athena25

Is a big bag of nonsense.

Some example questions are below:

What year did women get the right to divorce their husbands?
How many people in the UK are 19 and under?
What percentage of the UK say they are Muslim?
What is a quango? (none of the answers were "quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation", sadly)
How many days a year must schools be open?
What is the official recording of proceedings in the UK parliament called?

Some are just poorly worded, with bad structure that makes it hard to understand exactly what the question is asking.

Me, I got 54%, you need 75% to pass.

Clicky here to join me in failing!

What is this test supposed to prove, anyhow: does the ability to absorb and spew out census data make one a "good" citizen, or being able to quote historical / political facts? I'd like to think that what defines people who live or want to live in Britan as more than trivial pursuit questions.

Had a fantastic weekend - one of those where you are still grinning on Monday. Which I am. Went to mossman 's BBQ and house party on the Friday, which was super-chilled, although I did drink enough fizzy-pop to belt out lead vocals on Rock Band and murdered a couple of numbers. Amused by the fact that there was shared-brain syndrome over what to bring, and by the end of the night I think he had around 8 birthday cakes, including my own efforts (chocolate, with added chocolate, covered in sparkly cadbury's Roses) and a good show frommisterspidergod who had gotten the lovely people at Konditor & Cook to ice "Fuck You" in pretty lettering onto one of their splendid cakes.

It was a weekend of cooking, baking and going to the gym* . Lack of kneeshooter  meant that I could roast a chicken for the pair of us giving us some much needed non-dairy protein. Tried my hand at a recipe for a Peach Melba cake which would have been better if my damn oven wasn't quite so temperamental: I'm fairly sure that it is much cooler than it should be so may have to investigate with thermometer. In a very retro 1950s way I wandered over to alasdair 's for the game on Sunday with a cooling cake that I'd covered with a teacloth. Returned with a large wodge of tasty cheesecake and homemade tomato ketchup made by stu_n - we appear to be doing good shakes in balancing our distressing roleplay** with delicious foodstuffs. Contemplating a tapas evening at sometime in the future where we can all bring along lots of tasty little dishes.

* I am becoming an addict. On Sunday I had a couple of hours spare, and rather than sitting on the sofa, eating biscuits and watching one of the many, many DVDs I have yet to see I thought "no, I'll go to the gym" Then had a really good time working out and getting all endorphin-high. I'm becoming suspiscious.

** The game is distressing, the roleplay quality is pretty good.

Wrote long post but LJ ate it. Summary:

Not dead
Work busy, but good, need to take holiday soon though
Made nice food last night
Storm was good, making life bearable.

Back soon

Love and all that,

It's been a strange morning. I'm in clumsy mode these days, as alasdair will attest having narrowly avoided death by a thousand ballistic cherry tomatoes and forks. I'm never usually the most graceful person in the world, but it is getting worse. There is literally nothing I haven't mangaged to drop, stumble over or fumble. I'm amazed I haven't done myself serious damage. I blame the heat.

Today was no exception, I fell awkwardly onto the tube, narrowly avoiding blinding myself on a sharp exotic handbag*. I then tripped up the escalator out of Oval, tried to get a set of keys cut but the place didn't take cards, walked out of the station into the baking heat, attempting to juggle three shopping bags of different sizes. Straight into a police cordon.

The whole area is blocked off. I was cursing the world as I took a round-about route to the theatre (Oval is shaped funny). Still cursing and stressed, and hot and annoyed (a wall got a good kicking, my foot now hurts) I finally managed to fall into the office. To find out what had happened, a cyclist was hit by a lorry and died.

Puts everything into perspective, really.

* You know the type, gargantuan, with lots of different types of fabric and patterns, held together with multiple zips, chains, bits of thing and straps. Not so much a handbag as an advertisement for the number of things it is possible to attach to leather.

Gakked from tyrell , reposting specifically because I am bored to tears of people going on about the good old days and "traditional family values"

David Cameron's solution to a "broken Britain" would break us more. Yet that soundbite itself reveals a deep conservatism at the core of Cameronism. If Britain is "broken" today, when was it fixed? In the 1950s, when women were beaten with impunity and gays were jailed? The 1890s, when rickets ravaged the land? When? Of course Britain can be improved – it always can, like every country – but to imply we have degenerated from a lost golden age is regressive dog-whistle politics.

Today I fail to understand bonuses. I suspect this might be to do with never having had one. Although sometimes my dad bungs me fifty quid for beer and chips*.

I started my working life waiting on. You don't get bonuses for that. You do get tips however, but these are much, much smaller than people think. Especially the sort of people who "never tip" or who think that "wating staff are paid enough without tips" (yes, all those waiting-on millionaires zipping around in their fancy cars) or the folk who think a shiny 5p is a tip. I used to say "not thank-you" to the 5ps, because if you think that qualities as a tip, then you are worse off than me and need that money more. After graduation, my large debt and I went to work for a large mulitnational corporation, where I didn't get a bonus because I was on the graduate training scheme and therefore didn't qualify. Then I worked for a well-known commercial theatre where I didn't get a bonus** because nobody did. Now I'm at a medium size non-profit theatre where we have no bloody money to keep all of our staff, and our funding has been cut, so lets not even mention the word, ok?

Now, I am concerned that perhaps I might have gotten the wrond end of the stick, due to never having a bonus I clearly do not understand how they work. I thought it was a nice little annual pat on the back, perhaps a few hundred quid, something to do with how well you were working, or how well the company was doing, or some combination of the two. Apparently not. Witness Network Rail. Now, judging this, it appears that bonuses, in fact, are:

• Something that only really senior people get
• Huge sums of money that dwarf the annual salaries of lots of other people in the organisation
• Given to you even though profits are down, debt is up and performance is iffy.

Right. So. It is clear. If I want a bonus, I need to get a well-payed job. And then suck at it. Which, come to think of it, should give me a much easier life than my poorly paid job that I am good at. Funny old world.

* This is what an actual bank tranfer read once. My father understands what is important in life
** Or a pay rise, come to think of it

Those RP character memes....

( Brighton Below - Lady Roe )
( Maelstrom - Ree )

( Vampire - Bee Locke )

Following on from the swing-o-meter of pay I wrote about here

I thought that this study on attitudes towards economic inequality made a nice companion piece.

The thing I found most revealing were how personal attitudes to wealth and wealth inequality were. Which makes sense when you think about it, after all, I think a lot more about what I can and can't afford to do than what my friends can, or even what hypothetical people I have never met can do. This is illustrated most neatly, by the fact that whatever people actually earnt, they put themselves in "the middle" of the income spectrum. Neither rich nor poor. Neutral. Normal. The income gap was viewed as that between the middle (i.e. where they themselves thought they were) and the rich, not between the rich and the poor. So, in other words, the gap is between oneself and one's aspirations. Similarly, it was thought that those in the middle (i.e. themselves) were also the ones who were under most pressure from tax systems, and got less from benefits.

This sheds light on attitudes towards high earners - generally (although less so post recession-crash) people thought that high salaries were "fair" and "deserved". After all, if you are in the middle, the income gap is between you and the rich, and you aspire to be rich you would like to think of yourselves as deserving of being wealthy, and earning your extra cash. That said, when the question was posed in a different way, proposing that high salaries were not needed because they were more than any person reasonably needs to live, the results were skewed against the higher salaries. We like the idea of earning more money, but we also like to point out that those who do, don't live normally, like us real people.

What I found most discomfiting was the perceptions of those on low incomes, including the belief that there was equality of opportunitiy, and that all people really needed in order to achieve anything was will and go-getting-ness (the american dream fallacy), however, when presented with evidence of inequality of opportunity, people were supportive of projects that worked to change this.

Went to meet a friend for tapas at Camino in King's Cross, which was lovely. It's in Regent's Quarter, a converted warehouse space just round the corner from the train station. We sat outside at tables made from old sherry barrels, and I supped chilled sherry, nibbled on tasty pimientos de padron, empandillas made from spicy pumpkin, chorizo and enjoyed the cool evening sunshine.

It also made me reminisce about the time queenspanky and I ate our way around Seville, and that I should make some gazpacho soup.

One other person on the planet has the same viewpoint as me on space exploration.

All space programmes still seem to be working on the presumption that mankind will, one day, live on other planets. Why? Why? Let’s all remind ourselves: other planets don’t have Paris on them. They don’t have honeysuckle or English breakfast tea or tubas or blackbirds. They don’t have enough reception to pick up Seinfeld reruns on Comedy Central. On other planets you can’t breathe, your wee floats up into the air and you’re constantly at risk of Klingon attack. If space was featured on Watchdog, Nicky Campbell would give it a right kicking.

I say this with all due respect to my baby brother, the astrophysicist* who at least has the decency to merely look at space from telescopes and crunch numbers on the beginning of the universe, rather than actually suggest we go and live there.

But, can we at least fix this planet before we go bothering other ones?


* I'm very proud of him, you know. But don't tell him.

Seriously.

But no-one cares, because it was the girls team. However, if you have eagle eyes, you can spot the winning team, scroll down. A bit more. There, see?

Me, I don't care about any sporting event, except for the fact I work across from the Oval and it gets noisy, however, I reserve the right to be annoyed that when the (male) England team win something they get a parade and a load of honours. Because it's only the "proper" England team when people with testicles are in it. I think the women's team are lucky if they get a night off doing the cooking and an orange at half time. Oh, and of course the most important question posed to their team captain, when asked about the victory, was about whether she was going shopping for a new frock.

Weekend was a bit of a food and friend fest. And nothing wrong with that. Went for sushi with kangeiko to celebrate her triumphant return from Africa. Travel suits her, she has an air of calm happiness about her which my current state of nerves and mental tics finds rather nice to be around. I'm impressed, frankly, with everything she has managed to do, I'm not sure I'd be quite as cool about jetting off, on my own, to represent a major organisation on the other side of the bloody planet. Kudos, and all that. Given that we were in the japanese restaurant we are always in, we bumped into wingsmith and queenspanky which was nice.

Met up with alasdair , burge  and stu_n on Saturday to see Scoop do a demo of ice-cream made with liquid nitrogen, piccies will be somewhere, as there were many folk with cameras. The mix was the same, but was whipped up whilst the liquid nitrogen was poured over. The result was an exceptionally smooth, cold ganache-style cream, firm and quite dense, and very rich, richer than icecream usually tastes, perhaps because of the teeny, tiny nature of the ice crystals. It was hazelnut flavour, and mostly reminiscent of the filling of very, very good hazelnut chocolates. From there, we went to a belgian bar which let us sample wee third of a pint beers, so we could have a taster session, then on to Imli for curry tapas, continuing the new tradition of finding curry places that don't feel like curry places.* There were baby puris, served cold, into which you poured tamarind water, then ate cold. Crunchy outside bursting when you pressed down with your tongue. The stuffed paneer with fragrant mint chutney was also superb. And we had a camp, can-canning waiter, so what more do you want? We gently meandererd home, declaring the day a foodie victory.

Sunday morning found me in the gym, paying penance, but feeling pretty good about it, despite the usual 4 minutes worth of lung-hacking that needs to be done to get rid of the pollen invaders. Having spent last week in a fug of antihistamines, I'm attempting to take a week off, but we'll see how that goes.

It was very strange not to have kneeshooter about, although given he is studying for exams, I'm fairly sure that he was better off out of it, hopefully I shall soon see the end of the long-distance relationship, which will make me a very happy person indeed.

* As a person with any number of strange irrational habits it is hard to find fault with alasdair 's dislike of "curry house smell"

London postal workers are on strike today,  It's been an infuriatingly late notice strike, my attempts yesterday to find any details about it on the Royal Mail website bore no fruit, and I was working in chinese whispers from someone who had heard it from someone who had heard it from their postie. The RM have only just put something on their site today (not much good if you wanted to send something, unless you have a time machine), and the info is distressingly hard to find, RM obviously thinking that advertising jolly dinosaurs stamps is more important than flashing a useful message across their homepage.

Dicks.

And in other news, the Daily Mail continues its fine tradition of unbiased reportage and polling data. Clicky "yes" just to fuck with their chi.

Dear Daily Mail -  when did you last beat your wife?

For no particular reason, my heart is giddy today, and I'm very much in love.

Stop and search laws are being used by police in an unneccesary or poor fashion. and also do bugger all to combat terrorism. The little note about the need to "racially balance" figures gives me the shudders, as that seems to imply that there may have been a racial profile for the folks that the boys in blue have been stopping, and there now needs to be some backpeddling. Because of course, as everyone knows, white people never commit terrorist acts.

Anyone else got a throwback to the race riots triggered by the Vagrancy Act?

Orwell prize winning blogging police detective, Night Jack, has recently been disciplined.

This caught my attention. Apparently, the judge in the case has ruled that the blogging police officer does not have a right to anonymity and the blog has been taken off the nets.

Great. Well done. So not only are we unable to read something which appears to be of merit, but it also appears that those who might criticise the powers-that-be, especially in a literate fashion, are not entitled to privacy:

Mr Justice Eady said the blog contained opinions on a number of social and political issues relating to the police and the administration of justice. He added "Night Jack" had expressed strong opinions on matters of political controversy and had also criticised a number of ministers. The judge said the blogger had known he risked disciplinary action if his employers found out one of its officers was communicating to the public in such a way. (Source, Beeb)

Yes, he risked disciplinary action and he got it. Unfortunate, but it happened. That's not the point. The point is that the work has now been removed, and he himself has been publically unmasked.  Bloggers beware - those pseudonyms are not protected by law. The public have a "right" to know exactly who you are.

I have no doubt that any number of police officers face disciplinary action without judges deciding that their names and faces should be made known to all. The reason that this guy was named and shamed is because unlike arresting black people on suspiscion of having a car or tasering folk who are already on the ground, writing an internet blog which criticises police procedure is not something likely to be supported by the thin blue line. Not because it was in the public interest to know.

In fact, I'd argue that the public either a) didn't give a shit or b) were quite happy that he remained anonymous - that air of cool and mystery is sometimes all us bloggers have to cling to in order to maintain readership. No, it was in the interest of the police force to unmask him, in order to silence him. A heavy handed form of censorship.

For those of us who can no longer read what might have been a new addition to our feeds list, a summary of words scrubbed from the wall, can be found here.

I keep attempting to post, but there is a fug of hayfever blocking any sensible brain activity. So, erm, hello internet. I am still alive. I had a good weekend seeing kneeshooter , watching Deadwood Season 3 and doing plenty of roleplay. The sunshine was confusing, but I managed to avoid it due to previous mentioned roleplay.

I've now had over a week in the house, by myself and have yet to start drawing on the walls, or talking to the potplants and expecting them to respond*, although it is odd coming home to no-one at all. I received a text from kangeiko a few days ago, assuring me of her Not Kidnapped status, which is good.

* Because, of course, if you have a pot plant, you should talk to it, or it will be lonely. It can't talk back, because it is a plant. But it loves you....

It's the weekend, I'm going to go and have one.
I recommend you do the same.

But first, read this:

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=26

Now go!
 

First. I want a crunchie, mmmm, crunchie, crunchie, crunchie. I blame Warren Ellis. As usual. Second, I require another cup of coffee. A double, triple, big one, massive, fuckit give me a bucket. Sometimes the more sleep you get the more sleepy you feel - I had around 10hrs last night and my legs feel like they belong to someone else, I have that much control over them.

Things are, of course, massively rock and roll over here in theatreland. It's becoming summer, and we're dark in a few weeks so there is a lot of winding down and making people do fiddly, boring tidying up tasks.

Me to Tech Manager: Why are there lots of dead fluro tubes in the stationary cupboard?
TM: I left them there
Me: Let me rephrase that, can they please not be in the stationary cupboard?

I've also got some number crunching to do (mmm, crunchie) for some fundraising. It's not a huge piece of work, but it will at least keep me vaguely entertained until I can meet kneeshooter for pancakes.