Working Class Media

I heard someone on the radio the other day decrying the lack of working class people in the media. Surely, being in the media automatically makes you middle class by default, regardless of your background (unless you're Lord Clark of Civilization) - or is social mobility dead and buried? I hear many so-called 'working class' accents on the radio and TV these days.

Often, but certainly not always, you need a degree to work in the media too - there's no bar to working class people getting a degree, more and more are doing so and, if education is an attribute of class, a degree again makes you middle class.

Julie Birchill is a name that immediately springs to mind as an example of someone with a working class background and no degree, but who has become a media star and middle class, although she probably wouldn't like the label. Music seems to be a good route into the media for the working class, as is being a writer, whether of books or plays.

That's not to say things can't be improved, but it's patently false to maintain there are no working class people in the media, as the item I heard was implying. I suppose it all depends on one's definition of working class...

Analyse and discuss.

Customary Cat Exercises

Hay: "Kitty looks subdued, as if she's got something on her mind. I wonder what it could be?"

Chairman: "Jeremy Corbyn possibly coming out in favour of a customs union? She'll have heard it on the radio just now."

Hay: "Ah, yes. She's worried about the implications for that long-term export order for catnip."

Found out how to create gifs using the camera on the Samsung S8+.

Could come in handy, I guess.

Everyone is moaning about temperatures that are predicted to go as low as -5 degrees - one paper is calling it the coldest temperature for 27 years. Can't see what the issues it; when we were living in the caravan while building the house we recorded -10 degrees quite often in winter and there were no problems. OK, we had no water for a few days, but that was only because it came through a hose rather than an underground pipe.

The exercise regime I'm following is certainly having beneficial effects. While my weight has only gone down by 3kg (and I suspect that's because I'm simultaneously putting on muscle mass because the layer of fat in certainly disappearing and my stomach is flattening), my blood pressure has improved dramatically. Before the regime I was around 130/100, it's now consistently at 114/74.

I'm now on 20 wheelie rolls, 20 bicep lifts with a 10kg weight in each hand, 20 arm side curls with the same weight and 20 seconds of abdomen vacuum - all repeated 5 to 6 times a day, with one day of rest in the week to allow the muscles to repair. I'm also still on the 5/2 diet, but not eating breakfast or lunch on the 5 days, thus dramatically reducing my usual calorie intake. Watch this space...

Smearing Lecturers

This Ben Bradley smear of Corbyn - bad mistake. It has backfired massively and has served to a) draw attention to Bradley's own, odious, 4th Reich views (ref a vast sea of unemployed wasters who should have vasectomies in order to stop them having several children) and b) sway people who probably would never vote for Corbyn to vote for him purely out of distaste for what Bradley and all and his ilk stand for. Hideous little twerp.

I have to confess that I dabbled with Conservatism in my youth - who hasn't done something stupid when young? - but that was before they became what they now are. It was also before I developed what we experts call a social conscience, which today's crop of Conservatives have left behind. I don't, however, relish the prospect of handing control of the country to a workers' collective intent on a Momentumist Utopia either. For me, a social conscience is tempered with a healthy regard for keeping the the country running and competitive in an increasingly globalised economy - rewarding hard work and yet ensuring that those less fortunate are not left to fend for themselves and the plutocrats and oligarchs are not able to run riot.

The university lecturers' strike is drawing opprobrium from many quarters because students are a casualty. Similarly, if health professionals go on strike they are equally vilified - but what other recourse do they have? Any strike engenders collateral damage - whether it be customers or suppliers, but in all instances the strikers are left with little choice - they also are victims.

Trojan Millennials

Overheard while choosing TV programmes on iPlayer:

Hay: "I don't think you'll like this version of Troy - it's allegedly not historically accurate."

Chairman: "I think you'll find that Homer's version wasn't exactly a historical documentary either."

I was listening to something about Millennials on the radio the other day and their alleged sense of entitlement. Everyone is asking where this sense of entitlement comes from; I would suggest it comes from the aristocracy, certain sections of the political class who, after serving a term or two in government, sell large chunks of the family silver to their corporate paymasters at a huge discount and end up with the reward of a chairmanship, and the super-rich. You can't tell me that the old Duke of Beaufort, who died last year, didn't have a sense of entitlement, nor the majority of the Conservative Party.

It can also be traced back to the neo-liberalism of the Thatcher years when everything that didn't move was privatised and it became cool to be filthy rich on the back of a deregulated financial system. It even became cool to be financially criminal.

Then there's the fact that our kids are the most educated of any generation - correction, the longest educated - meaning they have been institutionalised for far longer before having to face the realities of the workplace, becoming neotenised by society in the process. We've added between two and five years to adolescence in the last 20 years.

It's ironic that the parents of Millennials are members of the generation that 'had it all' for the least effort. Is it therefore any wonder that Millennials want the same as their parents had? Don't judge them too harshly - you're probably the cause and are a giant toddler yourself, seeing your kids as your best friends, rather than wild animals that need discipline and taming (and hankering for off-the-shelf lifestyles). However, revenge is a dish best served cold and their comeuppance will manifest itself when your kids become parents themselves.

Hozzy Lips In Stow

A few days ago I pondered whether lip readers can detect accents - I found this:

About a third of the sounds we use for speech don’t use the lips or the front of the mouth, and so can’t be distinguished by a lip reader. Accents normally show most of their variation in the vowel sounds and these are the hardest to pick up by lip reading. A strong regional accent can often make lip reading impossible, so a lip reader might be able to tell that you had an accent simply because they couldn’t understand you. Identifying which accent it is would be harder, although some accents – such as Mancunian, which tends to use a wider mouth shape for vowels – might be detectable. More likely, a lip reader would infer your accent from dialect words and phrases (such as the Liverpudlian ‘hozzy’ instead of ‘hospital’).

Went for a quick trip to Stow-on-the-Wold yesterday. Nice place, but filled to the brim with lifestyle shops that provide one with an off-the-shelf, designer, Cotswold living room, or kitchen in the regulation, National Trust grey. These things seem to be designed for people lacking any shred of creativity and wanting to be shoe-horned into a pre-prepared idyll.

Back to Trump and the American arms race; he called the armed deputy who didn't enter the school a coward. That's fine talk from a draft dodger. He makes a habit of being a hypocrite. I'll tell you what's cowardly - not taking on the NRA.

Doping NRA Beakers

Of course the NRA is in favour of arming teachers - it's in favour of everyone in America carrying guns for the simple reason it will result in more guns being sold and higher profits. No other reason - business trumps logic and runs the country for the benefit of business alone, paying politicians to so their work. The ridiculous thing is that much of the electorate supports this position. It's people like this that give us ordinary nutters a bad name.

It's worth considering that no-one wants to be spotted holding a gun, even if being used in self-defence, when a SWAT team descends on a school where a shoot-out is taking place. Until such time as the NRA can develop a drone that can tune into homicidal maniacs' brain waves and then follow him (it's invariably, but not always, a bloke) round with a big, neon sign saying; "Homicidal Maniac," handing guns to all and sundry is a recipe for an even greater disaster.

These shootings are not random - the people shot may be, but the target building isn't. The perpetrator is sufficiently clear thinking to have a grudge and doesn't care whether he comes out of it alive, so arming teachers isn't going to make any difference as to whether he comes to the school or not. He's going out in a blaze of glory, come what may.

Trump saying he's going to address mental health, but calling these people 'sickos' doesn't exactly give the right signals either. Unless, of course, he's going to luck up everyone with a mental health issue. I wouldn't put it past him, if it means a contest between mental health and the NRA. Personally, I think anyone who supports the NRA has a mental health issue.

People who support an arms race within American society are just plain morons - there's no other excuse for them. I don't care if I upset any of my American friends on this issue - they're in denial.

So the continental Beaker People from Europe almost totally replaced the original Neolithic Britons some 4,500 years ago, bringing with them a more advanced culture. I'll say no more...

Regarding this Russian accused of using performance enhancing substances in the Olympic curling; how the hell can anything, except perhaps spectacles, improve your performance in chucking a lump of granite at low speed across a stretch of ice? I could understand doping the opposing team to make them fall about in a drug induced haze, but doping yourself?

Deaf Shelfie Diet

Thought I'd let everyone know what I look like, so I took a shelfie:

Saw an advert on TV last night for some diet outfit called Jane Plan. They send you food parcels and apparently you can get £100 off with a certain code. If there's £100 off, then it must cost a bloody fortune. Surely just eating less is going to involve no cost - in fact you'll save money - for no effort.

I wonder whether people who lipread can discern accents?

Dog Shit Markets

Overheard while walking into town:

Chairman: "Who is that lad on the other side of the road?"

Hay: "One of Chis and Ralphs - eldest."

Chairman: "They don't have a kid called Elvis!"

Hay: "What are you talking about?"

Chairman: "You said he's called Elvis. Neither of Chris and Ralph's boys are called Elvis."

Hay: "Eldest, not Elvis!"

Hay was selling something on Facebook Market. A bloke responded on Messenger with a voice clip asking a few questions. Hay, not being very familiar with Messenger, responded by pressing the wrong button and sent him a dishevelled photo of her in her nightie with a quizzical expression on her face. He must have been horrified. She'll be getting a name for herself.

When we were hacking the undergrowth from the bridge over a local stream over the weekend, we can across several plastic bags of dog shit. why do people bother to collect their dog's shit in a plastic bag and then dump the bag? They'd be better just leaving the dog shit on the grass, for God's sake! Foxes, badgers, etc. are meat eaters and shit in fields without it causing plagues.

Talking of dogs, I'm convinced that what with Hay's obsession with cats, the only way I'm ever going to have a dog is to offer my services as a dog walker.

Newsfeeds

Don't know about you, but I'm a tad fed up with newspapers no longer being newspapers, but propaganda machines and purveyors of vacuous tittle-tattle. Doesn't matter whether they have a left or right-wing bent, they consistently fail to report facts without putting their own political spin on them - or are selective in which facts they bother to report.

The on-line versions are even worse, publishing blatantly provocative or salacious items to draw clicks and advertising revenue.

The BBC is no longer what it used to be either. Having to pander to accusations of bias (most of which are politically motivated - the more biased you are, the more biased you're going to see anything that's middle-of-the-road; it's a relative measure) it now has to tread a very delicate line and has become adept at ensuring it gives equal coverage to both sides of any argument, even if it means giving total crackpots equal billing with experts.

I have been using Flipboard for some time, as at least you get a spread of opinion (for news is now opinion, rather than factual reporting) from both ends of the political spectrum, but it's wearing having to read two extremes rather than something from a reasoned viewpoint (which is not necessarily the middle).

That said, Reuters consistently comes out in analyses as politically neutral and has now become my preferred newsfeed. There's also the fact that most news organisations actually take their main stories from only three sources, Reuters being one of them. It's only after receiving the Reuters wire report that newspaper hacks put their spin on a story before publishing it.

Bridge of Mice for Ukip

Late news, I know, but apparently Henry Bolton has been voted out of the Ukip leadership position. Why the 2nd vote - what part of a democratic vote doesn't Ukip understand?.....

We did a spot of community helping this weekend by clearing a stile of brambles and trees. Imagine our surprise to discover a bridge we never knew existed under all the undergrowth. I always thought it was a stile over the stream with a small culvert.

Cat food pouches left in the kitchen bin ming like hell after a day due to the under floor heating working its magic; then there's also the fact the pouches are made of plastic, which isn't recyclable. Someone should make a cat food pouch in the shape of a mouse with a covering that a cat can rip apart and eat.