It never rains but it warms

This week there was another serious outbreak of global warming. We know that it has happened many, many times this year; it has happened in the past; and it will sadly happen again next year and the year after. Ah! I hear you ask. How do we know that what occurred over the past few days (the storms, I mean) was really an outbreak of global warming and not just a case of torrential rain? Good question! Well, you only had to turn on your television last night to see the reports on the news channels that heavy flooding was connected to global warming. This was unequivocally supported by a massive array of graphs, charts and widespread numbers to prove it. Even the BBC’s flagship news programme, Newsnight, took this line. So it is definitely true.

Hi there, my name is Sven Johnnson. My good friend Didier de Clerck put me in touch with the very decent owner of this website, a Mr. Ned Ludd and suggested that Mr Ludd might be open to a contribution from one of Europe’s leading climate change specialists – that’s me, folks. I rang Mr Ludd and he generously responded with the words, “Not another one.” And after a deep breath, he continued, “Fuckit” – which I gather is British for the affirmative! So here we are. I am today’s guest blogger!

Now, I, Sven Johnnson, am the man who lives for numbers. I live, breath, eat, sleep and most important of all, dream numbers. When I was younger my fellow students used to think that I was really mental about numbers. They’d say, “Sven – he’s the guy who goes around thinking that he hears strange numbers in his head.” And how strange is that, folks? But you know what? They were right.

Now, this post is just an introduction to Sven Johnnson. But let me tell you what you can expect from my blog in the coming weeks, months and years (let’s hope it will be years, eh, guys?!) I will be showing to all of you how numbers shaped my life. And when I say numbers, it’s not just numbers. It is graphs and charts and computer models. I will also be showing you how those numbers (and graphs, charts and computer models) have shaped your lives and will increasingly shape your lives as we go forward.

This is a great moment in history for you readers to be following my blog. This is because we are starting to see the emergence of people like me getting more and more involved in government studies, news production and major, major research projects. This, I can tell you guys, is going to be the era when numbers not only changed all of our lives, but changed the world we live in, that changed the way we think. Oh, and finally, that changed all our futures, yours and mine!

So, I will tell you this now: You will obey those numbers. That is an order!! (Only joking! It is what we in the European Commission call a Euro-Joke!!)

Posted by EU Climate Change Advisor – Sven Johnnson.

An EU Policy Advisor writes

I have been following this website with its guest bloggers for some time now. Some of the posts can be quite clever. Occasionally they are poignant. From time to time, I even detect a note of humour. What is clear though is a consistent bias in the posts and that bias is anti-establishment in tone. I have sent countless emails to Mr Ludd pointing this out and have asked on many, many occasions if I might offer the opposing view. To date his responses have been really quite unhelpful. In instances they have included the ill-considered use of words that some would deem offensive. However, after the recent arrest of two of his ‘bloggers’, Mr Ludd is in a spot of bother.

I sent him another email yesterday, when I read of that arrest and I asked him what he intended to do. Would it be conceivable, I asked, that I could offer my opinion on current affairs? This time he has responded in the affirmative, and with the following encouraging words, “If it will stop you bugging me, you tit.” And so it is that I will take today’s slot and offer you a few words of wisdom. I am glad that Mr Ludd has at last demonstrated that he is eminently willing to publish the other side of the argument.

Now there are some of you, possibly many, many of you who think that I am British. Very entertaining! But sorry, nothing could be further from the truth. I might have a grasp of English that is as firm as, and in many instances, firmer than that of British people. But it might surprise you to discover that I am in fact Belgian. Like our Prime Minister, and now President of Europe, Mr. Rompuy, I speak all the languages of the EU. And like Mr Rompuy, it is through the use of these languages that I hope to spread harmony, understanding and, most important of all, unity.

Now, you might have enjoyed the anti-establishment posts on this website. You might have felt some sympathy for the Lord and Lady who ‘innocently’ supplied drugs to elderly people. But can I say that you are terribly mistaken if that is indeed your viewpoint? For how indeed do you intend to achieve unity in this little country of yours, if you can criticize the drug taking habits of some in your community whilst ignoring those of others? The law must be rigorously applied across all communities if it is to work and to work efficiently. The law is not something that you can pick up at the time of your choosing and reject like some cheap and dirty wench when you no longer have need of her (which incidentally I have never done, however dirty she was at the time.) Just because Lord and Lady Trencherman are of noble provenance it does not mean that they are above the law.

And in no less a degree is this the truth for the European Union that it is currently my honour to serve. Now that we have our new President, Mr. Van Rompuy we finally have the opportunity to spread unity across the member states and to ensure that this unity is rigorously enforced by the application of the law.

It is truly a great day for democracy. It is truly a great day for all the nations of Europe and for all the people of all of those nations. For whilst Mr Van Rompuy was elected by a few grand men and women, he – and those men and women – will work tirelessly for the many. And I can delight you now with the news that it will be good people like myself who will spread the word – or rather the words - of the EU. It will be people like me with my twenty six languages, who will tirelessly teach the skeptics and the cynics amongst you of the great benefits of this community. It will be people like me who will show you how to reject the eccentric behaviour of your Lords and Ladys who pursue simply their own ends. And finally it will be fellows like me who will teach you how to act within the law and for the good of all people – even those people who are not clever enough to recognize that good!
Thank you.
By guest blogger Didier de Clerck, EU Policy Advisor

BUSTED

I have been asked at short notice to stand in for my brother Reggie. Last night he and dear Ivana received a visit from the local constabulary. A number of men, some in uniform, some in jeans or tracksuits, turned up on their doorstep and questioned them about certain crops that they believed were being grown on their land. Lady Ivana, I am told, was willing to divulge the whereabouts of these crops and led the men to a greenhouse full of healthy, flourishing bushes. She and Reggie were duly arrested and are right now being questioned about their involvement in a major drugs growing operation.

I feel that their treatment has been unfair, unwarranted. Somebody availed themselves of information posted by Ivana on this very website and decided to 'look into it'. A contemptible little 'investigator' broke into their greenhouse under the cover of darkness and subsequently confirmed to his superiors that this was a major cannabis operation. Because of the quantity of the drugs involved, Reggie and Ivana are now viewed as the Mr. and Mrs. Big of a major narcotics empire.

The truth is that my brother and sister-in-law have been supplying a growing number of old people with treatments for conditions that haven't responded to prescription drugs - MS, Sciatica, Migraine, chronic back pain to name but a few. The ‘supply chain’ has been manned by men and women of perfectly decent standing whose purpose has not been to exacerbate broken Britain but rather to assist people who find genuine relief through using these drugs.

It is characteristic of this country’s current administration that having done so much through its own socio-economic policies to foster broken Britain, it still feels that it has to penalize those who only wish to make the lives of others more bearable. Publicity conscious politicians, preferring to pander to the ill-informed views of middle England, are concerned not that justice is actually done, but rather that it is seen to be done.

These are the folk currently running this country of ours and writing its laws. They are sacking their own experts and making up policy on the hoof. If harmless eccentrics like Reggie and Ivana continue to get banged up whilst politicians mercilessly champion the ‘court of public opinion’ but subsequently take up well paid jobs with major pharmaceutical companies, then we might as well give up right now and spend our lives smoking crack and shooting up heroin and burning effigies - whenever it so pleases us - of the very politicians that we are meant to respect but never will.
(Hope this was not too much of a rant Ned, regards Algie.)
By guest blogger Algernon Trencherman

An apology

I see that my lawyer Mr. Doberman used yesterday’s post primarily to blow his own trumpet and showcase some of the cunning new legal tools that he is developing at Scheister’s. I had thought that he was supposed to be discussing Lady Ivana’s new blog and the legal ramifications of talking openly about ‘film people’. In fact I was rather perplexed that his only real point on the subject was that I appeared to be ‘in the dark’. Well, I will readily admit that the kind of fellows that populate Burbank and Beverly Hills are indeed a mystery to me as indeed are Lady Ivana’s past relations with them. So quite why he mentioned this, I am not sure.

I suppose that I really should not complain about Ferdinand’s contribution, though. As long as her Ladyship doesn’t come out with any howlers in her forthcoming literary undertakings, then he will indeed have helped me out and quite possibly earned his case of Mouton. Not sure whether it will be the 1989 though.

On another matter altogether, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to make an apology. There has been a lot in the news lately about the investment bank on whose board I sat for twenty years. It transpires that the founders of the bank ran a lucrative business funding eighteenth century slave traders. It therefore appears that the noble institution was founded upon the suffering of others.

Now whilst I have never engaged in the slave trade personally, it appears to be all the rage nowadays to apologise for acts in which one has played absolutely no part. Yes, I did indeed earn a living from the descendents of slave traders, but I never actually perpetuated the ghastly trade myself – unless one considers the long hours some of our dealing room staff have worked over the years.

But I rather like this idea of making an apology that is in no way heartfelt, meaningful or genuine. It is very fitting for a senior investment banker. And it allows me to overlook some of the hideous things that the bank really has done, such as, heavy speculation in food commodities markets that brought higher prices and greater hardship to the developing world… In addition, the massive bailouts that the taxpayer had to fund when the bank’s ventures into the mortgage backed securities market went spectacularly wrong. Much easier to apologise about something that doesn’t eat you all up inside, eh?

Good, well now that I have got that off my chest, I can inform you that her Ladyship’s ‘Burbank’ blog will still be only one of many appearing on this site in the future. The owners of this site would like it to maintain its ‘bio-diversity’ and continue the guest blogging concept. There will be regular contributions from politicians, bankers, lawyers, and presumably even strumpets.

I cannot yet tell you who will be guesting tomorrow. But I am sure that whoever it is, it will be informative and quite possibly contain an element of shock. If not, it’ll probably just be the usual rant that one is used to seeing elsewhere in the blogosphere. Good luck. Or maybe hard luck.
Toodle pip, as Ferdie says.
By guest blogger Lord Trencherman of Furmity

Super-Duper Injunction – A lawyer writes

My friend Lord Trencherman has asked a favour of me. He tells me that his charming wife, Ivana has taken to blogging and has told him that she wants to take the genre (for want of a better word) to places that this publicity-hungry strumpet, ‘Belle de Jour’ couldn’t begin to imagine. Apparently Lady Ivana spent a number of years hanging out in Burbank, California, before she met his Lordship and has some rather interesting stories to tell.

He has asked me to check on some of the legal ramifications of describing persons living or dead whom her Ladyship encountered over the years. He says that he cannot fathom why this is really necessary, as he assumes her revelations will be good natured and congenial. But apparently she is really quite insistent. I suspect that he is somewhat in the dark as to the true nature of her Ladyship’s relations and sadly has not twigged why this “Belle de Jour” has fired her up in the first place. But then Reggie always was charmingly naïve about these things.

As an old mate of Reggie’s, I have of course said that I am happy to oblige. Although I did point out to him that I normally ‘act for the other side’. My firm is one of those that has pioneered the use of the ‘super-injunction’ recently and I have to say that in general the application of this exciting new legal tool has been really rather encouraging to date.

Oh, I know that there was a spot of bother recently when one of our competitors tried to muzzle some turbulent parliamentarians. But I say that any fool know; the only way to get members of either Lords or Commons to do your bidding is to wave handfuls of cash under their porcine little snouts. We all know that piggies far prefer carrots to sticks. So yours truly will not be thrusting super-injunctions in the direction of the Mother of all Parliaments any time soon.

One more thing that I will add, before I scarper off to do my home work for dear old Reggie, is that my firm is working on an even more exciting legal tool as I write. This, we are (provisionally at least) giving the ‘working title’ of the Super-Duper Injunction. I know this sounds frivolous, but who knows, for that very reason it perhaps also sounds reassuringly unthreatening.

What we hope to do is go one stage further than the super-injunction. You see, one of the problems in the case of the Guardian super-injunction was the role that the internet played. The law firm that attempted to muzzle the press kicked up a storm in trying to do so. Or to put it another way: The shit hit the Twitter. The news of the injunction and the case that they were trying to suppress spread like wildfire over the World Wide Web, undoing all the good work that the super-injunction had initially done.

So what we are hoping to do now is find a way to shut down entire networks of communication next time we find ourselves in this kind of situation. We would hope to be able to go direct to the operators of, say, Twitter and ensure that any particular strands or threads that violated the terms of the super-injunction would be blocked. Obviously we are hoping to glean some useful information from our friends in the People’s Republic of China and one or two of the Islamic nations, as they already have form in this area. But it would all be rather jolly if we could ensure – through the rule of British law - that certain words or conversation threads were entirely blocked from the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and some of the other squalid little social networking sites.

Anyway, I hope to be able to let you how we are getting on with the technical aspects of this exciting new development in the near future. In the meantime, it is back to investigating and steering Lady Ivana’s lurid excursions into the world of the blogosphere. Let’s hope that I get a case of Reggie’s Mouton 89 for my efforts!
Toodle pip!
The guest blogger today is a partner at the law firm Sheister Ganif and Sheister.

Job vacancy No.197: Religious Leader – Men Only

All of a sudden my wife considers herself to be a seasoned blogger. I gather that her post on Saturday achieved double my average 'hit rate'. As a result she has now concluded that she might have found her new ‘calling’.

I cannot begin to describe the fuss she made on Saturday morning when I begged her to stand in for me. I was a little indisposed after a reunion dinner at my old Cambridge College. And I genuinely thought it might entertain Lady Ivana to do something other than tend her flowers for once. She grudgingly accepted and rattled off an article that in no way adequately addressed the concerns that I’d hoped to raise about ‘broken Britain’. She practically exonerated the wretched Messrs. Cowell and Hirst for their degenerate output and fell back on that old chestnut of ‘human nature’.

Anyway, I thought that this was the end of it. But no, come this morning, she wanted to do another post. I probed her sudden enthusiasm for blogging, and she told me that it was to do with the revelation in the Sunday newspapers of the identity of some strumpet who goes by the name of ‘Belle du Jour’. Lady Trencherman has decided that this might be a good time to start blogging about her own past, and she would like to focus primarily on the years that she spent in Hollywood, California. She thinks that she might capitalize on this Belle girl’s publicity and use the blog to depict some of the matinee idols and film producers with whom she became intimate during her years there. Quite what this has got to do with anything at all in the world of blogging, I am really rather uncertain. It is all terribly, terribly perplexing as I had no idea whatsoever that she’d hung out with ‘film people’, or that she had anything remotely interesting to reveal about her past.

Anyway, in the end I put my foot down and told her that I had plans of my own today. Her revelations would have to wait. I had far weightier issues to consider.

You see, there is a question that I have wanted to pose for quite some time - and one that few people appear terribly bothered about right now. That is: Why is it that religious organizations – be they Catholic, CofE, Jewish or Muslim - in this egalitarian nation of ours are exempt from the 1975 sex discrimination act? Why, after all these years, after all the debates about sexual discrimination over the past decades, are they still allowed to bar women from becoming religious leaders: priests, pastors, ministers, rabbis… or God forbid, Bishops?

I will not dwell on this point for too long as I am told by the people who run this website that nothing is more likely to turn readers off than a post on religion and religious practice. But I will ask this: Why is it, when the Church of England has voluntarily walked away from this exemption is it deemed appropriate for other religious groups to carry on this discrimination?

And equally important, given that we have a Labour government that includes supposed egalitarian firebrands such as the delightful and fragrant Harriet Harperson, why are not more women MPs up in arms, literally shouting from the rooftops of Westminster about this last bastion of discriminatory practices? Why isn’t this great, progressive Labour party of ours currently considering legislation to ensure that everyone, man and woman, has access to every available job in any given organization, commercial, public sector, charity or faith orientated?

My wife, Lady Ivana, who claims to be the grand-daughter of a suffragette no less, may wish to carry on about her baffling experiences in LA-LA land or whatever it is she calls it. But I feel that it is incumbent upon me to consider the questions that are of real import to women here and anywhere else where hypocrisy and humbug do prevail. I hope that this will spark some debate. And if the owners of this blog site truly find that their ‘site stats’ have gone down as a result of my very brief and not irrelevant question, then I do indeed apologize. Maybe they can then ask Lady Ivana to return to the helm in order to get ‘em up again. (The site stats, that is.)
By guest blogger Lord Trencherman of Furmity

Her Ladyship is standing in...

My errant husband, Reggie, tells me that he will not be posting today. He attended a dinner at his old college last night and ended up with friends at their house near the village of Madingley. They offered to put him up for the night, but he was having none of it. He demanded a cab explaining that he had a blog to do - or so I am told. Then he swiped a bottle of Grahams 63 port from a cabinet and managed to polish it off in the back of the taxi whilst sporadically poking his head through the window and shouting at passers by, "Have any of you lot seen my blog?" The frazzled cabbie set him down outside at half past four in the morning and demanded a hundred pounds, plus tip, which yours truly had to pay.

Apart from the fact that I no longer find such behaviour attractive in a gentleman of Reggie's years, I fail to see what this obsession with 'blogging' is nowadays. I am only writing this 'post' because he begged me at five o' clock in the morning not to 'let the side down'. However, I can honestly say that it is the first and last time that I will engage in this activity. And I really rather wish that he had stayed put in Madingley - I could quite easily have fulfilled his request without all the early morning jiggery pokery. But then I suppose, boys will be boys.

I took a peek at some of Reggie's notes earlier this morning to see whether I could 'stick to the spirit of the blogeology' (another one of his sozzled requests). But from what I can tell, he was determined simply to write another one of his articles slating 'this shallow and pointless nation of ours' - which he refers to as 'Fool Britannia'. It seems that his post was going to focus on what he terms the 'twin nematodes' of British Arts and Media - Simon Cowell and Damien Hirst. He claims that no parasites have done more to lower the tone in Britain circa C20 than these two.

Whilst, I am bound to agree with the sentiment, were I writing this article myself I should want to go a step further and consider why these chaps have been so successful. Their work has undeniably gripped the nation. Simon C has everyone glued to their seats, whilst Damien H has 'art-lovers' glued to his perpex. I know that one could claim that these two impressarios are engaged in nothing more than a cynical branding exercise. But then again, what branding!

So my view of it all? Well, as the old saying goes, twenty million dung-loving insects cannot all be wrong... Where there's a swarm, there must be form... Flies always know the 'coolest places to hang out'... I could go on. But I won't, for fear of boring Reggie's regular readers. (Does he have regular readers...? Any readers?)

But anyway, the point is this: These 'ghastly parvenus' as Reggie labels them, have identified how to part stupid people from their cash. And let's face it, if that means plumbing the depths of human nature, if that means 'dumbing down' then all you can say is: Where there's muck, there's brass! Cheesy fellows like Simon Foul and Damien Cursed are definitely on to something.

There's another well known saying that people use to define shallow, soulless showmen like Mr Cowell and Mr Hirst...They are laughing all the way to the bank! That is something that one most definitely cannot deny. They have cleaned up (metaphorically speaking.) Although of course whenever I repeat this 'laughing all the way' saying to Reggie, he always responds: And they are crying all the way to the banks of Hades, my love! (One of his Classical allusions, I suspect.)

Anyway, back to my usual Saturday morning chores: Cultivating the female flowering heads on the cannabis plants! Her Ladyship's work is never done... When he was in his cups earlier, Reggie mentioned something about Boris Johnson coming to dinner this evening. I think that this is rather unlikely. The poor fellow is far too busy nowadays managing London. But who knows? Reggie is always springing such surprises on me.
By guest blogger Lady Trencherman

Consider the hippies...

Free what?
It is not unknown for a peer of the realm to curse and blaspheme. Indeed my own recent use of expletives has not gone unnoticed, I see. Some wags and scamps have attempted to link this with the shortcomings of my physician, who in actual fact has never once hesitated to renew my prescriptions for diazepam and vicodin, whilst turning a blind eye to my predilection for poppy pod tea. So nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to my cussing. The reality is that there are certain things that even a former Cambridge Classics Don like me can only express in words of one syllable (or four letters – whichever shorter). And chief amongst these is profound disbelief. So, it should come as no surprise to readers when I pose the question, “The free market? What the fuck?”

It is not my intention here to question belief in the free market, rather belief that there is a free market… or that there ever could or will be such a thing. It seems almost laughable when one beholds the developed world to make this claim. The lion’s share of global business is conducted by a relatively small number of corporations.

These ‘multinationals’, so to speak, have been around for rather a long time, but in recent years have achieved supremacy with the latest installment of 'globalization'. They may offer society a net gain, or they might ultimately only benefit the few – i.e. wealthy businessmen and the revolving-door class of politician. That is not what I am asking here though. The real question is this: can you ever have a truly free market when these behemoths dominate the industrialized world? And can you ever have a free market when the barriers to entry for newcomers – global or otherwise - are absurdly high?

Clearly not, I would argue. For what would a free market – for better or for worse - really mean? For a start it would probably mean not destroying the opium crops of foreign farmers, it would mean allowing them to engage in whatever enterprise they wished. This is not to argue in favour of the opium trade. It is simply to say that Western governments will only ever allow a free market, free trade when it correlates with their own political and economic self interest(s).

This drugs example is obviously at the extreme end of the debate – and involves a subject close to my heart! But a truly global free market would also mean a sea change for many much loved industries and a spot of downsizing for their glorious chiefs and proprietors. Amongst them: Multinational news corporations, major computer and software providers, food manufacturers, pharmaceuticals concerns, operators of utilities, leading retailers (to name but a few). For you and me, and anyone with an ounce of entrepreneurial spirit, access to these industries right now is rather like access to the law and private education – open to everybody.

Yes, yes, yes. The World Wide Web has presented and continues to present lower barriers to entry. Many new entrants have indeed achieved success in cyberspace. But, as with all new territories, we are already seeing a consolidation of the major players. The guys from Google came from nowhere, we all know. But how free is the market in search engines nowadays? And it is not just ‘optimisation’ that the firm dominates any more. Youtube, anyone?

Furthermore many of the ‘old economy’ corporations are starting to clean up, as it is a darned sight easier to storm a new territory with resources, with a well stocked army already behind you. For a start look at who dominates the news agenda nowadays. Don’t want to mention names but… er hem… Beeb… Guardian… etc etc... Who knows? Maybe this humble blogsite will one day be a behemoth. Ho ho.

Anyway as you readers will have gathered from the outset, this post is really nothing more than an excuse to use more expletives. And so I will conclude it by saying this: When people ask me whether I believe in the free market I always respond by saying, “Free market? What the fuck's that then?”
(Is that profane enough for you, Ned?)
By guest blogger Lord Trencherman of Furmity

... able face of capitalism...

Now, let’s be honest. What do we really think of capitalism?
Perhaps that is an unfair question, because it sounds as though the response should be either ‘love it’ or hate it’. And of course it is not that simple.

The thing is: can you view capitalism as a single entity that you support or oppose, that you take or leave? Is it a philosophy? Is it a faith? Is it a system, a way of life? (Is it a bird, is it a plane?) Or is it simply a catch-all phrase that covers a multitude of sins, of activities, of practices? This is a relevant question in an age like ours, in an age that has tested to the limits our ‘faith’ in ‘the system’.

We believe in enterprise. We know that the flow of capital facilitates the efficient functioning of our society. We believe that competition is good, in that it by and large ensures low prices. So in that respect at least, we could call ourselves capitalists.

But the other side of believing in capitalism, or any system at all for that matter, is having faith in those who claim to be its stewards, its custodians. And that is where the problem lies right now. We’ve bugger-all trust in said custodians.

2008 and 2009 were the years in which our trust in business and businessmen reached an all time low. It wasn’t just the reckless bankers and the shady mortgage brokers. It was insurance companies (ruthlessly avoiding payouts) energy companies (high prices), telecoms (slow broadband, poor customer relations), national rail (poor service, overpriced), television companies (faking phone polls and competitions.)

And those other supposed custodians – the ministers of state – were nowhere to be seen. Or at least they only ever appeared to act when scandals were highlighted in the media, and they realized that they better move or else lose the support of the beloved voter. But even then their response was somewhat muted. There were a lot of bold initiatives. But the lobbyists soon went into overdrive and made ministers aware that if they generated too much regulation, they would turn Britain into an economic wilderness. And anyway, how could these ministers really act ingenuously when they had their own dodgy dealings (expenses) to handle?

So, people are indeed trying to get on with their lives, through thick and thin, amid whatever the recession might throw at them. They have little choice but to continue relying upon the system that is still just managing to keep them fed and clothed and housed. But when one is asked whether the custodians - after all that has passed, after all that has been said and done - have done enough to restore people’s faith in that very system that they are supposed to safeguard, one can but reply, in the most humble, restrained and modest terms possible: “Have they fuck?”
By guest blogger Lord Trencherman of Furmity

Idea Porn

Question: When do ideas become shallow and worthless? Answer: When they become fashionable.

It has been brought to my attention that the ‘chattering classes’ are developing a penchant for non-fiction, devouring ghastly little books that analyse modern cultural trends. It appears that a number of self-styled ‘public intellectuals’ have been doing very nicely producing books on everything from understanding children through to deciphering politicians (same thing no doubt.) Apparently the aspirational middle classes, desperate not to appear lacking in the erudition stakes, are lapping it up.

Self help manuals – which is essentially what these wretched books are – have previously been the preserve of the poorly educated and the socially insecure. Works like How to Influence People have sold in their millions to ambitious working folk who believed that a pot of gold awaited them at the end of the final chapter. But the sad thing about the latest crop of manuals is that they appeal to a supposedly better educated class of citizen, the ones who went to decent Universities. So what exactly has brought this about?

Well, one thing that became apparent during the Thatcher / Blair decades was that conspicuous consumption not only infected the vulgar nouveau riches, but also spread to those that had spent three years in higher education, studying subjects normally considered pretty highbrow. I, for one have been to countless dinner parties where to a man (and woman) the guests have been Oxbridge educated – with perhaps the occasional red-brick gooseberry. And yet for most of the evening these couples have banged on about their five star holidays or their dinners at the Ivy or rising house prices, as though there were nothing else to life.

I have often wondered what people get out of University, Oxbridge included. But when you discover that some of the most vacuous public figures attended the most revered institutions - including a raft of bland, blond newsreaders and witless television personalities – you realize that for many they are simply a stepping stone to ‘the most enviable jobs in society.’

Problem is that a lot of these BA Hons. lightweights are now facing intellectual mid-life crisis. It is dawning on them that the viewing public doesn’t consider them any wiser than the stars of X-factor or Come Dancing. Similarly, my old dinner party set look back on what they have achieved and discover that there is little more than material wealth – houses, cars, designer clothing.

They all know that they cannot return to college, so they have decided that a crash course in some fashionable, pseudo-intellectual topic is just the ticket. They can cherry pick ideas from easy-to-read paperbacks and regurgitate them in front of their peers (who are doing the same thing). Then they can hold their heads up high, and no doubt sleep nights, confident that their formative years at college weren’t all pissed down the drain in the pursuit of shallow materialism and keeping up with the X-factor generation.
By guest blogger Lord Trencherman of Furmity

Here today, gone tomorrow revolution

When you reach my age, the nearest and dearest occasionally find it entertaining to discuss Alzheimer’s in front of you. Of course we all know that alongside mad professors and eccentric aristocrats, the people most associated with battiness are the old and the ageing. Now I will admit that I have been known to leave the odd ham and cheese roll in the sock drawer, and have bored the grandchildren to tears by endlessly reminding them how Great Aunt Milly used to make opium tea. (One would have thought they’d be grateful.) But I rather feel that such events are small beer beside the collective Alzheimer’s one finds amongst the young, the relatively young, and even the middle aged nowadays.

What a year it has been, what a memorable year. In the space of roughly twelve months ordinary folk have learnt an awful lot about money and wealth generation and greed; about the haves and the have-nots, about the users and the used. A number of ne’er-do-wells spewed forth during the meltdown – they always do - and we saw businessmen and ‘role models’ and elected representatives cast in a new light.

Remember how taxpayers felt when the bankers who’d been coining it for years required a bailout? In the old days we might have seen ruined investors standing on window ledges and humbled bankrupts pleading ‘buddy can you spare a dime?’ Now it was ‘Stand and deliver. Give us everything you’ve got, or else the economy gets it.” Being understanding folk, the British people responded: “Of course, if it’s an offer that our beloved Prime Minister cannot refuse, then grudgingly, here, take everything.”

Soon after this, people learnt that the beloved Prime Minister and his ilk in the Houses of Parliament had also been taking everything and had been doing so for quite some time thank you very much. During the ‘boom years’ many MPs had evidently decided, ‘We’ll have some of that.’ Some of them, it emerged, were earning more money from their flipped homes than many ordinary folk do from their salaries.

Remember the resentment that was felt towards these greedy fellows – the politicians, the bankers, the businessmen – who, whilst feigning stewardship of the economy, had actually been cynically plundering it? Remember the sense that this could not be allowed to happen again? That the reprobates must go?

Well that was a long time ago (albeit only a year). Bankers are trading exactly as they were before the meltdown – and coining it - and the politicians are looking for new ways to water down expenses reform. So why are people not up in arms anymore?

Of course at the beginning of this article I referred casually to collective amnesia (or Alzheimer's to be precise). But I do realize that people still have access to newspapers and television, however bad their memories might be. The information is all there, laid out, day by day in the media. It is not subject to totalitarian blackout. The truth, let’s face it, is still accessible. So you will no doubt ask, what is it exactly that people have forgotten?

It appears that the people have forgotten how to feel, how to behave, how to react, that’s what. They live in a world of fleeting experience, of passing sensation, of instant gratification. Nothing lasts, nothing matters for long. Consumer goods, their possessions are obsolescent at point of purchase, and, as for what they find on the internet? Well, nothing could be more ephemeral.

And such is their mindset, when they contemplate the nefarious deeds committed in trading houses, or mortgage brokers, or the Mother of all Parliaments. The information will always be there at their fingertips, ready to access, ready to digest, ready to outrage. But it will always be – and will always feel – rather like all the other information that overloads their weary, strung out little brains: electronic, ephemeral, fleeting… hard to fathom, impossible to care about... at least for longer than it takes to re-boot your Dell computer... Bit like blogging really
By guest blogger Lord Trencherman of Furmity

Farewell to the vacuous noughties!

At long last! An end to the absurd illusion of meritocracy. What a wretched couple of decades it has been under these ghastly career politicians and their embrace of popular culture. Did anyone believe that you could achieve equality by snipping off the old school tie, by filling The Commons benches and the bourgeois haunts of the arts and the media with women and the lower orders? Did they really think that they could find equality with Big Brother… the X factor? Jonathan Ross?

Sadly, that is exactly what they believed, it seems. During the early nineties, when the ‘people’s party’ was rooting around for new ways to captivate folk, as the Tories had done in the eighties with share ownership, they found inspiration in celebrity culture. Here was an arena where you didn’t have to be aristocratic to stand a chance of being rich, famous and admired. In fact you could come from anywhere and have little education… or talent. What could be more egalitarian than that? What could be more meritocratic, more aspirational? Soon, all we heard was People’s this and People’s that.

Shame nobody told the proponents of meritocracy that the children of meritocrats are effectively aristocrats, born with silver spoons in their mouths, despite having even less talent than their X-Factor parents. Of course, these young ‘aristocrats’ go one further, bearing horrid names like Peaches and Brooklyn. You see, meritocracy really is a one dimensional concept. All that really happened under Labour was a farewell to the old old order and the embrace of a new old order. Except that where the previous bunch had grace and style and, quite often, erudition, this new celebrity lot have shown themselves to be vacuous and vulgar and really rather witless.

However it now looks as though the middle classes, the chattering classes, are vehemently rejecting the ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ class of politician. Of course we all know that nobody trusts MPs nowadays. But they particularly don’t trust those who want celebrity stardust to rub off on them. They cringe when they see the likes of our tedious little PM hanging out with pop singers and the stars of reality TV, pretending to be a man of the people.

So it looks increasingly like Old Etonians will be making a bit of a comeback at the next election, courtesy of David Cameron. If the Conservatives have their way, the government benches will be rather more Macmillan than Thatcher, come 2010. It leaves one wondering where the next bunch of Labour strategists and spin doctors will find their future role models. Maybe YouTube or Twitter... or, wherever they expect 'the people' to be hanging out a decade from now.
By guest blogger Lord Trencherman of Furmity