It will all come out in the wash.
Nutritional labelling annoys me. The multiple ’statistical’ standards and representative devices, ranging from lists to traffic lights, are designed to obfuscate and confuse.
I wonder if they could be employed to greater effect ? Perhaps to provide more salient or easily understood information to help me think about the impact of food on more than just my own body.
Or as a vehicle for altogether more existential questions ?
J.G. Ballard, who made it his life’s work to “picture the psychology of the future”, has passed away, aged 78.
I recently drew a link between some of Ballard’s later work (Super Cannes and Kingdom Come) and the Guardian picture of plainclothes policemen, armed with batons, joining their uniformed colleagues at the G20 protests.
I wonder if Ballard saw that picture and recognised how prescient his thinking has been ?
My article is here. The AFP story announcing Ballard’s passing is here.
I’ve been on tour in three of England’s glamourous northern cities, catching three very different gigs over the course of a week. And I can still hear. Rock’n'Roll ain’t what it used to be.
First up, a pilgrimage (for that is indeed what it feels like) to Leeds for The Sisters of Mercy. While it was invariably billed as a “homecoming” show (The Sisters were formed in some dark cellar round here in about 1981, I reckon), Andrew Eldritch made no concessions to any local interest. He remained resolutely enigmatic (“wortkarg”, he’d probably prefer to say).
Over the years I’ve seen the various incarnations of the band, starting with the UK Wembley shows in 1990; a ’92 festival at Germany’s Loreley; the Birmingham NEC in ’92; Manchester’s Apollo (I’m guessing 1996 ?) and University (2000); Birmingham’s Academy (possibly 2000 or 2001) and the Bristol Academy (god knows… 2004 and 2006 ?). Recently, Eldritch has started to cede the stage to his fellow musicians, allowing more axe solo work and leaving the stage for a rendition of ‘Top Night Out’, a two-guitar-no-vox piece.
This time round he’s hired Leeds’ own Ben Christo and Chris May, who both probably did a decent enough job. I say ‘probably’ because, I could hardly hear them. At first I thought it was the mix (ALWAYS a problem at Sisters’ shows), but when I realised that I was carrying on a conversation with Perlasix sound guru Andrew Daly at near-normal sound pressure levels it became quite clear that the PA sucked. Big time.
That said, Ben and Chris looked like they were trying to make a show of it… lot’s of axe-hero posturing and a bit of pogo (courtesy of Chris). The problem is that this can make the band look silly, creating a disconnect between the input of effort, flailing at instruments, and the woeful output of sound to the auditorium. It brought to mind one of Eldritch’s rare on-stage comments, made when finishing a support set for Depeche Mode. “Enjoy the puppet show”, he’s reported to have jibed. In retrospect that doesn’t seem smart. Perhaps he’d better stick to the enigmatic thing, at least until he can work with a band and venues to deliver a decent rock gig himself.
A few days later it’s a short-notice trip to Manchester for Ultravox’s Return to Eden tour. For this, the Apollo has been transformed to an all-seater venue, which is a first for me. Punters didn’t stay sat down for long though (probably for fear of getting DVT… it was like flying budget) and were on their feet for most of a fairly brave set. The classics (uptempo stuff off Vienna, plus Hymn, One Day, Dancing with Tears in my Eyes, etc.) all featured, but the standout tracks were the epics off both Vienna (Mr. X, Astradyne) and Rage In Eden (Death in the Afternoon, Your Name has Slipped my Mind Again). The band seemed to be enjoying themselves (“where have you been for the last 23 years”, Midge Ure asked the crowd), and genuinely performed ‘live’ with precious little sequencing, it seemed. They stayed faithful in tone to the originals, neither hardening nor softening the sound.
Finally, to Sheffield for Propagandhi, who are Manitoba’s finest agit-pop-punk-anarcho-vegans. Well, someone has to be. After some dismal support from a bunch of pissed teenagers with no songs and all their mates in the crowd (yes, both of them), Propagandhi came on for a set of ruthlessly efficient Green Dayisms… and were promptly interrupted by security invading the stage to announce a backstage fire. A ruthlessly efficient evacuation followed, the Fire Service arrived (to cheers), then the cops (to boos) and eventually, following lots of half-arsed chanting (“fuckin’ ell, fuckin’ ell”… vegan punks don’t seem to have the protein for a full-scale riot) and one arrest, a megaphone announcement to “go home… the show is over”.
Figuring that the scene was not about to get any prettier (all those ¾ length shorts, weird piercings and sleeve tattoos), I withdrew into the cold Sheffield night for some restorative meaty pasta. Sorry, vega-punks, but that cow did not die in vain.
One final thought – three gigs in a week and NO TINNITUS. It’s Health and Safety gone mad. Rock’n’roll may truly be dead.
Discuss…
Sudhir Venkatesh is probably very clever. His insight into the ‘hidden’ economies and social structures of poor urban neighbourhoods may even be very important. Unfortunately, none of this is reflected in the lightweight froth of Gang Leader for a Day, a populist counterpoint to his Ph.D. and subsequent research.
This is a book that proves that sociological research and gonzo journalism are twins separated at birth. Ingenue Sudhir, all pony-tail and tie-dye shirts, takes a six-pack of beers to the Projects, charms gang-leader J.T. with the false promise of writing his autobiography and ends up spending ten-or-so years with him “researching” (which appears to include something bordering on active participation in) the drug trade and its attendant niceties such as prostitution and punishment beatings.
The conclusions he reaches are wholly predictable: life is harsh; 911 is a joke; the Projects are a state-within-a-state, an economy-within-an-economy, etc. Public Enemy, NWA and friends told us all this twenty years ago, I reckon.
These revelations don’t seem worth the effort of reading this highly repetitive and vaguely self-glorifying waste of woodpulp. For the reader, that is. Venkatesh himself made Professor at Columbia on the back of the underpinning research. However, it’s his (or his publisher’s ?) decision to share almost none of that with the reader of this book. And this is a fatal error, turning the story into one that reads like Venkatesh the Glory Hunter, sycophantically cosying up to the bad guys for no reason he’s prepared to share with us. The sum of the impression is one of patronising condescension toward the ‘general’ reader. Are we too stupid to handle just a little bit of data and deeper analysis. Can we really only deal with a repetitive this-happened-so-then-that-happened narrative ?
The danger is that this book and others like it (are there others like it ? I’m assuming this isn’t a stand out), sold as “sociology”, demean the subject area. The blame may not lie with Venkatesh himself – he has a story to tell, after all - but with his publishers, who insist on sub-titling the book with a phrase like “a rogue sociologist…”.
This is not a sociology book. It’s a ‘ripping yarn’. Unfortunately, not a very good one. But that’s better than the alternative, which would ensure that no reader would ever be able to take a sociologist seriously again.
JG Ballard’s dystopias vindicated ? Plainclothes officers wield batons in G20 protests
I’m a big fan of two of JG Ballard’s later near-future dystopias: Super-Cannes and Kingdom Come. In both novels he depicts a state-within-a-state world of gated communities and out-of-town developments terrorised by privatised ’security’ and surveillance.
While Super-Cannes at least affords the comfort of placing the action in the (admittedly jarringly incongruous) setting of the French Riviera, Kingdon Come puts chav-clad private armies on the streets of the M4 corridor’s satellite towns. There, and under the influence of a charismatic leader who fronts a TV shopping channel, they patrol the streets surrounding a shopping centre, like sentinels around a latter-day temple.
As with Orwell in 1984, what makes Ballard’s vision so effective and so frightening, is just how familiar the environment is. He uses his workaday descriptive prose to illustrate just how little dys needs adding to our current topia to end up in hell. The overt violence of his marauding vigilantes trades on an undercurrent that his readers sense all around them.
And now, we can see it in action.
Of all the copper-beats-crusty shakycam clips we’ve seen post-G20 protest, the Guardian provides perhaps the most chilling today. The sight of uniformed riot police may be a commonplace, an expected presence. The high-visibility jackets, shields and batons are familiar and, while threatening, don’t feel out of place in the scenario. But the sight of plainclothes officers marching alongside, dressed in the everyday chav kit of light jeans, Harrington-type jackets and baseball caps and wielding batons is truly frightening because it degrades the image of the police from one of authority (conferred through the uniform and equipment and the sheer massedness of their ranks) to one of shame for deploying unidentifiable armed individuals in thug-type get up.
If one of those guys hits you, who do you complain to ?
Coke’s latest ad campaign shows us a bottle of their product next to a simple enough question: “… and what do you want to eat”. Their product may be the sugar-water of choice in cinemas, at sports events and on the go. But this campaign seems to want to put it on our dinner tables too.
Coke’s “red brand” ad budget in Europe reportedly exceeds £100m. But the company is a master of segmentation. With a limited product portfolio it has to be. So, not content with the familiar battle for the youth market, e.g. the 2003 ‘Coke…Real’ campaign and the UK ‘coke-zone’, it now seems to be looking at a very specific market: hungry people.
Coke’s marketing has always been notable – and often controversial. The company was recently forced to correct misleading statements in an Australian ‘myth-busting’ campaign that claimed its products did not contribute to tooth decay or obesity. The company has often been credited for the ‘invention’ of Santa Claus and lauded for its ‘It’s the real thing’ campaigns in the 1970s. Today, it uses innovative approaches such as Bluetooth-driven mobile marketing in London’s Piccadilly Circus, which has been praised because of its opt-in approach (essentially, it invites people to download content and doesn’t just spam their devices if they happen to walk beneath the famous billboard).
But youth has recently been a major target. The organisation of the cokezone.co.uk website tells you all you need to know: the menu options across the top of the screen include (from left to right): Sport, Music, Entertainment, Games and Fashion.
Not that this hasn’t paid off. There has been a steady growth of per capita consumption of Coke products across Europe, with only Germany notable for a decline over the last ten years. In the UK, per capita consumption in 2008 stood at 196 units (equivalent to 8fl 0z). That’s 46 litres per annum.
Coke, therefore, is ubiquitous and near-omnipresent. Its marketing assails us from public spaces via billboards; in our homes, through TV, press and online; in our workplace through vending operations and it now even follows us when we’re out and about, via Bluetooth.
But now Coke seems to be shifting its marketing approach. It’s worldwide ‘Open Happiness’ campaign acknowledges the impact of global recession and targets “consumers who are financially and emotionally pressured by the recession” with a message of retreating to the simple pleasures in life. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola and Pepsico are re-igniting the “cola wars” by aggressively competing for market share against a backdrop of declining sales in the US. The “and what do you want to eat” campaign can be seen very much as a part of this approach. It attempts to position Coke as the natural choice beverage (the question is: what do you want to eat. You already know what you want to drink) while targeting an under-represented segment: diners.
So, perhaps the last bastion of the Coke-free world is the dinner table ? But the company is clearly determined to wipe out whatever resistance is left. The “and what do you want to eat” billboard campaign simply gives us the familiar waisted bottle, right aligned and half in view, against a Coke-red backdrop and complemented with the simple question about what solids you fancy to soak up your soda.
Note that this is the ‘classic’ coke bottle in glass, with all its upmarket retro associations, and NOT the ubiquitous 2-litre PET ‘tank’ that you’re more likely to find gracing the dinner table chez Chav. The attempt here is to gentrify the brand’s association with food and conquer the last redoubt of middle-class ‘anti-consumerism’. But that’s ok… because with global financial meltdown and ‘Open Happiness’, Coke can be your friend in a time of crisis.
*burp*.
Two Lindt Bunnies got a bit animated at the breakfast table. (Belated) easter greetings to you all.
I had to sacrifice them in the end. They were tasty.
Alain de Botton’s books are a delightful, life-affirming read in part because they seem to tell you what you already knew, or at least suspected you did. While his latest work, on the Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, does just that, it’s strongest when examining those few people who have decided to rejected the rat race in favour of striking out on their own.
De Botton gently deconstructs work from the perspective of the individual steps in getting a piece of tuna from the Maldives to Sainsbury’s in Bristol or a few volts of juice from Dungenness to East London. Along the way we get some brief interviews with people whose lives’ work becomes ever more specialised in one aspect of the supply chain. So far, so alienated, so Marx. De Botton also riffs on the concept of the protestant work ethic, arguing that the emerging bourgeoisie of the 18th century was responsible for introducing the notion that work can create happiness. Concurrently, they also came up with idea that marriage and sexual fulfilment could go hand-in-hand. These concepts are a conscious rejection of the ruling classes’ ‘immorality’ that held that only hobbies and extra-marital affairs could lead to joy. However, given the evidence in modern western societies at least, the ancien regime may have been onto something.
In the book’s most compelling chapter, on entrepreneurship, de Botton also takes the opportunity to rehearse arguments familiar from his previous work on Status Anxiety. He illustrates that the largely 20th century idea of meritocracy is bound to result in legions of people feeling like abject failures when confronted with the undeniable economic facts of their meagre achievement (especially while jealously eyeing their neighbours’ shiny new motors, trophy wives and privately educated offspring).
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the harsh glare of the entrepreneurial arena. Business failure rates are sky high (up to 50% in the first two years, according to The Times) and investment notoriously hard to come by (his brief conversation with a venture capitalist tells you all you ever need to know about your chances of getting any cash out of one). To investigate what drives people to take the risk, de Botton attends a business start-up fair packed with the kind of people who have invented walk-on-water shoes and a way of compacting crisps into a snack bar (so they can be eaten with one hand and stored more efficiently in kitchen cupboards). He correctly diagnoses that these ‘entrepreneurs’ have signally failed to understand how people (customers) make decisions about how to cross rivers or when, how and why to eat snack foods. In short, their product idea came first… the rationale second. The supply of a solution came before the identification of a need.
In the book’s most arresting passage, de Botton diagnoses the condition thus:
These individuals were writing their stories in a subgenre of contemporary fiction, the business plan, and populating them with characters endowed with deeply implausible personalities, an oversight which would eventually be punished not by a scathing review by some bright young person from the London Review of Books but by a lack of custom and a prompt foreclosure.
Harsh, but probably true. Is this meritocracy in action ?
Research undertaken by a leading UK non-departmental public agency has revealed that consultants with double-barrelled surnames are on average one-and-a-half times more expensive than their single-barrelled rivals.
The chair of the agency’s Central Committee on Procurement has responded with a ban – effective as of today’s date – on contracting with further double-barrelled consultants. An unnamed colleague on the agency’s research team, which had worked with the procurement team on a root-and-branch review of consultant input, said: “we’re not sure whether the double-barrel thing is causation or merely correlation. We’ll be bringing in an external team to mine the data for a clearer picture”.
