell tickets. Someone in a group might get sick, for example. People might decide they want to go for a date that's released later on. But that doesn't seem to be what's dominant.

We had the opportunity to see it in action today. We were tasked to try and secure a couple of
tickets in the presale for a Twenty One Pilots gig at Alexandra Palace on 11th November this year. Literally within minutes of the presale opening, possibly less than a minute, no tickets were available.

By 9.30, that is, just half an hour after the presale OPENED, there were over 270 tickets being resold on Getmein, the Ticketmaster resale website. The markup was £10 or more per ticket. The tickets on Getmein were all being sold at around the same price - presumably this is a fairly mature tour, so by now the people buying to resell have a pretty good feel for what the market will bear. Valuable societal skills right there.

Some bands and artists have already reacted against this. There are means of regulating it which would make it much less desirable to touts. For example, Getmein could limit ticket resale price to the purchase price - why should someone reselling tickets make a profit from the transaction? Who does that benefit? Or, especially given that the tickets aren't normally sent out until a few weeks before the gig, they could offer resales only a week before the tickets would be sent. The trouble is, at the moment, Getmein/Ticketmaster makes even more money this way - they end up getting commission for selling the same ticket more than once!!

Just to let you know, if this is how you run a business and you happen to be reading this, then you're a spiv and a parasite. You are making money off other people's work, whilst adding no value of your own and just ripping other people off.

A methodology for analysis of pop lyrics - problems

Song lyrics are typically divided into blocks of text, with the blocks corresponding to musical sections of the song – verses, chorus, bridge. These typically consist of more than one sentence, and thus are analogous in rank scale to paragraphs. The first, and possibly most obvious, problem, in analysing song lyrics is repetition - the repetitiveness is one of the distinctive features of song lyrics. It has the effect of significantly increasing the word count without adding to the semantic content. It also has the potential to distort and bias word frequencies, particularly in the case of the most repetitive songs. Previous researchers have adopted different approaches to the issue of repetition. Kreyer andMukherjee chose to keep them all; Petrie,Pennebaker and Sivertsen chose to eliminate the third and subsequent occurences. (Incidentally, that last one is a really interesting paper - "A linguistic analysis of the Beatles".) In my project, I downloaded lyrics from lyric databases, and the files I downloaded generally included all repetitions, as they are written in such a way as to permit people to follow the song from beginning to end. However, I decided to produce a corpus in which I deleted blocks of text that were repeated unchanged in their entirety. Where there were changes, both blocks were kept. The effect of this was to reduce the average number of words per "song" from 343 to 220, a reduction of 35%. The justification that underlay this was that I was interested in exploring linguistic features. Having noted the scale of the repetition, there was little need to explore it further.

A second issue is that the language used in song lyrics often diverges from "standard English", both in terms of word choice and grammar. This means that it's necessary to come to a decision about how to write it down. Should I write "ooh" or "oooh" or "oooooooooh"? Should I stick with the official version, and end up with a range of different versions of a word that is functionally the same? I didn't come to an answer in my original work. I think the best approach is to attempt to standardise as far as possible, but record the extent to which changes were made.

Another issue is that of "definitiveness". The definitive versions of lyrics are likely to be found either on a band's website, or if not electronically, on an album sleeve notes. It is much more common for bands to make their lyrics available in this way than it was thirty years ago. The downside of this is that it takes substantially more research to get hold of the lyrics, compared with raiding a lyrics database. However, most such databases are "widely collaborative" enterprises, with people contributing lyrics as they see fit, which may or may not be subsequently corrected by other people if they contain errors. For my project, I used a specific lyric database as a starting point. However, if the lyrics were unconvincing, I would then check it against other databases or the band's own website if one was available.

A methodology for analysis of pop lyrics - justification

During my OU degree, I chose to do short project looking at the linguistic characteristics of pop lyrics. I felt this was worthy of further study, and would like to come back to it. As part of the prologue of this process, it's important to work out how exactly the language is going to be analysed. I've extracted and edited what follows from the short paper that I wrote.

Music is a form of artistic expression that is produced in the context of a particular culture. "Pop music" doesn't have a single clear definition, but is typically represented by music made available as "singles" – single-track records, or individual downloads. For many years, it has reflected and also helped to define a certain strand of particularly Western culture.

Despite the cultural significance of song lyrics, they have largely remained uninvestigated from a corpus linguistic perspective. According to Kreyer and Mukherjee, they have "not been included in any of the standard reference corpora". Some preliminary investigations have been carried out, but little attempt has apparently been made to describe the linguistic characteristics of pop lyrics. Such an analysis would provide a reference point for considering the location of individual lyrics within the genre. Given the close relationship between pop lyrics and culture, it is possible that song lyrics might provide a proxy for measuring cultural phenomena. This was an approach taken by DeWall et al.

Linguistically, pop music lyrics have characteristics that are different from other forms of language use. The medium itself is focussed on music, particularly rhythm, melody and form, and the lyrics might be considered subordinate to this. Individual song lyrics tend to be highly repetitive and relatively short. Although songs are written, rehearsed and edited, which ought to result in texts characteristic of written modes, the choice of language is often colloquial, stylised and limited – this being more typical of spontaneous forms of language use, such as conversation. The choice of themes is conventionally narrow. However, song lyrics are widely quoted beyond the context of their song, frequently have powerful emotional resonance, and consequently have a cultural weight in sections of society that few other forms of discourse manage. This cultural significance makes song lyrics worthy of investigation.

The "feel" of the Narnia books

I've given links on this page to two books that Michael Ward has written, and a DVD based on them. He has a thesis, for those who aren't familiar with it, concerning  the seven Narnia books. Note that it does not relate to the films or the BBC productions - if that's your only exposure to C.S.Lewis, then you need to do some more reading before you will understand this post! The Narnia Code DVD was broadcast on network television, and became one of the most explicitly Christian things I've seen on TV. The book of the same name is accessible to children whereas Planet Narnia is quite a challenging read. However, both books effectively engage in literary analysis in an incredibly satisfying way - if your only experience is of deadly hours spent in GCSE English classes, then reading these books is an eye-opening experience. Good analysis like this doesn't kill the books, it makes them come even more alive. (That's what Bible teaching should do as well!)

His thesis is that the seven books each use one of the medieval planets to create the distinctive "atmosphere" of the book. The medieval planets are the sun and moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The medieval view of the planets was complex - they were bound up with the characters of the gods they were named after and different aspects of the world that characterised those gods. Lewis believed that myth expressed an underlying deeper "truth", was quite fearless in co-opting this medieval framework as being representative of an underlying Christian reality. To give a brief examples of that, The Horse and His Boy is the book which relates to Mercury. It is dominated by rivers, carrying messages and twins. The Silver Chair is Luna, the moon. So there is confusion, ambiguity, a sense of "descent", madness and ... silver, the moon's metal! You can guess which planet the warlike Prince Caspian and the creative Magician's Nephew represent.

Ward's understanding of what Lewis was trying to achieve is pretty convincing, and is now apparently widely accepted. What interested me about it was the extent to which people's preferences between the Narnia books were shaped by the mood of the book, so I asked briefly which of the books people preferred and why. I suspect that the "mood" of a book does indeed have some impact on people's preferences, even if they read and enjoyed all seven books.

For what it's worth, I think that my preferred book as far as mood was concerned was The Silver Chair, even though I suspect it is one of the seven that I actually read the least. If you want to learn more about how Ward makes and defends his thesis, and how that actually works itself out, you'll have to go to the books, or at least the DVD. But once you've got an idea of how it works, go back to the books and read them again!

Feel free to comment on which of the Narnia books you liked and why. It would be interesting to see how often "mood" or "atmosphere" crops up.

A just war

The BBC has a web page which summarises what a just war is. It is so concise and simple that it's hard not to quote the whole thing, although it does leave quite a few questions unanswered - what is a "just cause"? What are "good intentions"?

The UK government is debating launching air strikes against Syria. To me, if this is to be considered engagement in war, I strongly suspect that it fails to meet the fifth criterion given on the BBC page:

• There must be a reasonable chance of success

How do you measure "a reasonable chance of success"? What even are the success criteria?

Two of the other criteria are also matters for debate:

• The means used must be in proportion to the end that the war seeks to achieve.

• All other ways of resolving the problem should have been tried first.

 And two of the remaining three require proper articulation:

• The war must be for a just cause.

• The intention behind the war must be good.

Even assuming that the idea of a just cause is not ambiguous, what is the cause for which we would be fighting? And what is the intention, and can we at least agree that it is a good one?

Let's assume that these matters can all be addressed. We then have to look at the conduct of the war. Can we be confident that "innocent people and non-combatants" will not be harmed, if our chosen way of conducting it is by bombing? If not, then the war ceases to be just.

People have said, "what should we do, then?" Personally, I think the cause is just - namely, to attempt to protect the people who are there. But the means of fighting is wrong. If it is agreed that the cause is just, then it is hard to argue with the logic that says we actually ought to be fighting there. This cause is less ambiguous than seeking regime change in another sovereign state, regardless of how much you have come to dislike it.

Who is a "first-time buyer"?

The government, in its spending review, is promising amongst other things:

• £2.3bn paid directly to developers to build so-called "starter homes", aimed at first-time buyers, who will get a 20% discount on prices up to £450,000 in London and £250,000 elsewhere

 I want to talk briefly about those "first-time buyers", who will be benefiting from the government opening its purse strings. The phrase is a loaded one - in the same way that when you think of a pensioner, you think of this:

rather than this:

What you probably think of is a young couple, maybe starting a family, one in a worthy job - maybe a nurse or teacher or policeman a year or two into their career.

That's all wrong.

Take that £450,000 maximum pricetag for London. The 20% discount reduces this to £360,000. To afford to buy a property, these first time buyers need cash of around £40,000 for deposit and fees, and an income of around £90,000. So, let's assume this is a couple. Both are close to the higher tax threshold, which means they definitely aren't classroom teachers (unless several years into leadership) or policeman (unless close to inspector level) or nurses (below band 8).

A couple of things follow from this.

• If this is where you need to be professionally to be a first time buyer, then something is wrong with the system.
• Are these really the most needy in society, the people who the government should be directing billions of pounds to helping out? 

Expo 2015

There's still time to go.

It's in Milan, and runs till October 31. The theme is "Feeding the Planet: Energy for Life". We spent a couple of days there in July, and here are some reflections on it.

I went to my first Expo in Vancouver in 1986, travelling on my own. Then I took my family to Hannover in 2000, and then went back there for another short day later on in the summer. I've been wanting to get back to an Expo ever since. Milan seemed like a good opportunity, and it was just a matter of finding a block of days when we could get there.

It's hard to describe what it actually is. I think it has its roots in such things as the Great Exhibition. It is dominated by international pavilions - we think around 120 countries were represented there. These vary from 5x5 metre rooms with posters and (usually) a few products to buy to sophisticated walk-through multimedia attractions, with restaurants and arts venues. There are also commercial pavilions, parades and entertainments both lowbrow and highbrow. I think the name of Epcot in Disneyworld is no coincidence; it is a kind of theme-park, "Disney" version of Expo.

It has grown! In 2000, we pretty much broke the back of Expo in one day - with two children who weren't fluent walkers. We spent two pretty long days there this time, and only got around it by skipping most commercial pavilions and ones with queues, so I think a fifth had gone unseen. I suppose, given that the theme was Feeding the Planet, it is not surprising that many of the pavilions should showcase food and drink. We ate in Azerbaijan, Brazil and Chile, and bought a drink in Laos.

I was apprehensive about the heat of Milan in July, especially as Expo involves a lot of walking. As it turned out, it was me who came closest to succumbing to the heat, needing a fairly long mid-afternoon break on the second day, despite drinking plenty. The organisers have given consideration to the impact of heat. The heart of Expo is a covered boulevard around 1500 metres long. But you can't really avoid a lot of walking.

There are ethical issues raised by Expo. There were riots when it opened; it feels like an expression of globalisation. And it's very much the case that the countries and corporations present themselves as they wish to be seen. But on the other hand, there aren't many places in the world where you can get a glimpse of so many nations on their own terms at one go (North Korea, Sudan, Yemen, Laos, Ethiopia, Brunei...), and the subject matter does invite the countries to consider what they are doing about food security and sustainability, and the visitors to critically engage with these questions. I'd like to get back there and see more - failing that, the next Universal Expo is in Dubai in 2020 (though there's a smaller, specialised Expo in Astana in 2017 - just 100 countries represented ...)