Chill Winds

I was away for a long weekend with a friend in Derbyshire: a lovely cosy house deep in the Dales. Mind-numbingly quiet after the bustle of London, but bitterly cold in the wind. Usually we go for long walks across the fields and through the woods, but not this time.

On Saturday we did some shopping locally and had lunch in a delightful but busy deli in a sidestreet of Belper. After that it was off to a garden centre near Uttoxeter that Rosemarie and Celia wanted to visit. Quite a nice drive, of which the high point was driving past the International JCB Headquarters at Rocester - really. At the side of the road is the most amazing scultpture by Fosser made out of JCB parts. This picture does not do it justice. I will have to go back sometime and get some proper pictures. It is eerily like a real life transformer.

The other end of the country we are missing a Mayor.

I grew fond of Ken Livingstone when he was standing up to Thatcher's attack on democracy in 1980s London. I was right behind him when he objected to the sickening sight of half dead aristocrats pouring into the House of Lords to vote themselves huge rates reductions. He has done an enormous amount for Public Transport, the Arts and Communities in London. He has been voted in with a clear majority twice. He represents my London.

But apparently he cannot say what he thinks without bringing his post into disrepute. We seem to be moving into a world where my freedom of speech is subordinate to someone else's right not to be offended. You don't have to prove you have been offended - you just need to assert it - then everybody has to ooze sympathy or understanding. Well, not quite. This applies if you are religious or a member of an ethnic minority, but not apparently if you are secular, atheist or believe in ...um... free speech, for instance. The idea that insulting a poor sensitive Evening Standard reporter is somehow an insult to all jews is laughable.

I am more than happy to respect peoples right to identify with ethnic or religious groups, in the same way that I respect their right to believe in UFOs or crystal healing, but they cannot have an absolute right to veto what anyone else says in case they get upset.

What are you thinking subconsciously?

I read this interesting link at Meg Pickard's site and I think it is a pretty devastating comment on the bullshit that seems commonplace in today's business world. I haven't any experience of working with naming experts but I have been in a lot of focus groups. Sometimes I even told the truth.

They seem to be set up in naive ignorance of the GIGO principle. They have to be structured so the results can be presented as pseudo science, but what they are really measuring is people's techniques in lying and being polite.

I have attended groups where every single person is acting. We are trying to take it seriously but the questions are so daft that we either have to make something up or laugh out loud. I have actually been asked, "If this car was a guest at a party, how would they behave?". "Does the colour of this packaging make you feel more secure about the product or less?".

Now obviously people react to things, but at a largely subconscious level. The clue is in the word subconscious. Getting people to try to analyse their reaction to adverts is a waste of time. A behavioural psychologist looking at the session from behind a mirror might well be able to get some uselful information out of the event, but that rarely happens. We tended to end up frustrated when we didn't like any of the adverts being proposed (for instance) but the group facilitator was desperately trying to find what we disliked least. "They're all crap" wasn't an answer he was happy taking back to the client.

What was very revealing and came up time and time again was that when they talked to us about good adverts we had seen in the past, we could alll identify adverts that impressed or amused us but we could hardly ever remember what company they advertised. The cleverer they tried to be the more this was the case (particularly with adverts for cars and financial services).

I deal with sales calls a lot in my job, where people are for the most part trying to crudely manipulate my responses; and I have also participated in a number of telephone surveys. Without exception they are unable to represent my opinions. Particularly irritating is the "on a scale of one to ten..." nonsense. I do not think like that, and I have never met anyone who does. What number means "I don't care" or "It does not apply"? They think that they are getting useful information but as the survey progresses my responses become more and more formulaic.

The article also reveals a mind set that assumes that the more the client dislikes the solution the better it is. After all, why employ an expert at a huge cost and then ignore what they tell you?

This is why we don't get what we want. They ask us the wrong questions, we lie, and they ignore the answers.

Release The Neck

Visit to my Alexander Teacher today. I try to get there at least once a week for a bit of back-lengthening and general straightening up. It always leaves me feeling relaxed and poised and energised.

I started about three years ago, and wish I'd done it many years ago: I could have too. In the 1980s I knew quite a few people who were training or had recently qualified but it all seemed a bit gimmicky at the time (there was that and Rolfing and Hellerwork) not to mention a bit expensive for me at the time.

Still, I am doing it now and finding it great. I guess I had better plug Chyna's website and while I am at it her music website.

Rain

There was actually some rain in London today. This has been a very strange February - strange winter in fact - and real rain of any kind is almost a treat. There's been a lot of windblown spit, but this evening, on the way back from shopping, the darkness, the rain on the windscreen and the blurred lights all came together and I roared right back to some earlier previous similar.

There is also a flavour that differentiates Saturday from Sunday. More bustling, more people still working: a hangover from the main part of the working week. Still to be transformed by the magic of Sunday morning.

Aeon Flux. What?

Well. Just got back from taking my son and his cousin to see Aeon Flux. Well.

Um.

It's not that it's bad exactly. Though it is. It's the waste. I don't know what gets into these producers and directors. Lots of money on special effects and sets (well quite a lot anyway) and then really ruin it with a crap story. I mean, does it take that much longer to read through the script and notice glaring plot problems and continuity errors? I mean, the Matrix story was pretty crap, specially in the last two films, but at least they made an effort. I sometimes think they should turn entire films over to the art and design teams and completely forget about trying to graft a story on to it. Well I guess they did it with 2001, and it shows up in some of the IMAX 3D shorts, but with the exception of a few shining beacons like Blade Runner and the first two Alien movies. it's pretty painful.

I hardly know where to begin. This film sinks under the weight of the Stormtrooper effect, there is staggering technology with no apparent source or consistency, people miraculously recovering from bullet wounds, communication devices that require you to dig holes in your flesh, except when they simply make your ear light up, events immediatley contradicting explanations, a voice over that comes and goes at random, and a lead character and initial baddie named Trevor.

You have to sit through all this just to watch Charlize Theron running round in a skin tight catsuit. It was Underworld:Evolution all over again.

The things I do for my son.

It's Life, Gym

Yesterday I went down to the local gym for the first time in ages during the week. I joined a few years ago and to begin with I was down there three or four times a week in the evenings and at weekends. This tailed off in the way these things do but I still kept up weekly visits - usually on a Sunday afternoon.

A while ago my daughter moved back into the area and registered at the gym, and she is still in her enthusiastic phase and she is encoraging me to go more often, so last night I got home from work early and were down at the gym by 7.

I could not believe how crowded it was. There is usually a bulge in membership just after Christmas while people work through their new year resolutions, but this was ridiculous: it was like being at the first day of a sale.

There has also been a dramatic change in the mix of people. I gave up listening to the music or tv feeds ages ago and found it much more interesting to look around at my fellow gym enthusiasts. It starts out by just watching but inevitably ends up by trying to categorise them.

There are still the Posers. Usually young women in designer gym gear with ipods and very fixed expressions, they are dedicated to looking good and not working up a sweat. They always seem to succeed at the latter and often at the former.

There are still some (but ominously fewer) of the Lastchancers, who have clearly been told by family/friends/doctors that they must lose weight or else. They are the stoics of the gym.

There were hardly any of the Pairs. There were a lot of these last summer: a gym regular and their newbie mate. Usually male, they are characterised by the regular shepherding the newbie from machine to machine and explaining loudly and often with dubious accuracy how to use it, and half demonstating it in an I-could-be-a-Personal-Trainer-if-I-wasn't-so-busy mode.

A subset of these are the Couples, where the whole thing is much gentler, varying from the businesslike (Come on, we agreed to do this) to the heartwarming new world discovery of new love.

I only saw one Professional. These have always been quite rare, but are very obvious because they hammer the machines (usually the treadmill) with a no-nonsense determination and quite frightening intensity, going on and on at a speed and a level that leaves me in awe.

This time there were a lot of Youths, just-eighteens going round in groups of three or four, spending more energy on larking around with each other than on the machines. They were everywhere I went somehow, laughing and joking about the machines like they were some kind of smutty sex accessories. They made me feel old.

What overwhelmed the place though was the influx of Heavies. They can't all be bouncers (police intelligence is that they are mostly drug dealers or their muscle) but they are built like brick shithouses, with unfeasibly large muscles (getting shirts must be a real problem) that shout SUPPLEMENTS or HGH across the gym. There seemed to be several distinct groups and last night they all seemed to be very watchful of each other. They weren't menacing or anything (in fact they tend to be very polite and helpful) but they just seemed to fill the place up.

Which group am I part of then? Well, obviously, the non-judgmental serious excerciser group. The group that everyone thinks they are in.

Here we go then

Just what the world needs. Another blog.

Toyed with the idea for a while like it was a hangnail. What would I say etc. How to avoid emulating other blogs. Serious/political? Amusing/trivial? Dear Diary? It's like that moment of helpless freedom when I am asked what I want my password to be, or what to name a new machine. It can be anything. I have absolute power. Why can't I decide?

Still, I couldn't make the time to write the relevant code on my website; it was easier just to take the Google shillling and see what happens.

I don't get that worked up about Google any more than I get worked up about Microsoft. Yes they are earth-swallowing corporations with a quite scary power over peoples lives and they don't always behave as I'd like. But I can remember when each make of pc had its own operating system, and more recently, when search engines were an idea whose time was overdue. The advantage is that you can see where they are and it is in the open. I am far more worried about the data being collected by loyalty cards, mobile phone companies and our government's idiotic drivel comments about ID cards.

Oh, and why Other Kosh?

Long story.