I hate Mondays

i seem to have lost about ten hours sleep this week - where did it all go.  It feels like I have lived seven days and only got five days sleep.  What amazes me more is how you look at the world when your mind is not in it usual state.  Boring people I find pointless.  Noisy people I have to resist the urge to punch in the back of the head.  Angry people I want to out anger.  I wonna go postal so bad and then I'll get eight hours sleep and the feeling will pass again.

the same ground rules for all

If, like me, you also get annoyed by people that tell you to do something, or complain about an event but they are not prepared to do it themselves or are unaffected by the impact, then this leads to the next idea.  It should be made illegal for anyone who does not pay tax in this country to influence in any way the taxation, budget or public spending.  They can in no way benefit from a country they are not prepared to contribute to in full or in way attempt to avoid or minimise their charges.  Personal finances should be made available on request.  If the books are above board and beyond reproach then what is the problem with a little scrutiny.

Giving moral guidance and not even living in this country should be sentenced to the wearing of dunces hat for two weeks.  Don't high and mighty on me and not be prepared to live by the same rules as me.

More thoughts

I need something more revolutionary not evolutionary to keep the momentum going.  What could that be be? How about something like scraping trident?  What value is something that you will never use.  I can appreciate that there is a need for a tool to encourage the demilitarisation of a nation but what is the point of something that can't be used to threaten other nations.  We don't need it but we do need something like it to encourage the re evaluation of the military agenda of these rouge nations.

Let us scrap trident for now and look at alternatives for the futures.

The Second Idea

Declare all outside interests.

Having a second job is fine and should be positively encouraged; this helps to bring in other viewpoints, ideas and reduce the costs to the tax payer.  However, this should be no secret and all rewards from this other role should also be made available to all.  The other side of this information exposure determines the financial remuneration for the public service position; if you are earning are large salary with a large bonus, the public service role should be considered as charity work.  Lets make it tax deductible.  There is no mechanism by which a millionaire can claim expenses from the public purse.

If the role in public service is the only position occupied by the individual then the salary should be pegged to the equivalent profession like a doctor.  Again, this information should be freely available to all.

www.changetheuk.com

The Problem

Over the last year, I found myself getting very angry with the Government and then Parliament and then rule makers attitude towards each other and then their attitude towards the public.  Big sentence with many gripes and concerns but how do I move on with my life?

I started by asking myself a few simple questions.
1. How did Parliament and Government become so detached from the public they serve?
2. How did a representative democracy become so unrepresentative of those that elect them?
3. Why is the system only allowed to be changed by those elected by the current system?
4. Why are policy and law makers the only people to allowed to change the framework they are operate in?
5. How can 60 million effect the change themselves?

For some reason the image from the Pixar movie A Bug's Life jumped into my head.  A moment near the end of the movie when Flick the ant says to the leader of the grasshoppers "We are stronger then you and you know it".  The instant when everyone realises the game is up and whatever happens next it will not be the same as where we were.   The game changer.

The Experiment

So what is next?  I don't know where this will lead but I thought I would try something exciting (at least for me).  If you could hit control, alt, delete and reboot the system how would you like it to recover?  If you (the benevolent dictator) ruled the country could implement any change; what would it be?

The First Idea

Fixed term parliaments.  If a four year cycle and limit of two terms is good enough for 220 million and then why not for us too.  Along with that, a MP cannot serve more than three consecutive terms and cannot reapply to the position without a equal time spent working in industry.  Be a MP for 12 years but you have to spend 12 in a real job before entering Parliament again.  The point being that a good MP will cycle between industry and public service keeping them fresh with ideas and help them understand the demands and needs of the public from the coal face.

Let's see where this goes.

so full yet so empty

I, like every other music fan around the world, am feeling an odd sensation this week.  Ever since the death of Michael Jackson I find myself listening to the entire back catalogue of music from the early days of Motown and the Jackson 5 through to Dangerous - lets face it, the stuff after is pretty average.   Having lived through the seventies and eighties and experiencing this music when it was new and fresh and then watching the decline of a huge star, the great music (everything pre-1992) was damaged and the records pushed to the top shelf next to House Hits of 1986 and everything by Level 42.

In March, after the O2 concert announcement, I found myself routing around on the top shelf again.  Dusty, dirty and neglected the CD case was found and opened, the disc cleaned and held up to the light to check for scratches, finally I popped my copy Bad (circa 1987) into the CD player and hit go.  Inside of 10 seconds I was sixteen again, this did not worry me as much as my kids - don't expect a great response from a six old when you are singing "Who's bad?" at them.  The four of us then spent half an hour trying to moonwalk around the kitchen.  Yes, you look like you are walking forwards but move backwards - eh?  As a parent, I regret not introducing the monkeys to Michael sooner but I, like everyone else, felt uncomfortable with man but not the music.

The music is inoffensive, entertaining and gets us of the sofa and swing hips.  The kids really loved it.  We still listened to the music in private, rolling up the windows of the car when it came on and hoping no one else would notice.  The most guilty pleasure of the last three months.  And then he died.

I am so happy everyone is looking at the breadth of work with fresh eyes and he is the biggest selling artist in album sales and mp3 downloads.  As of today, the top 25 albums on Amazon include 20 various albums and collections of MJ.  Even the golf club had MJ playing yesterday afternoon.

For every great achievement there is some darkness somewhere, hearing about the decline of the man over the last fifteen years was sad and disillusioning for me.  I "lost my faith" a long time ago and hearing about the state of the man at the end did not surprise or shock.  The name that jumped to mind was Howard Hughes, a great inventor and philanthropist and so much to offer but the ending is similar.  Having everything and having it when ever you want is not healthy - as human we need to hear the word no to keep us in check.  No, you can't have that. No, that is stupid.  No, you need to get well first.  No more drugs.

I am listening to Billie Jean right now.

My favourite ML joke:  What is the Funk of 40,000 years anyway?  Bill Clinton must be close by now.

tough day

Tube strike days are always interesting days to be travelling if you
like to be people watching. It is a constant source of amusement to
me that folks can work in London for decades and still not known where
they actually work, walking or taking the bus is confusing and very
alien to them. It is like watching a bunch of tourist struggle to
make sense of the bus route spider maps, they know the information is
there, they just have to keep looking. The commuter magic eye picture
- look at it long enough and the hidden picture will emerge.

These confused individuals are keen to regale stories of distant
travels and time spent with native that and not even seen a black
person before but can not navigate the urban jungle. Commuters
reading map while walking should be run over - please!

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Lap

another boozer closes down

Have you noticed the number of pubs closing down in the London area?
Quite a few of my regular haunts, not regular enough by the looks of
it, are getting boarded up and put out to pasture. Please, please,
please no more trendy wine bars or gastro pubs. I want beer, nuts,
crisps and a dartboard.

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Lap

summer bliss

Just spotted a man, sitting on a bench in the grounds of a church,
drinking a can of lager. It is warm and sunny, boy does he look
happy. And here I am recovering from a dodgy curry a couple of days
ago.

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Lap

talent

What is talent? Having watched the last few episodes of Britain's Got Talent (BGT) and I am inclined to believe that is not talent. If an alien saw nothing of our culture but this show, what would they take away from it? A small island of the north coast of the continent is populated by odd people whose only desire is to be famous even if it is for only fifteen minutes. Talent's are cynically broken down into singers, dancers, bands, musicians and comedians, no painters, philosophers, designers, writers, just folks that want nothing than to perform the monarchy of the day.

Count the number of times you hear "I really need this" or "I want this more than anything" or "my whole life I dreamed this" from the talents. It is so bad and so obviously scripted. Even poor old Susan Boyle, the runaway winner of the competition, is being attacked in the press for being a bit of a spoilt artist in an attempt to push some votes onto the other contenders.For me the worst part of the show is when the judges pick the second runner up in each of the semi finals. The master stroke is by providing a mechanism to remove the chaff and focus on getting some acts worth watching into the final. However, all that actually happens is that final is populated with a mix of talent and not just singers or dancers - that would be boring and too much like X-Factor.

It is a shame that the small talents are ignored, I can throw two grapes into the air at the same time and catch them in my mouth. A talent of which I am immensely proud and have no desire to perform it in front of anyone but my wife and children. We all have a talent, we just just choose to keep it personal. Their greatest desire is to show their talent to the world, my greatest desire is for them not to.

Yes, yes, yes. I can turn over but if you a child that is ten years old nothing is more important than that show at the minute.

Create, educate, include and develop now those are four talents true.--

Lap

tweet this

i have given up on twitter. It is nothing more that a time vacuum for
those who need to know what everyone is doing all the time. Why do I
need to know Stephen Fry is currently stuck in an elevator? Do I
really need a running commentary on his life?

I woke up.

I went to work.

I went home.

I played with kids.

I argued with wife.

I stormed of to bed.

I went to sleep.

repeat...

That's about as complicated as it gets for 99% of the population. We
crave interesting things so much they can happen to other people if
not us as long as we know. Ask yourself, if you are other 35, when is
the last time you made a friend? A close friend, someone to confide
in completely, be their best man as their wedding even. When is the
last time you stuck up a conversation with a stranger? When we do
these things we feel great but we seek solace in the life of others.

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Lap

oh frack

too much free beer and free belgium food from belgos is not a good
combination. All this talk of corporate excess is comical, when you
have those days when nothing goes your way, you try your hardest but
it is all worthless,, what is the point. The only way forward is
through. Which brings me to the free beer. It would be rude too say
no.

Lap

blog: http://blog.lapnagra.net

doable is not a word

Next time you hear anyone say it just punch them in the back of the head.

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Lap

why are men so focused on technology

I have had to listen to two guy talk about, sky, sky +, hd, plasma
screens, blueray, playstations, surround sound, 3.1, 5.1, 7.1, lcd
screens, mobile phones, ipods for nearly one whole hour.

It was great!

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Lap

interviews

I have been interviewing folks to back fill my role as I am being
seconded to the new project. Why is it so hard to find normal people
these days? Virtually everyone I have come across seems to have some
odd quirk in their personality, even though they may be technically
capable and more astute than me they would not be able to do the job.
Or worse still they would make current staff leave.

I have come around to the ensuring that some technical test be part of
the interview process. Lets face it, if you were hiring for a choir
you would not wait until opening night to see if they could actually
sing. The test should be well time boxed and a little open ended,
encourage the candidate to go wild for sixty minutes. The test should
be geared around solving a common and simple problem (even with access
to the internet) but given enough scope to prompt the candidate to
impress you as much as possible. What can you do in sixty minutes? A
demonstration of breadth and depth of knowledge is the goal here.

The jury is still out on whether the formal interview process should
include technical questions too. I prefer to focus on scenario based
questions - what would you do to solve a problem like this - to see
how the candidate would handle odd situations under a little stress.
It is a little cruel but I do enjoy it.

Finally, you have to ask yourself the million dollar questions, could
I sit next to this person for a whole year and would they encourage me
to raise my game. New talent should not just bring in new skills,
that's easy, but they should also force us all out of our complacency
and raise out games too. Not just how you make the team better but
how you make the other individuals better too.

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Lap