December 2009 Archives

I used to make New Year's resolutions only to see them all broken inside a week. No more. Don't take that to mean that I'm going to keep the resolutions this year. No. I'm just not going to make any resolutions at all. It's not because I'm perfect and don't need to change. I've just decided to resign myself to being a weak and foolish man whose appetite for slightly self-destructive behaviour has to be satisfied from time to time. Moderation in all things, and all that.

I might allow myself some New Year Aspirations instead. I'd like to write the book, learn some Italian and get to the end of 2010 in better physical condition than I enter it. Those seem reasonable and attainable.

Tonight, Anne and I have been invited to a party at one of Anne's writer friends. I'll go and have a good time and not drink at all because I have to drive us home afterwards. I find that having to retain control of an automobile is a really good excuse not to get rat-arsed at Hogmanay. Strong drink is a mocker and I certainly make a mockery of myself when I've had a bit too much. I'm nowhere near as funny as I think I am when I'm sober, never mind when I'm throwing up on someone's doorstep. (Sorry, Tess.) So I'll go out in 2009 sober and return home in 2010 sober. I'll go to bed and wake up without the hangover and self-loathing which often attended the first day of a New Year in the past.

In 1999, I had the Millennium Flu. I went to sleep on the floor of my girlfriend's bedroom at about half past ten because I could no longer stay awake. I really don't want to party like it's 1999. A lot has happened in the 10 years since then. I broke up with that girlfriend, had a few love affairs and infatuations, changed jobs, grew up and met the wonderful woman who married me. I'm a happier man now than I was 10 years ago and tonight I'm going to celebrate all that.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Since I started thinking about Climate Change for the Rest of Us I haven't really carried out much of what might actually be called work on it. I've written a draft of the introduction which really only serves as a To-Do list for the project. By chance I was listening to the Little Atoms podcast on Christmas Day which was recorded at The Return of Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People. The very wonderful Johnny Ball was there and was talking about how he didn't think that anthropogenic climate change was actually happening. He said that he got quite a rough ride from the audience at the show and that doesn't surprise me in the least. He also got quite a rough ride from at least one of the presenters on the podcast.

There is a problem in promoting scepticism and the scientific process and that is that there are always people who have just enough scientific training to be able to present data which contradicts the case you're trying to make. I love Johnny Ball. I used to watch shows like Think of a Number and Think Again avidly and he helped feed my enthusiasm for science and technology. He is a well-known and well-beloved communicator of science and when he says that perhaps current climate science is incorrect, then people listen, particularly those who don't really want the data of the climate scientists to be correct.

As a direct result of listening to this single interview, I've decided to rejig part of the book and give more room to the climate change sceptics. I haven't changed my own views on climate change - it's real, it's happening, let's deal with it - but I think I have to be a little more respectful to those who take a different view. If I were completely dismissive of those people, my own case would be weaker and the book would not be as good as it could be.

I hope your socks are warm, your jumpers can be worn without excessive embarrassment and your hangovers are mild indeed. Love and peace to everyone.

Lots of love,

Richard :)

I've started a new book project. It's about how to cope with the whole climate change debate if you're not an activist, climate scientist or politician and just want to do the right thing. If I get nowhere with it over the holidays, I'll take the idea to a couple of publishers and see if they can commission it from their author pool. I can't be the only person who's fed up feeling guilty because I'd rather push the central heating up a notch rather than put on another jumper, or who has to drive for their job, or who really, really likes a great big slab of red meat. My plan is to go through the evidence, talking to some climate scientists, activists and politicians and try to get to the bottom of why it's all important.

It must be important, mustn't it? I mean that's why all those people are in Copenhagen. I wonder how many of them got there by bicycle. Probably not many. 

In yesterday's blog I said that I didn't couldn't remember what Chris Huhn looks like. That's true. I can't. It's worse than that. I couldn't remember who the leader of the Liberal Democrats is. It is of course Nick Clegg and no, I haven't the least idea what he looks like either. We're so fucked at the next election, so very badly fucked. 

I am a worried man. A very worried man. I realised this afternoon that I was more interested in a politicians ability to amuse or entertain me than their policies. I have long been a fan of William Hague not for his incisive understanding of world affairs or out of a sympathy for his politics, but because he has an immaculate sense of comic timing. I enjoyed his appearances at PMQs as Leader of the Opposition so much I felt a real sense of loss when he stood down as Tory leader. Boris Johnson's election as Mayor of London hasn't in the least reduced his ability to make me laugh. I'd probably be laughing a lot less if I were a resident of London but there you go. I'm a selfish as well as a worried man.

My favourite comedy politician is the great Charlie Kennedy. I voted for him as Leader of the LibDems and was so sorry for him when he resigned as Leader to recover from whatever problems he was having at the time. I am even more sorry that we hear so little from him now. Sir Ming is a very serious politician in comparison and that was all well and good for the electoral chances of the party and Chris Huhn may well be a very serious politician but I still can't remember what the fuck he looks like. Sorry. Charlie did a better job of getting the right sort of attention to the policies of the party in spite of his problems than either of his successors.

I'm afraid that my cynicism about the process of government is now such that I don't think it much matters whose hand is on the tiller of the ship of state. We're heading through stormy waters and it's going to be a rough old ride. I know that much. In view of that, we might as well have a government which is making us laugh while we search for the sick bags. I'm going to miss John "Two Jabs and an Uppercut" Prescott and his ability to mangle syntax. I can laugh at that and admire his passion even if I think he's wrong on just about everything he's ever said about anything ever. The same with William Hague and Boris Johnson.

Politics is of course serious business. Politicians are held responsible for our health and livelihoods when often they have little or no control over anything much at all. The truth of the matter is that the best they can do is give nudges occasionally and set the tone, whatever that is. I'd like them to do it with a car horn from time to time, that's all. Even Lord Voldemort - sorry, I meant Mandelson - can't really do all that very much if a multinational business decides to close down its UK operations and move to Moldova or Mongolia or much more likely, China or India. If a man as serious and well-connected as Peter Mandelson can do fuck all about it, why not have Boris blundering about giving us a giggle? Gordon Brown, bless him, is not a funny man. That great, clunking fist of his gets in the way of putting over a decent one-liner. And you can't really take the piss out of a one-eyed man in case anybody thinks you have something against partially-blind people. I'm told that he's personally charming and amusing company but his public persona is necessarily humourless and that's a sad, sad thing.

So, when the election messages drop through my letter box next year, I promise my vote to the candidate who makes me laugh the most. Keep it clean, please.

Sorry to be so abrupt. It really isn't me being more than usually Scrooge-ish. It's the UK Border Agency. I am grateful to The Daily Quail for its tweet bringing this to my attention.

Generally, Christmas cards fall into a number of categories. You can have religious ones containing sentiments suitable for sending to an aged aunt who always goes to Midnight Mass because she always has. You can have much less reverent ones which you can send to those of your friends who go to Midnight Mass because the church is open, warm and just over the road from the pub where they've been drinking since getting off work early because it's Christmas Eve. You can have cards which raise money for charity and those which raise money for artists. Increasingly, you have the corporate card which a company sends out to its customers and clients every year at this time. I have some of those to send myself, as it happens.

What you have not had - until now - is the mission statement in the form of a Christmas card. Ekklesia has published the card the UK Border Agency is sending this year. I was speechless. Seldom happens to me, except when I'm having to make small talk at some social event I don't want to attend. But look at it. You'd have to be come kind of complete arsehole to think that sending that out to your stakeholders is a good idea.

I'm sure that the UK Border Agency does good work tracking down people traffickers. In fact, I'm sure of that because their website tells me that's what they do. but I'm also sure that they do a bang up job of banging up children in wholly unsuitable conditions in detention centres.I suppose since the only other cards they've sent out this year have been ID cards to foreign nationals, they thought a Christmas card was a good idea. Personally, I'd have sent one of the juniors down to Oxfam or Shelter and bought a few boxes from them rather than create this wholly unseasonal Season's Greeting. Probably would have saved a few quid for the tax payer that way as well. Honestly, if the Baby Jesus hadn't risen to heaven, he'd be spinning in his fucking grave.