sebastian michael

europa!

2011-12-11T13:24:00.001Z

It was entertaining last week to see most European nations revert to type and play more or less exactly the roles they have cast themselves in over the last hundred years or so.

Of course, it could (and maybe should) be argued that the nation state itself is a thing of the past and that we would (and maybe will) be infinitely better off now abandoning the concept and embracing instead much larger organisational unions to handle continental and global issues while dealing with the comparatively banal day-to-day running of our communities at a regional and local level.

Except, this seems to go straight against the grain of the European psyche. If there is such a thing. And if there is such a thing, what is it? Who knows. But what we can observe looks something like this:

The Germans, having spent the entire second half of the 20th Century convincing everyone that they don't want to domineer everyone, shape Europe in their image and run it so it works, find themselves in a position where, if they want to shape Europe in their image and run it so it works, they really have to domineer everyone. Which is awkward, because they've just convinced everyone that they don't.

The French, having spent all of the 20th Century becoming almost completely irrelevant to the rest of the world but extraordinarily important to themselves, find themselves in a position where they realise that - although they tried to convince themselves and everyone else to the contrary - faced with domineering Germans they will effectively roll over and do whatever they're told. Which is awkward, because although they never really convinced anyone other than themselves that they wouldn't, it's still embarrassing when they do.

The Italians, having spent the second half of the 20th Century getting over the fact that they had put at their helm a preposterous buffoon whom they then unceremoniously ditched before entering an extended phase of administrative limbo, find themselves in a position where they've just had to unceremoniously ditch a preposterous buffoon and could now well be facing another phase of extended administrative limbo. Which would be awkward, if anyone cared.

The Austrians, having spent the first half of the 20th Century being sort of German but not really and the second half explaining to the world that they sort of weren't really German though in a way they were, find themselves in a position where they are sort of German, but not really. Which is just awkward.

The Spanish and the Portuguese, having spent the first half of the 20th Century creating and then the second half of it dealing and pretty much coming to terms with their own mess, find themselves in a position where they would like to and probably can be dealing with any new mess they may have created for themselves, by themselves, if only the Germans will let them. Which may be awkward if they don't.

The Greeks, having spent the last two and half thousand years enjoying the fact that they gave us civilisation, find themselves in a position where everybody suddenly blames them for giving them a crisis. Which is awkward in so far as both is at least partially true, but pointing out the latter feels a bit rude.

The Dutch and the Other Two that make up Benelux, having spent the last seventy-odd years feeling increasingly chipper about practically everything and being universally loved (the Dutch) and largely ignored (the Other Two) respectively, find themselves in an unchanged position where everybody still loves (the Dutch) or largely ignores them (the Other Two). Which is only awkward if you bump into one and mistake them for another.

The former Eastern Bloc, having spent the last seventy-odd years and probably about the seventy-odd years before that in various constellations under some sort of imposed rule or totalitarian regime, find themselves in a position where they are just glad that that's all over now and happily take a bit of domineering from whoever manages to put some order into their affairs. Which is a little awkward for most, as that happens to be the Germans.

The Scandinavians, having spent their entire history being healthy, free-spirited and nordic, they are not going to change now, are they. So they find themselves in a position where they are just going to continue doing their own thing while being nice to anyone who buys their furniture and music. Awkward does not come into it.

The British are, you will note, on an island. They don't trust the Germans (except their cars), don't like the French (except their wine), don't respect the Italians (except their art, their food, their wine, their coffee and their lifestyle, and Tuscany, of course), don't pay much attention to the Spanish (not even when on holiday there), don't know much about the Portuguese (except that that's where Port comes from), don't view the Greek as contemporary (but relish the Classics), and don't care much about the rest (except the Dutch, whom they love, and the Polish, who are forever friends and really the best builders they've ever had). This is broadly the position they've always found themselves in and they're quite happy with it for the foreseeable future. Cheers.

(The Swiss. With a practically uninterrupted history of independence, democracy and neutrality, the Swiss neither are nor do they want to be part of the European Project. Which makes perfect sense, because sitting at the heart of Europe, on spectacular mountains, with a flourishing economy, a stable currency, and a train set that runs literally like clockwork, why on earth would they?...)

Oh, and the Irish! Well, having spent the first half of the 20th Century wrenching themselves free from British rule and the second half winning Eurovision song contests, they find themselves in a position where everybody simply adores them, if nothing else for their very fine stout...

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killing killers

2011-08-04T16:55:00.006+01:00

A lot of people in the UK are demanding a debate in parliament about the death penalty. Of course, we can debate it. But can we really, seriously, consider bringing it back?

No. Under no circumstances.

Judicial murder and a civilised society do not go together. We can either aim to make the world a better place, in which case we have to break the cycle of violence, terror, revenge and barbarism; or we keep ourselves base and unevolved, maintaining the fantasy of 'justice' through retaliation.

Violence begets violence, hatred begets hatred. Whether it's a Myra Hindley, or the killers of Jamie Bulger or someone like Breivik. Their wrongs must not pull us down to their level. If we allow them to, they win, we lose. If we want to be better than them, we have to have the courage to show this through our actions.

Every Time.

(There is a counter-petition which asks for the government to keep the existing ban on captial punishment in the UK. You can sign it here )

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rupert

2011-07-09T12:38:00.005+01:00

As he flies into this country - to do what exactly? To salvage his operation here? To oversee damage limitation? To apologise? - it is worth calling to mind just what exactly this man is. Not who, that's a matter for his biographers, but what he represents and embodies.

The great writer Dennis Potter memorably called his cancer Rupert, after Rupert Murdoch. And that, I am convinced, is precisely what Rupert Murdoch is. A malign tumour that has been sitting on one of the vital organs of our society - the media - for four decades and whose effect on the entire fabric that enmeshes our journalism with our politics, our judiciary, our police, our culture, our perception of ourselves, indeed our identity as a people, has been to damage it in the most insidious and pervasive way imaginable.

There has, yes, always been a market for tittle-tattle, there is, patently, a hunger for gossip and salacious stories, but while the great British public have to bear their share of responsibility for buying the lies, the trash, the made-up sensations, the half-truths and untruths peddled as facts, the misogyny, the homophobia, the xenophobia, the small-mindedness and intolerance, the thoroughly un-British unfairness of a small band of hand-picked henchmen and women, part family, part cronies, taking it upon themselves to threaten, bully, blackmail, intimidate and manipulate everyone from elected politicians to people who happen to carry out their work in the public eye to members of the royal household to anyone really they themselves consider 'fair game'; while it is true to say that much as every country gets the government it deserves it also gets the press it deserves, there is one fact that can't and mustn't be overlooked. Which is that the mindset - I can't bring myself to calling it a 'culture', as that would suggest there was anything in the least refined or civilised or even just human about it - which this man has instigated and spread is in itself as toxic as the brand he has just culled from his stable. You can create markets. As any drug dealer will tell you, you can manufacture (again, we can't justly call it 'cultivate') demand, even if it is for something that makes you sick. You can awaken, appeal to and feed into the lowest, most base instincts and by feeding them create more appetite for them. Like the sugar in sweets and the salt in crisps, you know it rots your teeth and gives you heart disease but you've tasted it now so you want more. What this man is responsible for, and if not single-handedly then most assuredly as its most effective, most efficient and most devastating operator, is the systematic destruction of ethics in journalism. This is a man who knows how to extract a price for everything and who knows the value of nothing, indeed. He is the nemesis of culture, the debilitating blight that has made it almost impossible, at times, for decency, in this country, to breathe.

As he flies into this country, this man, we are, I believe, within our rights to call for his arrest. He stands accused, personally and as the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, parent company to News International, of the corruption, the interception of communications, the interference with a police investigation, that his people stand accused of. If he says he didn't know about them, I say he is a liar. And if he isn't a liar, then he is grossly, criminally irresponsible, because know about it, he should: these kinds of scoops do not come out of nowhere. And if he did know about it, and admits as much, he is, of these crimes, guilty. I believe we are within our rights to call for the arrest of his son, James Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corporation Europe and Asia, and his Chief Executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks/Wade too. I believe we are within our rights to call for these people to be brought to justice.

Rupert, the cancer, ended up killing Dennis Potter. We need not let Rupert, the man, kill civic society in our country. We can excise him, or at the very least tame him. The rampant multiplication of his cells can be stopped, we have the wherewithal. And as for BSkyB: there is no way this person and the persons who do his bidding can be, in any meaningful way, in any way that doesn't make a mockery of language, sense and reason, be described as either 'fit' or 'proper'.

is earl's court worth saving?

2011-04-27T04:02:00.021+01:00

if things go ahead as planned, the world famous earl’s court exhibition centre and concert venue will be demolished after the london 2012 olympics, when it will host the volleyball competitions as the last event ever to be staged there. this forms part of a vast local development programme which has been given the catchy title ‘earl’s court and west kensington opportunity area’ by the three joint owners of said area: the london borough of fulham, who hold some of the existing housing stock around the earl's court centre, london transport, who own the tube line that runs underneath it and a fair bit of trackside wasteland around it, and the investment and development company capco (capital & counties), who own both earl’s court and olympia (the old olympia centre in kensington, not the new olympic village in east london...)

while a masterplan for the redevelopment appears to be at an advanced stage, a ‘first public consultation’ about it has only just now come to an end (26th april 2011), and this is also the reason i suddenly became aware of - you could say alert to - the impending changes proposed for a place two minutes‘ walk from where i live.

as somebody who generally likes change and embraces the new, i started out looking at the plans for earl's court, almost liking them. certainly i did not see anything substantially wrong with them, apart perhaps from the fact that they seemed somewhat 'pedestrian' and mediocre (if the people who have presumably laboured hard to come up with them will forgive me what is, if anything, an unintended slight), proposing at heart nothing much more and nothing much less than a new set of 'urban villages' much in the general contemporary planning mould that you could find practically anywhere in the world where there's a bit of space with a lot of money sloshing around, handled by a competent team of architects.

(i want to emphasise at this point - as if that were necessary - that i’m not an architect, city planner or urban strategist. it could well be that people who are, not least perhaps the masterplanner himself, sir terry farrell of terry farrell and partners, would venture that i’m talking out of the wrong part of my anatomy, and i grant that purely metaphorically, this may well be the case. so while i certainly have my steadily growing doubts, i do make allowance for their doubting too...)

examining the plans in more detail, and especially giving them, and my home turf, earl's court, a little more thought, i'm beginning to wonder whether this project - also bearing in mind that it calls itself an ‘opportunity area’ - doesn’t in fact miss two giant opportunities and may, for this reason, be misguided to the point where it should be re-conceived:

firstly, earl's court one (there is also an earl's court two, right behind it) is an iconic landmark building of at least some historical significance and architectural interest. it's an exponent, albeit not ‘pure and unaltered', as some might point out, of the art moderne style, which is a less fussy and more robust evolution of art deco, and it has its own characteristic elegance and an imposing beauty.

now if, as the masterplan suggests, venues for large and small scale events should continue to exist in earl's court, then keeping this landmark, which itself has come to define the area, intact would appear both the obvious and indeed the inspired thing to do. internally, as the redevelopment of the erstwhile millennium dome demonstrates (also something of a theme park and very middle-of-the-road along the covered mock 'high street', but top-notch inside the performance spaces), there is enormous scope for creating a genuinely exciting, and newly ground-breaking location which can incorporate a sizeable, adaptable performance space for big, top headline acts of the kind that have made earl's court famous - pink floyd, madonna, david gray... - and that the earl’s court centre itself likes to claim it has helped turn into legends, with compendium venues for smaller events, such as a high quality jazz club or independent music club, just as examples. within the structure, there would be plenty of room to also accommodate a new studio theatre with perhaps two performance spaces (what london hasn’t got enough of and what would therefore be more than a little desirable in this constellation would be a 250-350 seater and maybe a smaller experimental space with a capacity of up to about 150, both with completely flexible and removable seating, so performances can take any shape they like), a state-of-the art digital cinema with two or three screens (we are reasonably well-served with mainstream chains in the area, but what is sorely lacking in london generally are independent cinemas), and, as the icing on the cake, there would still be scope for turning some of the structure into a vast unconventional art/performance space that allows for large-scale, site-specific, non-auditorium style theatre, music and cross-media art events to take place.

as the wholly inspired and ingenious conversion of the turbine hall at tate modern illustrates: a big empty space is not a big empty space, it can bring value, visitors, and - directly or indirectly - revenue to an area, if its potential is recognised and utilised. of course, we don't need another tate modern here, but this kind of bold, conceptual thinking that recognises earl's court as a unique location and maximises its potential would genuinely move earl's court forward as a destination and also serve the twin goals of on the one hand preserving an historic architectural icon, while rejuvenating and newly inspiring people locally and from all over london (as well as the massive tourist contingent that's already here anyway) to use earl's court as a place of inspiration. a set of ‘urban villages', by contrast, is something that could take shape anywhere in the world and nobody would be any the wiser as to where they were or why they were there. yet surely the point and substance of redeveloping a local area like earl's court is to take its character, its identity and build on that, expand on it, make it clearer, more pronounced: enhance it. the current masterplan does nothing of the sort, it eradicates the earl's court identity and imposes a fairly bland globally applicable residential patchwork on the area instead.

secondly, then, keeping earl's court one (in particular) would of course require comprehensive re-imagining of the surrounding development area. here, i feel that the proposed plans are, while not inherently objectionable, timid and tame (although it could be argued, of course, that being timid and tame is inherently objectionable...). i see this, too, as a chance for bold, inventive planning, in which, to my mind, real emphasis should be given to architectural and conceptual innovation, with a clear focus on the kind of communities that one would like to build/facilitate in the area. my impression is - and i consider myself on somewhat less firm ground here than with my first point above - that the plans are principally aimed at a broadly affluent corporate clientele, which is understandable in so far as the development cost will be huge and investors will want to see a return. but earl's court is a multifarious, diverse, complex community that has often in the past been described as essentially transient. here is the opportunity, i believe, to set a marker for the area to be evolved and characterised as an 'organic' continuation of where it's coming from. i would certainly like to see the pendulum of the 'happening place in london' swing back now from hoxton square and shoreditch to the centre-west, and what better place for this to take root than here in earl's court, which has a long-standing association with artists, actors, performers, writers, musicians, photographers, poets and thinkers, and why not bring into the fold contemporary artisans, designers and specialist manufacturers. with the design museum set to move into the former commonwealth institute up the road, with olympia still there as a conference venue, and earl's court's status as a music, performance and art location reinvigorated, we could find ourselves with a ‘magic' triangle of culture, commerce and community that people will want to come to not just because it's convenient for the airport, but because it has identity, character and real content to offer.

targetting, and making an area accessible to these kinds of people, projects and enterprises is in itself, of course, an investment, because they are not, i realise, the most profitable bunch, but as has been shown over and over again, in the king's road, in notting hill, in dalston and southwark: if you have or make available useable, accessible and above all affordable spaces where creative people can work and live and in particular also showcase their work, then the moneyed people will invariably follow. the difference is that without the people who make and create things you get corporate lets and sterile gated communities where people on two-year contracts watch HD TV and go to the gym before moving on to their next assignment in singapore. with the ‘artists and creatives’, you still get those, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, indeed, you need a blend and after all, somebody has to come and engage with all the art, the music, the performance and the cinema that's being produced, but you also get the vibrancy and dynamics of a thriving culture. i think therefore that this is essentially a choice between: just going for the money and plonking down a soulless pseudo-village, or going for the character of an urban area and allowing the content to pull the money, thus creating a thriving, lasting, spirited mix of life.

so i’m coming around to answering the question in the affirmative. i think that maybe earl’s court is worth saving. i think the current masterplan can and should be rethought, that earl's court one at least should not have its current certificate of immunity from listing (COIL) renewed but instead be protected from demolition and that the earl's court and west kensington opportunity area ought to be developed as not just a commercial, but also conceptual and civic project that genuinely relates to, enhances and evolves earl's court as a cultural hub.

(i’d be seriously interested to know what other people make of it all. and here are some links to related websites):

the developers’ masterplan

a ‘causes’ page set up by people who want to save earl’s court

a tandem facebook page

a facebook page dedicated to c. howard crane, the architect of earl’s court

and his wikipedia entry

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a railway for christmas

2010-12-25T14:13:00.012Z

the ticket inspector just makes the train.

a polite but inane voice over the PA has already welcomed everyone on board and announced the destination: laufen. the doors start to beep and as they slide shut, he manages to sneak in, relieved. he has a moustache and wears glasses, he's not very tall. 'grüezi mitenand', he says to the people already in the carriage, who look at him a little bemused: surely the midnight train on christmas eve is not one to inspect tickets on? this is a suburban line, after all, where they only do spot-checks, occasionally.

he's carrying his little machine and what looks like a present he's been given, three miniature bottles of wine. he sits down and catches his breath. he takes from his uniform his badge and puts it in his breast pocket. the bemused passengers defrown, one manages a smile: he's off duty, on his way home.

his phone rings. he connects it to his headset and answers. 'paul! [not the real name, obviously] how are you? - no i'm fine thank you. yes, no really: i'm fine. well... there was a little altercation. - yes. - well, there were four of them, they had tickets for zones one to three, so we said to them: you can't stay on this train now, you have to get off, or buy another ticket. - it was all right, there were two of us, so it wasn't too bad: they got quite ...verbally robust, you could call it, but by the time we got to olten, we managed to convince them that they really needed a ticket, but they got off instead. so that's why we ended up with a three minute delay there. - no, no, i'm fine: thank you. i appreciate your call though, these things do shake one up a little. i hope they didn't wake you up on my account? - oh, i'm glad to hear that. - well. merry christmas to you too, goodnight!' and finally, he relaxes.

we've been to our sister's, my mum & dad and i, we sang carols, we exchanged gifts, we had dinner, it was lovely. ours is the next stop, we get off the train and step out into the snow. by now it's christmas. it's going to be a very white one. and what i'm thinking is this: everybody knows that the british railways are absolutely dreadful and the swiss railways are astonishingly brilliant. but today we've experienced a whole range of reasons why:

it's been snowing all day across the country. granted, not very hard, yet, nowhere near as hard as had been predicted, yet, but still. none of our trains, and none of our busses, on a three hour journey there, and a three hour journey back, is delayed by as much as a whisker. on the long-distance double-decker train, the little trolley, which comes through three times during the trip, carries green tea and a proper espresso machine. the ticket inspector on the mainline train back (he's so tall he almost has to walk bent double, but not quite, so as not to bump his head against the ceiling) laughs and jokes with us: 'of course the one day travel card is valid until the last train of the day, whatever time that is past midnight.' my dad wants to be sure: 'so if your colleague tries to charge us a penalty fare, we tell him that mr...' he cranes his neck and glances up at the tall young man to read his name - 'don't you worry', the young man says, 'if he doesn't know this, then he won't be a ticket inspector, haha...'

as it happens, the ticket inspector on the suburban midnight train towards laufen is off duty. but he still takes enough pride in his job to greet his fellow passengers on boarding the train. his line manager is also off duty, he might already have been in bed, though that, as it turns out, wasn't the case in this instance. he is concerned enough about his member of staff to phone him within minutes of what he knows to be his clock-off time. just to make sure. he's able to do so, because somebody else in the organisation has cared enough about their member of staff to inform him, even though he's off duty, that there has been a verbal assault. and did anybody lose their calm or call the police and threaten an arrest or issue penalties or invoke, in some random way, health & safety? clearly not. they used their common sense, and reasoned until reason prevailed. which appears to have been in olten. the cost to the system: a three minute delay. which was taken seriously enough to be logged, of course...

today is christmas. it's still snowing. the swiss trains will be running mostly on time, barring any drunken incidents, one imagines. our not very tall ticket inspector with the moustache, he'll be feeling perfectly fine. it's all been sorted. our very tall ticket inspector without the moustache will be just dandy too, he so much enjoys his job, it's hard to see how he wouldn't. and the four bores who got on a train without a valid ticket last night will probably be nursing their hangover and thinking: 'we were being real bores last night, maybe we don't need to do that again very soon.' harm done: virtually nil. order: virtually perfect. that's why the swiss railways are bliss. is there no way we can ask them to run ours for us?...

love & peace to you all on this, as on any, day

sebastian

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"policing by public consent"

2010-12-14T01:02:00.010Z

we have in this country, says home secretary theresa may, a 'tradition of policing by public consent' which, she assures us, is to continue. so far so good.

there is a lot of debate to be had about the extent to which policing that entails the practice of 'kettling', of beating someone over the head with a truncheon to the point where they need brain surgery, or dragging someone from their wheelchair, or charging into a crowd on horses at the risk of trampling people who are going about their democratic right to demonstrate, can be said to be happening by 'public consent' and there is plenty of evidence that these are not just idle allegations of policing in london having gone way off anything that i, for example, would ever be happy to consent to.

but leaving these questions, burning though they really are, aside for the time being, another 'tool' for 'crowd control' has been seriously discussed over the last few days, and with it the spectre of a whole new type of violence. water cannon.

theresa may has now 'ruled out' the use of water cannon 'in policing student protests'. but only after doing the precise opposite as recently as sunday when she told sky news that the use of water cannon was up to the police as 'an operational mater'. meanwhile, head of scotland yard's public order branch, bob broadhurst, says it would be "foolish" not to consider their use.

if you want to know what a water cannon does to you if you get it in the face, have a look at this picture of a 66 year old man who took a direct hit in stuttgart, germany, earlier this year, courtesy of his local police force. (word of warning: it's not for the squeamish...)

Dietrich Wagner, after being hit by a water cannon.
Picture: Marijan Murat / dpa

love & peace

sebastian

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making some noise for the sound of silence

2010-12-13T21:30:00.013Z

last year it was all about rage and a big noisy track from an american punk band to knock simon cowell's bland x-manufacture off the coveted christmas number one spot in the uk charts. and against all odds, against all predictions and to the joy of millions, it succeeded. rage against the machine's killing in the name beat joe mcelderry's the climb by some 50,000 downloads, clocking up an impressive half million of them and becoming the fastest selling digital track of all time, raising a cool hundred grand for homeless charity shelter in the process.

this year, someone's decided to take it all one step further. the idea has a spark of genius about it and if it succeeds will be the greatest triumph of networked conceptuality over commercialism yet. and like all good ideas it's strikingly simple:

make it about silence. the space between the assaults on our senses that pummel us every minute of every hour of every day. make it about the music inside of each of us. and so a motley crew of quite famous and not-so-famous but nevertheless very with-it artists came together in a soho studio in london last week to record john cage's seminal 4'33". today it was released, and in about the first ten hours or so of it being on iTunes it climbed from rank 171 to rank 31, while on the livehits download tracking site it also reached rank 31.

it's still a fairly tall order to make it to the top, but i reckon it's possible. and what a wondrous joy that would be: for the UK chart to be topped by four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. it would be, quite literally, unheard of.

but does it matter? does anyone even care who or what is the christmas number one? perhaps not. there are clearly several hundred thousand other issues, causes, problems, challenges and delights that are signally more important than this. but this is so worth doing: to show the likes of cowell that theirs may be the money but ours is still the imagination, theirs are the means, perhaps, but ours is the power: they have the machine, we have the magic.

and what about matt, the young man who apparently won x-factor this year? i have no idea. i've not been watching the show, i've never clapped eyes on him. my friend charlie tells me he's lovely and extremely attractive to both men and women. so how could i wish him anything but the best. the one thing this certainly isn't about is matt. i congratulate him on his success and wish him many a hit in a wonderful career. it is about machinations though. and throwing a spanner it their works. and what a glorious spanner this would be: 4'33" of silence.

help make it happen at

http://www.facebook.com/cageagainstthemachine

where you'll find everything you need to know: how to get the track, which charities the money goes to, who's behind it and why. and obviously, please spread the word: it's all got to go through this week!

love & peace

sebastian

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the right to education & the right to protest

2010-11-24T19:56:00.005Z

this is going to be short and simple:

i fully support the students on their day of protest.

1) all education should be free to and for all, and paid for through progressive taxation

2) the practice of 'kettling' is an indiscriminate form of summary action against demonstrators whether they be peaceful or no and invariably leads to perfectly guiltless individuals being held for hours without access to essential amenities such as water, food, toilets and shelter, and as such constitutes a serious civil and human rights abuse

3) the liberal democrats can not call putting up student fees 'a compromise' and blame it on their role in a coalition government. 'a compromise' to their election promise of abolishing fees would be a serious reduction and gradual phasing out of student fees, not putting them up.

and full marks to joana pinto from the national committee against cuts for her performance on BBC news 24 today: competent, reasonable and unapologetic.

power to the people
peace & love

vote

2010-04-09T01:13:00.012+01:00

i'm going to steer well clear of politics, don't worry.

but since there's a general election underway, and while democracy is still the least worst option, it would seem, that we have for what passes as a political system, and most particularly as this year's voting round may, for the first time in ages, produce what the libdems have taken to calling a 'balanced' (as opposed to a 'hung') parliament, i reckon it's worth pondering one particular thought:

what would happen if we voted purely on policy, instead of according to which party's brand image we have come to vaguely (or even strongly) identify with, instead of the personalities we've come to like, love, or, more often than not, loathe, instead of the tradition that may or may not run in the family or the community, and especially instead of who we think can actually win our seat.

if there is a significant chance of a balanced parliament, or even a hung one, for that matter, then this latter consideration - who can actually win my seat - does in fact largely pale into insignificance. unless you want to positively vote one party into government, or actively want to remove a party from government, you can consider the question who wins your seat, and therefore by extension who wins most seats, no more than perhaps technically relevant (in as much as which party will field how big a contingent and therefore have how much clout in a coalition) and concentrate much more on who will get your snippet of the share of the vote. and on this occasion, share of the vote may matter more than it usually does, because if there is a hung parliament, and therefore a coalition, it will very likely lead to a reform of the voting system to either full proportional representation or to something relatively close to it. the greater the discrepancy between seats in the house and share of the vote, the more compelling the argument for a voting system that more accurately reflects voters' wishes.

but even if you're not interested in a hung parliament, even if you'd just find it refreshing and thought it would make sound political sense for us to vote in accordance with policies we actually support, rather than with how effectively the campaign machinery bludgeons us into buying the party leaders' message, then luckily, help is at hand:

on voteforpolicies.org.uk you can find out precisely who you should vote for, based purely on the policies six parties are putting forward. the site has no political affiliation, it doesn't try to sway or persuade you, it doesn't try to sell you antyhing and it doesn't come with any bias or hidden agenda. it just presents you nine major policy areas, of which you can choose any that interest you, from a minimum of four to the maximum nine. and then it tells you in brief bullet point summary what each party's policy is on that issue. except, and herein lies the brilliant thing, it doesn't tell you which policy belongs to which party. it just asks you to choose the policy you most agree with, and then you move on to the next issue. after you've made a selection for each of the issues that interest you, it spends a few seconds computing the result and then, ptaa!, reveals who the policies that you've gone for belong to.

obviously, you can then make up your own mind who you're actually going to give your vote to. just don't be surprised if the result surprises you...

this is how parties' policies stood after 59,411 completed surveys, on 8th april 2010:

to complete the survey and find out whose policies are up your street, go to voteforpolicies.org.uk - it may be the most eye-opening ten minutes you'll spend in this election.

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

rage

2009-12-16T01:37:00.013Z

this is why i love facebook. it's not the only reason i do, but it illustrates perfectly the power of networks and it proves that the rebel in us all is not dead. and that alone is worth celebrating.

it's also, in a slightly convoluted way, a classic david versus goliath story, except that in this case goliath's bigger brother actually supplies the stones that david uses in his sling and so benefits from every shot that's fired, but this hardly matters, since we are talking about a symbolic battle and what's at stake here is of such immense importance that a bit of collateral profit for the enemy can surely be justified.

we are, after all, talking about the christmas number one!

judging from the tone of posts and discussions on the facebook group that started this epic, it might as well be about the right to breathe. and that's what makes it all so very entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable not just to watch but to become actively involved with. i for one have purchased my download of killing in the name of by rage against the machine, and found to my pleasant surprise that i like it. a lot. but what i like even better is the fact that with, at the time of writing, 788,000 members (and steadily counting), the 'rage against the x-factor' group on facebook - started by two people who, but for their daring, bold and inspired act of capturing the other half of the nation's mood, could probably be called 'ordinary' - stands a real and realistic chance of preventing joe mcelderry's intended chart-topper the climb from reaching its scheduled summit by the end of next sunday, when this year's official christmas chart is compiled.

not that i have anything against joe mcelderry, don't get me wrong: the boy is adorable and he clearly can sing. i wish him the best of luck for a long and prosperous career. i wish the same to olly murs (who i preferred by some margin, simply because unlike joe who is excellent but a bit dull, olly is in fact also a truly gifted natural entertainer) and most emphatically i wish john & edward all the very best. they made me laugh, they made my jaw drop, they gave me many a minute of televisual pleasure. from which confession you can readily infer that i actually watched the x-factor (almost every instalment of the live shows) and predictably became a little addicted to it. it's top-notch tv of its ilk, if you ask me, and i do not for one moment begrudge joe his success or simon cowell the multiple millions he makes at every turn from it. good for him, i say, he will, i'm sure, in time find worthwhile uses for his wealth. that's not the issue with the x-factor.

the issue with the x-factor (and we all realise how enormous an issue it is, particularly when viewed in the context of, for example, the war in afghanistan or the copenhagen climate summit) is that it is so good and so successful at what it sets out to do, it leaves no margin for error. no room for surprises. it sifts genuinely talented performers from the pool of the bland and mediocre and then moulds them into bland and mediocre products that it can sell back to the pool. with absolute professional efficiency. and in the process it has committed a cardinal crime against the british psyche: it has made the christmas number one predictable.

but we don't want the christmas number one to be predictable. we want it to be a fresh contest, every year. we want it to be open to something as godshockinglyawful as mr blobby in 1993, as charmingly retro as somethin' stupid (2001), as yucky as any cliff richard or as unparalleled as bohemian rhapsody, back in '75. yet ever since the x-factor started, the most coveted place in popular music has been occupied by self-referential dirges with titles like that's my goal, a moment like this or when you believe, except of course last year's unforgivable assault on the leonard cohen classic hallelujah.

and that's why tracy and jon morter are heroes of our time. they just said to themselves 'it doesn't have to be like this', and then told their friends on facebook. and if by christmas a million people have joined them, i shouldn't be in the least surprised. so do! do join the group, do go to the info tab and see where to get your download and do use the link you find there (or below) to give to shelter, the charity the group has adopted to make sure something tangibly positive really does come out of it all. as i'm typing this, supporters of RATM4XMAS have given more than £35,000. music to the ears of those who care for the homeless and a good source for much seasonal cheer.

have a happy festive, all.

love & peace

sebastian

join the facebook group RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE FOR CHRISTMAS NO 1 here

give to shelter here

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

es ist deutschland hier

2009-09-29T01:25:00.006+01:00

this is amusing, but also a touch troubling. it's probably not quite as troubling as it is amusing but it's early days and if nothing else it makes you wonder what goes on in the man's head.

the man in question is guido westerwelle, leader of the german liberal democrats who have just effectively won the german general elections together with the much bigger CDU/CSU combo (the christian democrats with their bavarian counterpart), headed by angela merkel. what's likely to happen is that westerwelle's party will form a new coalition government together with angela merkel's and at the moment it seems everybody's assuming that he himself will therefore get the job of foreign minister.

now watch (below) what happens when the man from the beeb asks him a question in english at his very first press conference, even before he's got the job. sadly, the video clip is not subtitled, but i can tell you: the correspondent introduces himself and announces he's going to ask his question in english and could he, westerwelle, please answer in english. westerwelle promptly raps his knuckles by telling him that as they are at a german press conference, he should ask his question in german. so the bbc man says, fine, may he then ask the question in english and westerwelle can answer in german. westerwelle uses a phrase that's roughly the equivalent to the english 'with all due respect' which normally means the direct opposite and so the journalist's translator steps in and says: 'we'll translate'. before she gets around to doing so, westerwelle drones from the podium that 'just as it is the done thing in great britain to speak english, so it is the done thing in germany to speak german'. so finally, the bbc man gets to ask his question which his translator then poses in german and westerwelle answers by telling him that he's just asked the same question as his german colleagues had asked and that the answer is still the same: he won't go into any speculation about cabinet posts (even though he clearly wants one, everybody agrees.)

then comes the icing on the cake: just as the chair or master of ceremonies or whatever his title would be at a press conference is about to go on, westerwelle says: 'to make it absolutely clear: we can certainly meet up for a fabulous cup of tea some time outside a press conference, and then we'll speak nothing but english, but... - this here is germany.'

all of which suggests that the man widely tipped to become germany's new foreign minister in what's supposed to be a 'centre-right' government either:

a) doesn't speak english (bad news if you are foreign minister of any country in today's world)

b) does speak english but is unwilling to use it when somebody who doesn't speak his language asks him a question, and then doesn't even want to listen to the question when it is suggested to him that he may reply in german, which means he is simply rude (bad news if you are any kind of diplomat)

c) is so much of a nationalist that he won't tolerate any foreign tones being uttered at his german press conference in his german fatherland, because "this here is germany", jawoll. (bad news. full stop.)

whatever the answer, it doesn't bode well. of course, the point has been made already in various comments and blogs, and it keeps being made, that nobody would expect david miliband for example (the british foreign secretary) to field questions in german (or spanish, or italian, or french, for that matter) at a press conference in london. but it's a mute point. because the fact is that the lingua franca of our day is not portuguese, or mandarin, or french, italian, spanish or esperanto. the language everybody speaks is english. it used to be french, in diplomatic circles; and a long time ago it used to be latin. and maybe in a few decades' time it will be german, who knows. or hindi. but for the time-being it's english, like it or not. so for the foreign-minister-to-be of any country, let alone the biggest economy in europe, to refuse to answer a question in english is at best embarrassing, at worst a throwback to awful extremes.

we used to fall about laughing as kids in switzerland, because our grandparents told us how their german neighbours across an increasingly anxiously watched border started referring to the banana as 'schlauchapfel' (literally 'hose apple') in a drive to rid the german language of any un-german elements. but clearly, while highly amusing, the thinking and mentality behind this was anything but.

it may be going too far to draw the parallel between that kind of thinking and westerwelle's desire for german purity at a german press conference. maybe he's just not that confident when it comes to foreign languages. but then why not say so: 'sorry, mate, i really don't speak your language very well, can you talk to me in german please.' and who could be offended? but 'this here is germany': what that implies is 'this here is germany, either be german yourself and speak german, or get out.' and that from their foreign minister. that's troubling. amusing, yes, but troubling...

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

...

2009-07-19T23:55:00.002+01:00

i'm a great fan of the colon.

it’s friendlier than the full stop because it doesn’t say stop. wait here. i have something else to say in a moment. but right now i need you to halt. it says: hang on in there, the thought isn't quite finished: it continues, but remember to breathe. the colon is beautiful: small enough to not really obstruct the page, but noticeable enough to register. it doesn't drop below the baseline. i like that.

the comma, by comparison, is always a bit clumsy. it keeps dangling its tail, which is not elegant. i personally don't like the comma very much. if it were down to me we would use far less of it and simply allow ourselves to be carried along by the sentence for a while but most people find that exhausting and a little frightening because they feel they have nothing to hold on to then.

and the full stop is so very heavy. although it’s small, it has this density. it weighs in. it says you must. i don't like punctuation that says you must. i like punctuation that says you can; so if it weren't for the fact that like the comma the semi-colon dangles its inelegant tail below the baseline, i would also very possibly be able to be a fan of the semi-colon.

the semi-colon has a bit of an idiosyncrasy about it. it’s not quite one thing and not quite another. it’s half comma and half colon. which is why it’s called the half-colon. it could also be called half-comma, it wouldn’t make any difference. i think that’s almost a little endearing. it’s like a mongrel. it wants to be loved, but it knows it can’t quite be. it can be loved in an ‘all right then’ kind of way. that is in itself a little endearing. but i can't quite fall in love with it, not the way i can fall in love with the colon.

of course there is always the dash – but the dash loosens up the sentence so much. also it doesn't really know what it is. but it doesn’t not know what it is in a charming way (the way the semi-colon doesn’t know what it is, for example) it does so in a lazy way. it lies there, right in the middle of the sentence saying ‘i’m here now, i can’t be bothered to move’. but that isn’t really a very attractive thing to do. also, is it a hyphen or is it a thought? is it a typographical element or a grammatical one? i have nothing in itself against things that don't know what they are because in not knowing what you are there is an element of potential: of finding out what you can be. but the dash hasn't convinced me yet of its potential. it needs to do more than just lie there. so if ever possible i only use it to – a bit reluctantly – wedge something into a thought that otherwise would just be lost. for that, for holding up something that otherwise would just be lost two lazy dashes come in handy. without really noticing it they suddenly do something that they can do better than any other punctuation mark, and so they can be both at the same time, lazy and helpful. that’s in many ways ideal.

normally, though not always, and not just then, a bit earlier on, i avoid as much as i can the question mark and the exclamation mark too. they are both too much, really. how often do you really need to highlight the fact that you're asking a question. and if you have a point to make just make it, there's no need to signpost it. so to my mind these two too are almost superfluous. only sometimes it helps a little to emphasise that what you’ve just put down is actually a question, especially if it's a rhetorical question, since rhetorical questions aren't questions at all, so it sometimes helps to dress them up as questions. that's really almost the only good reason to use a question mark, and even then it isn’t always, is it...

i do like the ellipsis though i use it sparingly because not many people know what to make of it and i don’t want to expose it to their fury because it’s quite a gentle, unassuming, open-minded punctuation mark that gets a little insecure when questioned too forcefully. it needs looking after a bit. (and i quite like brackets, but these you have to use sparingly because, though useful, they are a bit ungainly. that doesn't make them bad, or give us reason to cast them out into the wilderness, of course, but i think it means that for aesthetic reasons we need to treat them with a degree of caution.)

i do like paragraphs!

(and that was a rare instance of an exclamation mark perhaps being justified. because i really like them, paragraphs. more and more. i never used to when i was very young, i almost eschewed them completely, but these days i really, really like them.)

as it happens
in my plays
i've now done away with
punctuation
almost altogether
and work with
paragraphs instead

paragraphs
are wonderful

they create a whole
different picture
on the page and they allow
the eye
to breathe

i am
a little bit
in love
with
paragraphs
though
when used in this way
they are really
lines
you could say, they are not
strictly
paragraphs
at all
which makes them even more interesting because they are
something
and something else
at the same time and the
something else
makes them
even better
than what they
were
before they became
what they are now

i like that

what i have a slight over-fondness for i think are maybe adverted commas. i may want to rein them in a bit. though they are useful, because they make things more relative. is a truth really a truth or is it a ‘truth’ they say. they say you know what a word means but allow for the possibility that you only ‘know’ what it means and that there is another way of ‘knowing’ what it ‘means’ too. but i realise they can become a bit annoying. so i may want to exercise, practise, some discipline when it comes to adverted commas. because like commas they also are a bit inelegant. they keep poking their tails above the topline and that is no more agreeable to the eye than what the commas do with theirs, and if it isn’t their tails that they poke then it’s their heads. and that doesn’t make things any better.

but at least in english we don’t have to, as they mostly do in german, use double adverted commas unless you’re actually quoting someone or something. because they are really ugly. they take up space on the line without doing anything more useful than single adverted commas and think they’re doing you a favour. they say “let me be ugly right here right now for you.” it’s the “for you” that irks me most. and they make other punctuation marks behave erratically. like the full stop. suddenly it doesn’t know should it go inside, where it strictly doesn’t belong, or should it go outside where it looks like it’s been locked out. so it suddenly feels out of place. what kind treatment is that anyway, of your fellow punctuation marks, to just lock them out, and make them look like it too. that’s rude and unnecessary. no, i’m glad we don’t have to use them much. i think we do just fine with our single adverted commas. but i know i have to watch them a bit in my writing…

i think that more or less sums up my stance on punctuation.

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

droplet

2009-03-10T06:12:00.010Z

here's a conundrum:

a drop of water, in its perfect state, is a perfect sphere.

yet, a drop of water can never be in its perfect state: the moment it becomes definably a drop - a small enough quantity of water to be 'itself', an individual, if you like, a drop - it acquires the shape we all know it as: the droplet shape.

whether it be hanging off a solid object, like a tap, for example, or a bottle, whether it be running down a surface, like a window pane or a cheek, whether it be travelling through the air towards the ground, like rain, or towards the sky, like from a fountain's jet, in this, the natural world, it is always just that: a droplet. a vague approximation to something we recognise it as, but not itself: not a perfectly formed, absolutely round in every direction drop. not a sphere.

the closest a drop would appear to come to being its perfect self is on its point of death: when it enters a mass of liquid. of course it may never make it there. it may evaporate first, find itself dispersed in the air before being allowed to form again as part of another droplet elsewhere and starting over until it ultimately finds its universe.

and then, just when it becomes part of the big universe it would recognise as its own - the liquid world of puddles, rivers, lakes and the seas, or even just of your bath tub - when it is perhaps most truly at home, it is no longer itself. it is no longer a drop, an individual portion of water: it is completely absorbed in its element. it is whole, but wholly dissolved.

and curiously just then, when a drop is no longer a drop, it could be said to be at its best, its most liquid. its most wet.

so does that mean then that being a drop is essentially futile? or simply impossible? does it mean that the moment a drop is identifiably born into the world it has lost its perfection and the only way of getting it back is to end its existence as what it is and become completely part of something infinitely bigger?

or is that in fact the point? is that what being a drop is all about? to be something else entirely for a while, to take on these shapes and fulfil a little purpose, maybe a big purpose, maybe no purpose at all, to just be, as a droplet, as the manifestation of something that cannot be what it is until it ceases to be what it is? and when it ceases to be what it is does that mean it then no longer exists, or does it mean than then at last it can truly be.

and does it mean that the best chance it has of being perfect is for a fleeting moment, just as it dies? or did it go through a similar brief state of perfection, just as it formed?

or is our entire concept of what it is to be perfect, what it is to be a drop and what the natural world is, flawed?

that's the droplet conundrum.

and there is, would you believe it, a facebook group to celebrate it...

obama

2008-11-04T16:35:00.007Z

america is voting. within the last couple of hours, the state of alaska has opened its polling stations, the last of the united states to do so; it will also be the last one to close them tonight. by then, we should have a fairly clear idea of who will be the 44th president. every indication suggests it will be barack obama: history is being made.

clearly, the american people do not need me or anybody else to tell them how to vote. which is one of the reasons i'm writing this on the actual day of the election. (although i don't in all earnest believe that this blog is read by so many people stateside that it could be of any significance to the outcome of the election in any way. my delusions of grandeur are way more subtle than that...)

but for the sake of history, we - those five and a half to six billion of us who do not get to vote in this election, but who will nevertheless live with the consequences of the outcome every day for the next four years and possibly long into the future - must hope and trust that today america is making the right decision, by chosing change. it's a mantra obama and his team have been repeating for as long as their campaign has been going, and it's one i'm prepared to have faith in.

america stands very literally at a crossroads: one way is embracing a new politics, a new type of politician and a new language of politics; the other is effectively more of the same, in a somewhat changed dressing. one way points towards restoring the united states' standing in the world as a country that possesses both democratic and ethical authority, the other points towards a country that is becoming introspect, wrapping itself in patriotism and self-interest. one way promises a road towards harmonisation externally and domestic unity, the other will bring about more alienation from the rest of the world and a pronounced rift in american society.

the latter not because john mccain is an inherently divisive figure - i don't think he is - but because by now the hope and promise of a new departure is so strong and so real in those who long for that change, that mccain pipping obama to the post would be nothing short of catastrophic. whether or not obama will in fact make a better president than mccain is by now almost no longer entirely relevant. i personally believe he would. but then i'm inclined to say so, because my politics, such as they are, are naturally at home on the liberal social democrat end of the spectrum.

but at stake today is not a simple, straightforward trade-off between republicans and democrats. between slightly left of centre or slightly right of centre policy. what's at stake today is the heart and soul of the most powerful nation on this planet, and still the only superpower. what's at stake is how america will understand itself over the next generation, present itself, how it will behave and how it will feature within the fabric of the community of nations. and indeed how it will be understood. how the world will see and relate to this giant in its midst.

obama, as the first african american president, as a young man with a young family, as an intelligent, educated and articulate leader, will restore our faith in america as a country leading the way: the nation that has made such a pivotal contribution to the twentieth century will regain its position as a land that - no matter how 'conservative' in many respects much of its people are - looks forward, shines a light on the road ahead and then strides there, courageously. a land, essentially, of progress. a country where hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets to hear a civil rights leader declare 'i have a dream' may mean that barely two generations later, that dream can actually be fulfilled.

a president obama will embody, personify and represent to us, the rest of the world, much, if not all, of what we have either forgotten or, in the course of the 'with us or against us' rhetoric of the bush era, over years of swagger and posturing by a man incapable of stringing a coherent sentence together, over the staggering offences against democracy, international law and human rights that are the iraq war, guantanamo bay, extraordinary rendition and sanctioned torture, over the jaw-dropping agonies of pregnant chads and broken voting machines, we have been forced to push out of our minds altogether: that america has the potential to be a credible force for good in the world. that america is - at heart - our friend.

and a president mccain? well: a president mccain, by now, would drive home no message so clearly as this: that america is afraid, that america would rather have a rest from its role of responsibility in the world than a change, that america does not have the confidence to vote for a black president even though it has been telling its pollsters that it was willing to do so, that america is no longer ready to look forward and outward, but is focusing inward and backward. that america has - alas - had its day.

that, to my mind, is what's at stake.

apparently, the bookies in england make obama a 16:1 favourite to win this election. the bookies in england are fairly astute. i hope, i so hope that they're right. not because i have a tenner riding on him - i don't - but because the world has an entire version of its future riding on him.

and my prediction: i go with the bookies. i predict barack obama will win this election, more narrowly than expected. i predict he will be the next president of the united states. he won't solve all of the country's problems, let alone those of the world. but he'll make his country a much, much better place, for the fact alone that it has elected him. and if the strongest country in the world is a better place, then consequently, by definition, so is the world.

good luck and - if you believe in him - god bless america.

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

sachs

2008-10-29T15:27:00.010Z

what with the US elections, the country sliding into recession, and the ongoing general climate angst, it was only a matter of time before something truly noteworthy would happen.

and it's happened. this week, our little island has finally been shaken to its core. what two world wars, the suez crisis, the thatcher years and a decade of new labour couldn't achieve has suddenly come about, all by itself and without warning: we've suffered a collective sense of humour failure.

it's a truly apocalyptic state of affairs: we've started to take ourselves seriously.

if you don't know what this is about and have - like the vast majority of people, including myself - not heard the original broadcast on radio 2, here it is.

be warned: it's funny. it's also mildly rude, very puerile, somewhat ill-judged maybe, and largely unnecessary. but it's funny. even if you don't find it funny, it's fun. fun in bad taste? absolutely. so is an awful lot of good comedy. but it's not malicious and it's not cruel and it's not anything really even worth writing about. the fact i'm writing about it here is already giving it far too much significance. it's two blokes making phone pranks. granted, they're doing it on public sector radio, they're extremely famous and they're paid excessive amounts of money for it. but it's still two blokes being silly on somebody's answerphone. using the word 'fuck'. it's hardly the end of the world as we know it.

yet a martian landing in britain today might think the country is in its greatest crisis since the norman invasion. the prime minister has spoken on the matter, and the director general of the BBC is conducting, and awaiting the result of, an investigation. meanwhile brand has resigned from his radio show and ross remains suspended. tens of thousands of people are complaining to the beeb and presumably to the broadcasting standards authority, voicing their 'outrage' at roughly eight minutes of air time they would know nothing about if the daily mail hadn't picked it up and turned it into a 'story'. now the story is running, it's gone out of all proportion, and it is truly shocking. not because of what brand and ross did, but because of how many people are over-reacting to it, and just to what degree.

but most shocking of all is that nobody - at least nobody 'important' - has yet stood up and said: get a grip: it's russell brand and jonathan ross. it's jest. it's what this, our great nation, is supposed to be famous for and proud of: our ability to have a laugh.

yes, for andrew sachs it was unpleasant and offensive. for this russell and jonathan apologised both privately and in public, and the apology was accepted. end of the matter.

ah, but there's the 'issue' of sachs's granddaughter, georgina baillie. is it fair on her to be telling her grandfather via his answerphone - and letting the whole nation know in the process - that one has had sex with her. wearing a condom. well: i haven't slept with russell brand. after a couple of guinness and with an hour to kill i would probably think nothing of it. but i would know it was russell brand. i would accept that even just going by my extremely limited knowledge of the gentleman, i should anticipate that his behaviour post encounter may potentially be less than gentlemanly and maybe not altogether discreet. i would not come over all surprised and indignant if he was seen the next day on the rooftop of broadcasting house, shouting it from there loud and proud, with a live-relay to a worldwide webcast. (and i would, in truth and in spite of myself, be ever so slightly chuffed that he felt it was worth shouting about). but it's russell brand. it goes with the territory. or so i would assume.

so no, maybe it isn't fair on georgina. but please: was it the romans who said, if you lie with dogs you must love fleas? or the greeks? no matter: you know what you're letting yourself in for when you get into bed with russell brand. the man is not a cad. he may be a clown and a braggart, he may be infuriatingly entertaining and willfully sub-iconic, but neither is he evil nor is he devious nor does he leave you - or the rest of the world - in any doubt what he's mostly about: himself.

and why shouldn't he be? make of him what you will, at least he and his mate jonathan still have what the rest of the country on far too vast a scale appears to have abandoned altogether: a sense of humour.

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

titians

2008-09-01T01:09:00.027+01:00

to be perfectly honest, i'm not a great fan of titian. this sounds like an obstinately philistine statement to make, but obviously i'm neither speaking as an art historian nor as an artist. nor in fact as an expert of any description. i'm not giving you my assessment of the quality of titian's work, i'm just telling you where he fits into my personal taste. and the answer is hardly at all.

so if it were purely a question of whether i like these paintings or not, i'd see very little reason for getting in the least bit interested in the case of the two titians. but of course it has nothing to do with personal taste (least of all my personal taste) and everything to do with civilisation.

if you haven't been following the case of the two titians, it's remarkably simple: the duke of sutherland, his name is francis ronald egerton, owns two famous paintings by the italian renaissance master titian. the paintings are called diana and actaeon and diana and callisto, and they form part of the 'bridgewater' collection which has been with the national galleries of scotland for just under sixty years. so far so good.

diana and callisto

diana and actaeon

now, for reasons of his own, the duke as decided he wants to sell these two paintings. on the open market, it is estimated, they are worth a cool £150m. each. £300m in total. he'll let the national galleries of scotland and the national gallery (london) jointly have them both for £100m: fifty million a throw. but the galleries have to raise the first fifty million by new year's eve (about four months after the offer) and the second within another four years.

and this is where it gets fascinating. how are these two galleries going to raise a hundred million pounds for two pictures that the vast majority of people have probably never heard about until now. (the highest sum the national gallery has so far paid for the acquisition of a painting is £22m, back in 2004.) the consensus in the art world, not surprisingly, is that if the two paintings should end up being sold on the open market they would almost certainly be lost to the nation, which would constitute a major catastrophe. outside the art world, opinions vary a great deal and what pops up regularly in debates of this nature has predictably popped up here too: the 'how many hospitals' argument.

it's not so much of an argument as a price comparison that goes along the lines: how many hospitals could you build for (in this case) a hundred million, implying that this would be a far better use of the money. (this is often then accompanied by the number of premier league footballers you could have for the same amount, though this largely for entertainment value: i've never heard anybody seriously suggest that public funds be spent to purchase premier league footballers for the nation, though who knows that may not be such a terrible idea either...) the answer, as it happens, is about 3 (and 30 respectively), though obviously that depends largely on the nature, size and location of the hospitals you want (and the current career status of your preferred footballers).

and of course the argument doesn't hold, because it really isn't one, certainly not for a country that ranks among the wealthiest in the world. if you are a household with a reasonable income you do not say to yourself, every time you go to the cinema or the theatre or buy a book or, most particularly, if and when you buy a painting to hang on the wall: ah but think how many aspirins that would pay for. you certainly don't look at the heirloom (if you're privileged enough to have one) and work out how many days in physio it would pay for. not unless you're seriously ill and really have absolutely no other sources of funding.

if we were an impoverished nation on the brink of collapse with people dying for want of health provision and a large segment of the population illiterate, we would be looking at a different proposition. but we're not. we're a highly evolved sophisticated society that knows - even if sometimes it pretends that it doesn't - the value of heritage, art and culture. and here is the opportunity - you could call it the imposed necessity - to buy, for the nation, two works which practically everybody in the know agrees are in actual fact priceless: the colours titian used, the composition, the artistry, the allegorical references, even the history of their commission make them, as a pair, unique: they are a treasure.

a nation needs treasures. and in this country - and this is something we can and should be extremely proud of and happy about - these treasures are freely accessible to all. you don't pay any admission, you don't have to belong to a club, you don't have to book. you just walk into any museum and enjoy them. so really: £100 million is a snip. it's about one fifty a head of the population. less than a cappuccino. about the price of a simple burger (if you're that way inclined). for something that, if you allow it to, can do you more good than a lifetime supply of prozac. art is good you: it nurtures the mind and nourishes the soul. falling in love with a painting is like, well, falling in love. it releases endorphins in your body and makes you feel good. feeling good heals. never underestimate the power of art.

i'm not about to suggest that we should do away with hospitals altogether and simply rely on art for our healthcare but everybody knows that money spent on prevention goes a whole lot further than money spent on cure. and taking care of our national treasures helps us take care of ourselves. it's the bigger picture we're after: how things fit together in a civilised world.

so i say: yes go ahead and spend the money. buy these paintings, take it from the taxes. it'll be money well spent.

the bbc news q&a page on the titians

the save the titians! group on facebook

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

hasbro

2008-08-23T13:07:00.017+01:00

i'm wondering whether this is a 'complex issue' or really very simple.

in a nutshell, the situation as i understand it is this: scrabble is a trade mark owned in the united states and in canada by hasbro, and everywhere else in the world by mattel. scrabulous is the online version of scrabble developed by indian brothers rajat and jayant agarwalla, and as a facebook application it has acquired in the region of 600,000 regular users worldwide. some of them devoted, like myself: i love scrabulous. it replicates the scrabble board, allows you to maintain multiple games with your facebook friends, it has a clean, simple interface, it keeps track of your games statistics, and it adds a little joy to your online existence every day.

currently i have three games going: one with one of my oldest friends, whom i've been in ongoing competition with ever since we've known each other (be it in real-life knockout whist, a 'tournament' that has been going for well over ten years, or in virtual scrabble); one with a new friend who i don't really know all that well yet, but whom i have the greatest esteem and respect for as an actor; and one with a friend who at the moment lives in dubai and whom i would not, otherwise, probably be in contact with at all. so scrabulous, as far as i'm concerned, is a good thing, and no doubt about it.

but, as you've guessed (you may already know) there's a problem. hasbro and mattel are, not altogether surprisingly, deeply unhappy. because you don't need to be a particularly sharp copyright lawyer to hazard a guess that the agarwalla brothers' venture - spirited as it is - seriously treads on their toes. i had long wondered how rajat and jayant had squared their game with the copyright owners of scrabble, and soon enough it turned out: they hadn't.

so hasbro and mattel both announced they would take legal action and indeed in january 2008, hasbro filed a lawsuit against scrabulous for copyright infringement. as a result, facebook shut off scrabulous in july 2008. for about 48 hours or so, no matter where you were, you couldn't play scrabulous. then it started to work again anywhere outside north america. but as of last night (22 august 2008), it was shut down everywhere in the world except india, apparently in response to a letter from mattel to the indian high court. (the logic of this is not entirely clear to me either, but the effect is the same: scrabulous has gone.)

now, it's fair to say that rajat and jayant were maybe a touch naive to think they could simply appropriate a board game - design, tile distribution, scoring system and all - allude to it in the name of their online version, and get away with it. i'm not an expert, but in legal terms i should imagine this is pretty straightforward.

but otherwise, it isn't. not any more. because the world has changed. and in this changed world, the rules are rapidly unravelling, and have to therefore be rewritten. in the music industry, this has now been recognised. youtube is awash with videos that use tracks which the people posting the videos most certainly don't have the 'rights' to. but the artists and record labels not only allow this, they encourage it. and it's not a bad strategy: if using online communities to freely disseminate content popularises what you offer and creates devotees, you can fairly much bank on a commercial pay-back at the other end of your operation. the ting tings are a perfect example of how to use youtube and free music downloads to generate support and then hit the number one spot with paid-for downloads and singles sales in the slipstream of their own popularity.

applied to scrabulous and facebook, there is no reason why this principle shouldn't work: scrabulous, with its vast and extremely enthusiastic supporter base, is brazenly infringing on copyright, but in doing so it is also advertising the game and concept of scrabble daily, for free, to a captive, receptive, audience, many of whom probably would never before have thought about playing - let alone buying - scrabble.

sadly, at hasbro and mattel, this new reality has not, it would appear, been recognised. i don't know how the conversations between them and the agarwalla brothers went, what was on offer and what wasn't. i know that mattel has since launched its own online version on facebook, but as mattel doesn't own scrabble in north america, theirs can't be a global platform, and so it hasn't caught the imagination of facebook users. mattel, it seems, much as hasbro, has fairly missed the boat. but that doesn't mean that they can't benefit from all the exposure their real-life game is getting through scrabulous. but instead of working with scrabulous, they are both now determinedly pursuing its creators and driving it off facebook.

and that, i think, is stupidity supreme. because no matter how much they are within their rights to do this, they are most categorically out of their minds: by knocking scrabulous off facebook, they have in one fell swoop alienated, disappointed and angered half a million people worldwide. and not just a little: scrabulous is a part of its users lives; people who - like i - have built scrabulous into their day: a few minutes at the top or the tail of each one is given to making a couple of moves on scrabulous. and that simple, honest pleasure has been taken away, by hasbro and mattel.

so in actual fact, i do think it's all very straightforward. hasbro and mattel are applying old thinking in a new world and they are making a gigantic mistake. which is why i support the idea of sending a message to them, by calling for a boycott. bit of consumer pressure: if a large enough number of people say they will simply not buy any hasbro or mattel products - and their brands include most of the best known toys and games, so there's a lot of xmas trade on the cards - until they have resolved their issue with scrabulous and allow it back on facebook in its original form, then maybe hasbro and mattel will learn to adapt to the changed reality. and that will help them too, in the long term, because in business, as surely as in life and nature, you do, over time, adapt or die.

join the 'save scrabulous' group on facebook

join the 'boycott hasbro till scrabulous is back group' on facebook

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

birmingham

2008-08-15T16:00:00.020+01:00

it's an easy mistake to make.

you're tasked with putting together a little leaflet (print run roughly 720,000) celebrating the successes of your city's recycling scheme and congratulating everyone for doing so well with it. you go to the picture library and choose a lovely skyline to illustrate the city you're addressing, and hand it over to your client, the city council.

the council signs it off, prints it and starts distributing it. not, by the looks of it, because your leaflet is a particularly great design, nor is the picture all that lovely for that matter, but because it seems to do the job. and what more do you want.

well... it would be nice, of course, if the picture you've used showed the right city. sadly though, it doesn't. you've mistaken birmingham, alabama, usa for birmingham, uk. it sounds ludicrous, i know.

until you look at the two birminghams:

i mean: can you tell the difference? of course you can, but: really? do you even know which is which? i didn't.

first is birmingham, uk and on reflection it looks a little greener and a little bluer. but that could just be the framing and the light. second is birmingham, alabama. which, let's face it, could so easily be birmingham, uk.

i've been to birmingham, uk, and far be it from me to cast any aspersions over britain's 'second' city. but it is ugly, there are hardly two or more ways about it. and it's not ugly because it's modern, it's ugly because it lacks any real aesthetic of any description.

even further be it from me to cast any aspersions on birmingham, alabama, a place i only know from song (it seems to have been rather more sung about than birmingham, uk, which to me suggests that if it isn't any more beautiful it has at least some character worth making a song, if not necessarily a dance, about, though for all i know there may well be a dance about it too).

so the problem with this leaflet lies not with the hapless designer who mistook one charmless 'skyline' for another. that genuinely is an easy mistake, i was not being facetious. nor is it with the councillors who signed off the job. the fact that the duly elected representatives of birmingham, uk, can't tell their own city from a place some four thousand miles away on a different continent: you can't hold it against them. if the place looks so bland that the only appropriate response to it is indifference, then really, so be it. and refreshingly, birmingham's city council seems to be taking just that attitude. there are no plans of pulping, recycling or reprinting the 'offending' leaflet, which indeed would be complete waste of money and resources. and in truth the leaflet probably hardly offends anyone at all. not even, apparently, the mayor of birmingham, alabama, who reportedly feels 'flattered' by the mix-up (he clearly hasn't been to birmingham, uk).

no the problem, to the extent that there is one - and i have a feeling that in fact there truly is one - lies with the city planners who have foisted upon the british midlands an urbanscape that is exactly as inspiring as a drive-thru burger joint, spelt without the o-gh. if anybody is to take responsibility - and i have a feeling that perhaps somebody ought to take responsibility - for the second largest city in a country awash with culture, heritage, design, architecture, engineering and conceptual genius looking as individual as a shopping mall, it most probably is the people who planned and built it, and those who allowed it to be planned and built.

and that has nothing to do with modernity. new york, shanghai, dubai - they are all inherently modern cities, modern certainly in the sense that they are forward looking, dynamic entities that are not tied to their past or revel in antiquity. yet they're all individual. they have a character that, even on a comparatively dull picture, comes across immediately as distinct. they have features.

you might say that birmingham, uk has features: that little tower there, for example, right in the middle. and the lego-shaped buildings around it. but half the cities in the world have those. not every city in the world has the gherkin. or the eiffel tower. or the burj. not every city has a st paul's or a st peter's and not every city has a leaning tower. not every city has canals and clearly not every city has a bird's nest stadium. the cities that do are those that have an identity, and pride themselves in it. cultivate it. the tower and the tower bridge, the millennium wheel: that kind of thing doesn't come about by accident. the centre pompidou. the guggenheim, the tate. you might say the birmingham bull ring, that doesn't come about by accident either.

and that's precisely my point.

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

奥林匹克

2008-08-12T18:24:00.004+01:00

i am in beijing.

sadly, not literally, although that had absolutely been an intention of mine, which then didn't quite work out for timing and practical reasons, but in spirit. i love the olympics. as a concept. as an idea. as an event. always have done. always, i imagine, will do. i love everything about it: the drama, the spectacle, the sheer magnitude of it all. i love the fact that it brings everybody together, in peaceful contest, and i love the way it makes heroes not only out of those who go swiftest, fly highest, and are strongest, but also of those who have the courage to hang on in there, come what may, for their own private victory. i love the fact that we celebrate an eric the eel or an eddie the eagle almost as much as a sir steve redgrave. i love the way the olympic movement calls itself a 'movement' and the way it's rooted in ancient greek civilisation, and i love it for giving cities and countries the opportunity to stage the greatest show on earth. so yes: i'm all for the olympics.

and say about china what you will: they know how to stage an olympics. that opening ceremony: well nigh perfect. and, now we learn, also a little fake. which is a pity, because it was impressive enough as it is; faking fireworks or substituting a pretty girl for a slightly less pretty one (is she really?) was hardly necessary. but in any case, how london is going to follow that is, at the moment, anyone's guess. for my money (which, to a very small proportion, it after all is) the thing to do, most likely, is to go in the opposite direction. obviously, what beijing put together in terms of precision, mass choreography, scale and discipline is not going to be matched here. we don't have the numbers, the money or, for want of a better word, the homogeneity in society to come up with that level of visual impact created by performers. i doubt we have the skill, even. and sarah brightman, well... in a way it's probably best she's done her bit now for the olympics. that should put the idea of using her again in the next twenty to thirty years right out of anybody's mind.

of course, the ceremony made a point, at some stage, of representing the 50-odd ethnic groups that make up today's peope's republic of china, but it is still fair to say that one of london's greatest strengths as a city is its genuinely global cultural and ethnic diversity. so london 2012 won't be the same as beijing. and nor should it be. beijing was well nigh perfect, for beijing. for london, a whole different approach will be right. one that plays to london and britain's strengths just in the way that the beijing ceremony played wholeheartedly to the strengths of china. and if that results in a smaller, quirkier, perhaps less bombastic but no less engaging show, that maybe even displays a sense of humour, then so much the better. but in terms of what we wanted from beijing in an opening ceremony, 08 08 08 has delivered. and then some.

settling down now in front of the TV (and - thank you, thank you BBC for the iplayer - at the computer) to absorb wall-to-wall coverage, i realise that here is one thing that has clean dropped off the 'things to do before i die' list: winning the 100m gold. on track or in the pool. in fact, winning any type of medal in any kind of sport for me is now so unlikely as to be considered impossible. and i'm not somebody who uses the word 'impossible' lightly. i really never say never. but the opportunity, i believe i can now concede, for me to represent my country (either of my two countries) at an olympic games (any olympic games, winter or summer) in any sport at all has now, with likelihood bordering on certainty, gone.

but before you start feeling sorry for me: this really is no great loss, seeing that i've never had the slightest ambition to be an athlete of any description, ever. i quit school sports in more or less mutual agreement with my PE teacher (it was more mutual attrition, but i won) by the age of about fifteen, and at the last school i went to for the last eighteen months of my secondary education i set foot in the sports centre precisely once: to tell the teacher there that i wouldn't be coming to any of his classes. (i had, to make this less of a suggestion and more of a non-negotiable statement of intent, brought along a certificate attesting to the dubious usability of my left knee, issued by a sympathetic GP even though the x-ray had shown up nothing of the sort...)

when i and my three best friends at school decided, at one stage, to take tennis lessons, it took us no more than about four weeks to find out that quite as much fun could be had by going for the ice cream not after the class, but during it, and the effort involved was substantially less exhausting.

so really: a sportsman was not lost in me. which makes my admiration for athletes all the greater. i really genuinely wish each and every one of them all the best. for me, just that fact that they've made it there, and are there now, in beijing, not as spectators, commentators or volunteers - all of whom we also couldn't do without, i know - but as participants, makes them little heroes in their own right. some of them become great big heroes, or are such already, and some may in the course of the next two weeks be toppled from their pedestal. but they are all olympians and that, to my mind, makes them great people, and i salute them from afar.

there's one though who i have a particular admiration for. consider this: some eleven thousand men and women compete in this year's olympic games. out of these, exactly ten are publicly, openly, known to be gay: nine women and one man. his name is matthew mitcham, and he's a twenty-year old australian diver. he is, in beijing 2008, the 'only' gay man competing.

now obviously, everybody's sexuality is their own business and i've never subscribed to the view that public figures should be 'outed'. but to think that in the year 2008 there are likely to be in the region of five hundred to a thousand sportsmen and women at world class level who, for reasons of their own, find it necessary or preferable not to come out in public, seems a touch retrograde. and it brings back that old question that was so much on people's minds during the era of 'gay liberation', right into the late eighties and early nineties, and that in almost any other field of excellence - the arts, music, even politics for the most of it, though it's questionable whether politics can be seriously counted as a field of excellence any more - has now been effectively answered: are there any positive role models? is it all right to be young, talented and gay? matthew mitcham says yes. and for that alone he commands my respect.

of course, i can't put his medal hopes above those of our own tom daley, for example; but in any event, in any discipline of any sport: may the best man win. or woman. or team. (or, as in the case of tom daley, youngster...)

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

π

2008-08-12T18:17:00.002+01:00

tucked away in the 'news & curiosities' column of this month's prospect magazine (in itself not what you'd call the frothiest of entertainment rags) is a nugget, a little gem of a fact that makes you feel that maybe it is all worthwhile after all: perhaps there is a point, some sort of order or at least an underlying principle in this most chaotic, random world of ours, that is also astonishingly beautiful:

"The average ratio between the actual length of a meandering river and its length as the crow flies is pi." credited as he source of this reassuring insight is fermat's enigma by simon singh, a book i haven't read, and i surmise that simon singh probably has his own fount of knowledge, credited or otherwise, from whence it stems. in any case i have no reason to doubt it.

now i am not a scientist. my maths teachers despaired over me. one of them, one memorable day, after i'd slouched from my seat to the blackboard (we had blackboards in our school) glanced underwhelmed at the the 'problem' on it (i could never quite see what the 'problem' was with any of his questions, they seemed to me so hypothetical as to be irrelevant), shrugged my shoulders and painted, with the chalk he'd handed me most probably not to this specific purpose, a question mark in the place where his expectant face foresaw some sort of 'solution', uttered these words which have stayed with me ever since: 'es ist schade wenn intelligenz brach liegt.' which roughly translates as 'it's a pity when intelligence lies barren', the implication being that i, as its ostensible owner, should till that soil, plant in it seeds and nurture them. even back then i couldn't agree with him more, it's just that the seeds he offered were ill suited to my climate and have remained so to this day.

but π is an altogether different proposition. π to me is philosophy. i have a feeling some scientists (especially mathematicians) would argue that all science (especially all maths) is philosophy. and i would neither have the cause nor the resources to argue with them. but π in itself to me is a symbol of perfection, more potent, more elegant and far more interesting than the circle, part of whose nature it describes:

π is perfect because it remains forever incomplete. which in turn makes it absolute; it is absolutely infinite, at least as far as we know, as far as reason allows us to understand. and there's no end in sight and no pattern - it is pure: no repetitions, no symmetries, not even an approximate way to predict how the sequence will continue, not one hint of certainty, other than that it is.

this is a wonderful, wonderful thing: it tells us more about the nature of our existence than we find in volumes of philosophical treatises.

we can easily grasp the underlying principle and basic character of it, we can apply sophisticated technology and thinking of the highest order to understand its workings in detail, and we can never come to a finite conclusion about it nor can we ever foretell what's in store. we don't even know what the next digit is after the last one we've just calculated, let alone the next few thousand. it's impossible and will remain impossible and that's the way things are. and yet: it's anything but random. it's just that we don't have the capacity to think or to express ourselves in a way that would allow us to know more than that which we can see. and we can see it just fine: the first million digits are right here, for example. but when it comes to the 'big questions' why? for how long, really? according to what rule? we barely have the vocabulary, let alone the answers. yet. who knows, maybe we'll develop that too. over time.

the level of insight we have incidentally is impressive: apparently the value of π has been calculated, so far, to an exactness of more than 1 trillion decimal places. set this against the quaint observation that a value of π 'truncated' to just 39 decimal places (not even a scratch off the trillion or so we have available) will allow us to compute the circumference of any circle so vast that would just about fit into our observable universe with a level of accuracy that corresponds to the size of a hydrogen atom. so you could say we know more than enough. and rational thinking would say yes. human nature though says no. which is why we keep searching.

and the fact that this is all mirrored, played out in natural rivers across the planet, that it's not just mental gymnastics and the pastime of geometers and theorists but that water the way it flows over the surface of the earth follows that precise principle all of its own accord: that is a thing of absolute beauty.

and it has made my day.

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

08080000133

2008-08-12T17:34:00.001+01:00

i have a secret admirer.

he - it could be a she but i prefer to think of him as a he, it sits well with my penchant for irony - calls me four times a day, sometimes five. i'm sure there have been days when he got to six.

adam - i like to think of him as an adam, it's a nice name and i'm convinced he's a lovely guy really, when you get to know him, and all the adams i've ever met have been nothing short of adorable - sits wired into his headset in front of a computer at vodafone headquarters in newbury and every two or three hours of every working day (and that includes saturdays!) he thinks of me and feels the urge to give me a call.

clearly an urge that he can't resist.

probably because he's got one of his bosses glowering over his shoulders and a target to reach. because adam's admiration for me is - alas! - narrowly founded. the narrow foundation adam's admiration rests on is a list on his computer screen of subscribers who have recently requested their pac code because they want to take their phone number elsewhere. so something tells me it isn't admiration at all that's prompting young adam to phone me. something is telling me that his boss, probably his boss fairly high up, possibly mr vodafone himself, has decided that people taking their pac and going elsewhere is something that can't be allowed to happen. not without a fight. not without an all-out assault. not without a full-on campaign. not without tackling them, wrestling them to the ground and if necessary beating them into submission.

i got my pac a bit over a week ago and to be honest i'm in no hurry. so far, adam, or maybe he and his friend eric, or maybe there's a whole team of them taking it in turns, well, they've phoned me about sixty times. could be seventy by now. they never leave a message. and i never answer the phone. because i don't know who it is. because they never leave a message.

i started to worry and wonder whether i was being harassed by a stalker. or by my ex. (it's not likely, seeing my ex has been my ex for about eight years now, i know, but you can't rule it out, as you'd know if you knew my ex...) but it turns out it's not a nuisance caller at all, it's my own mobile service provider. what joy.

how in the communication god's name they can imagine that bludgeoning their customers will endear us to them is not entirely obvious to me. i have no cavil with vodafone. and certainly not with adam. (in fact, i almost have something of a quiet admiration for adam personally myself. his tenacity is impressive. if he goes about wooing his lovers the way he goes about wooing me he may well get himself killed by them in the process but his determination will never have been in doubt. and for that alone he deserves some respect.) no, i just want to try the iphone now, having waited for it since about 2002. and i would have seen no reason not to at least consider staying or coming back at a later date when maybe O2 no longer have the exclusive.

but i reckon vodafone have gone and done it now. i reckon they've pushed me over the edge. and it's not an edge that's going to be easy to climb back up. because let's face it: there are only two reasons why somebody would do this to you, relentlessly, systematically grind you down: either they are completely totally irrationally and - even if annoyingly then still, in essence, forgivably - in love with you. and much as i like adam (in abstract terms: i've never met or spoken to him) i don't think somehow that that is the case. which leaves me with the other explanation: they hold you in utter contempt: 'he wants to leave? keep phoning the bastard, ultimately he'll crack.'

seems vodafone (like my ex really) doesn't know me at all...

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook

the sebastianator

2008-08-12T13:55:00.004+01:00

i used to have a blog before they were called blogs.

mine was called 'dear dan' and it irritated the hell out of my then partner.

which isn't the reason i stopped it. the reason i stopped it was that dan broke down (my old desktop pc, after which it was named) and i couldn't bring myself to write a webdiary under the title 'salut sweet satellite' (my then new laptop pc), or anything similar, and also there weren't any ready-made blog platforms, at least not to my knowledge, so the process of blogging was tedious, slow, and not very interactive.

also i wasn't sure i had anything much to say.

rephrase that perhaps. perhaps i felt i may have something to say but it made more sense saying it in other formats. so i said it in other formats.

and is there a good reason now for starting a blog, for starting it up again so to speak? in all seriousness, not really. there are more than enough blogs out there already and as somebody who loves writing plays and screenplays, and having now reworked and finished 'the novel' and therefore coming to the point of possibly commencing work on another one, i suppose i don't really need a blog.

does the world need another blog? from me? hardly.

then again, why do you need a reason? that's effectively been my 'motto' and the strapline of my website ever since i first went online, some ten years ago. which is also when i first started 'dear dan'. and i suppose the answer remains exactly the same: i don't, do i? practically anything you can put the question 'why?' to, you can with equal validity ask about 'why not?'

and so, as of today, here, as if it were needed, is another blog. i'm calling it the sebastianator. it's what happens when you put the world through my perspective. nothing more, nothing less.

enjoy.

sebastian's website sebastian on facebook